Fancy? Cancel Novice About Value.

Is this cancellation worth the $15 price?

Do you like it $15.00 worth?

Consider: this cancel is a little fancier and less common than just a plain star or star in a circle. The Marshal's corner card is nice to have, but the legal size envelope is a minus for a lot of collectors. Still, the double rate makes this something a little better than run of the mill. The pencil docketing gives a date of use which is not always found on covers of this era.

So rdavid's comment is very valid. If you feel that you have a chance of being burned at that level, why wouldn't you research prices? Sold prices on ebay, which are closer to wholesale prices in many cases, are a good reference. It might take 15-20 minutes tops? That said, I like it at $15 worth.

I'm aware of several varieties of 19th century star-in-pentagon fancy cancels. While maybe not as easily-recognized as the compass or square, these come from Masonic symbology, and there's definitely a market for them.

Your stamps don't appear tied to the cover, which is a little odd given the position of the cancels, especially on the right stamp. If I were in the market for this kind of cover, the first thing I would want to know is whether this particular fancy cancel is documented in the city (is that Pittsburgh, PA?) during October 1874. (I've found an example of a negative star-in-circle from 1874 Pittsburgh, but not a positive star-in-pentagon like this one.) If it is, the cover is probably genuine and worth at least $15.

If you would like to pay $15 for it then it is worth $15 since a willing buyer (you) will pay that price. I would not mainly because the stamps are not tied to the cover and could have been added. I would alao deduct value for it being a legal sized cover instead of a more collectable and displayable Number 6 size.

Pretty sure it's from Pittsburgh and the date is correct too. See photo attached.



It has a cousin too which I'm considering.

On the 1st, even the US Marshall's letterhead is watermarked '1874'.

caper - the question isn't whether the cover and enclosure are from Pittsburgh, but rather whether that fancy cancel is known from Pittsburgh (since the stamps are not tied, they could have been from somewhere else and then moved to this cover)

eyeonwall, the recording of fancies on Banknotes is poor since there are so many. This killer may be in a reference on Pittsburgh cancels, but city and state cancel references generally fix on townmarks and just give killers a mention.

http://www.stampsmarter.com/feature...sicView.html
records a similar cancel from 1877 and Pittsburgh has many other star killers in 5-sided frames. Further, the ink color, its consistency and the cancel strike matches the townmark from what I can see from just a scan.

As luck would have it, here's a cover for sale on ebay right now, supposedly dated 1874, source of date unknown ecept for a posthumous pencil note:

This killer isn't tied, either. So it's faked and that there's a factory out there cranking out forgeries of inexpensive covers? The pencil docketing is forged? Contents were taken from another cover and included here? Perhaps a chance of all three happening, but that's a chance so small as to be nearly nonexistent.

It's one thing to not like this in the case of stamps not being tied. But if untied is the only way the star killer exists, and you'll never have one. Also, Banknote-era legal covers are disliked relative to small covers as are postal cards. But postal cards yield the best cancel strikes and are what are often available these days. Postal cards can have dated contents whereas Banknote-era covers mostly do not. Again, if a cancel doesn't exist on a small-size cover, you won't have one. Makes it easy to collect when nothing is considered worthy.

There are loads more positives than negatives about the first cover. The approach is different from a collector vs. a postal historian. Of course, you should be cautious; paranoid, no. Further, in the case of Pittsburgh who generally used fancy cancels in the Bankote period, replacing one fancy cancel with another different one that is not a spectacular one doesn't make sense.

From what I am seeing on this second cover the cancel is tied on the left side though to a small extent.

Interesting Hy-Brazil. The cancel on your post is the day before mine!