Pan Pacific Sc# 397 1915 Stamp With 1913 Cancel???

How can this happen? A June, 30 1913 cancel a full year and half before the stamp was issued. I don't believe the cancel is miss inked and could be 1918 because the salutation is dated June 29 1913, one day before the cancellation. Could this be the earliest known usage? Any other examples? Opinions please. Thanks! Wolf-==-



Please disregard this post. I just looked in my US specialized and saw that the stamp was issued Jan 1, 1913. Sorry for jumping the gun, my bad

It is interesting though that a stamp was issued on New Year's Day ... and my favorite U.S. stamp at that. Of course, it was not the only one ... 399 & 400 were also issued on Jan. 1, 1913. For 398, Scott only mentions Jan of 1913 without specifying a specific day.

Once again I'm kind of embarrassed about this and apologize for taking up the bandwidth. I tried to cancel/remove the post but something is broken in that system. Possibly my not understanding of it.

The reason I first got excited about is was that the stamp is dated 1915 with the cancel being 1913. You would think that the USPS wouldn't know if the world would exist past the issue date. So as not make this thread a total waste, can anyone think of other issues of postdated stamps prior to their issue date. US or otherwise. Cheers! Wolf-==-

The exhibition opened in 1915, but construction of buildings and other preparations began many years before. It was a major event in the West. The USPO got on the promotional bandwagon in 1913 in part because the media was already covering the event and the public was interested. The timing really is not unusual. There are probably many examples. A modern one is that USPS issued stamps commemorating the NY2016 international stamp show long before it opened.

I wonder how many stamps have been issued in honor of events that never actually materialized. If such an event as the Panama–Pacific International Exposition had been planned for Europe rather than the U.S. in 1915, it almost certainly would have been cancelled.

I have poster stamps (not postage stamps) advertising a couple of Esperanto congresses that were cancelled because of the outbreak of war: the 10th World Congress of Esperanto (Paris, 1914) and the 32nd World Congress of Esperanto (Marseille, 1940).

The 32nd was postponed until 1947, when it was held in Bern. The 10th is much more interesting, because it was cancelled right as it was beginning. The congress was scheduled for 2-9 August 1914, but France mobilized on 1 August and declared war on Germany on 3 August. Some people coming to the congress were turned away at the border, while some from enemy nations who had already arrived in Paris were jailed. L.L. Zamenhof, the inventor of Esperanto, was halted in Cologne and hurried back to the Russian border, only to find it closed. He returned to Berlin and was eventually able to make his way home to Warsaw by way of Sweden, Finland, and St. Petersburg.