Unrecorded Sawtooth Perfs, NYC Roulettes, And Chicago Perfs... OH My

The Chicago perfs are certainly unofficial as well as privately done but I think "precursor" is something that they could have been if only the USPOD had required, or Toppan Carpenter had decided to buy/use the machine that made them. See article written by Jerome Wagshal in Chronicle 130 for more info.

I never had the pleasure of knowing W. Wilson Hulme II, perhaps a good start to understanding who he was would be to read his eulogy in the first pages of the sale of his collection, Siegel Sale 964.

To put this in maybe a more tangible frame of reference, try Siegel Sale 869, Lot 3023 for one of the other covers. Reference is made to Winston's, in the description.

https://siegelauctions.com/lots.php...869-lot-3023

The Chicago perfs are known used from about mid 1856 until early 1857.

This cover doesn't have any information to narrow down an exact date of mailing.

I did find an ad for the "Lake View Water Cure" in the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel of April 2, 1856.

That, of course, doesn't tell anything about when this was mailed, other than to validate the existence of such, on or around the right time frame.

That's a good data point, Tex. Thanks for posting.

Does not look right.

Since no facts or rationale are given for that comment, it can only constitute noise in this thread.

Realize that the 1c stamp on this cover is paying the printed matter / circular rate. This was junk mail of the time. As such, complete postmarks with nice month, day, and maybe year markings are frequently not used. The "PAID" (only) is perfectly reasonable for this type of cover.

The discovery of this cover also dates from an era when these were showing up from different sources (Chicago perfs), and all of the experts of the day, including Chase, were well dialed into these.

There are ways to expertise a Chicago perf stamp, which I won't go into here, but this stamp exhibits exactly what needs to be there, and looks absolutely genuine to me. Certainly, it would be nice to have it formally expertised, given what is now known about these, but I think this one's a slam-dunk (in other words its totally legitimate).

Understand that this is on a cover from the Chicago area. If it were on a circular, say, from Texas, then, well, we'd be having a different discussion regarding authenticity.

Oh, and of course, I omitted the obvious in my last post -

The perforations don't look like normal perforations, for say a #20, Ty II 1857 issue 1c stamp, because it isn't that. Those were made on the Bemrose government perforating machine that I outlined earlier. The gauge for those is 15.

Winston's stamp came from Hadley's private perforating machine, and constitutes an imperforate #7, Ty II, that Hadley ran through his machine. These gauge about 12.5. He probably then gave it to Swift, who either used it personally, or handed it out.

I've attempted to provide a condensed overview of the Chicago perfs, here, for the casual reader. Winston pointed out earlier, one good reference for them, and here are Wilson Hulme's two articles in The Chronicle for those who wish to read further.

Chronicle 174:
http://chronicle.uspcs.org/PDF/Chro...74/17972.pdf

Chronicle 175:
http://chronicle.uspcs.org/PDF/Chro...75/11694.pdf

No doubt the very same item as illustrated in Ashbrook Volume II on page 26. Poor Mr. Fancy Cancel.

A 1c Chicago Perf in Siegel sale 1199, Lot 1052 -

https://siegelauctions.com/lots.php...99&page_no=5

There is a 3c one, in the subsequent lot.

I don't have my notes handy, but I'm guessing this might be one we weren't able to plate in 1996 since it was locked up in Wagshal's collection, and we probably didn't have much of a photo.

Looks like a plate 2 B relief.

From the Siegel description in txstamps link



Any idea how this stamp went from Jerry to the current auction? I can't imagine Jerry would have sold it. Was it sold from the estate prior to the Siegel sales back in 2010-11 or is there more in the estate still to surface?

Lot 1015, the 7R1E has the same comment about ex-Wagshal.

I have no idea what path these stamps took. I'll be interested to find out.

I'm not aware of Jerry selling anything nice while he was around. He would sometimes try to pawn off an off-quality 'find' of his, for a large sum of money - no luck with me on that!.

Over the years I have heard various comments that Jerry owned X and it wasn't in the auctions, but this is the first time I've seen something appear at auction.

There were definitely a few modest things of Jerry's that Siegel sold off piecemeal, prior to his big sales. These would appear in regular Siegel sales, with something like 'ex-Neinken', and appeared after I knew that Trepel had Jerry's stamps.

Most such material was off-quality, not top-tier stuff like what we are discussing. I think all of that was saved for his main sales.

These items are a surprise to me as well.