Hey, Did You Get That At Baskin Robbins Or Ebay?

The certificate is obviously wrong. It says "1861" not "1851". It would have been mentioned. Notice that the cert does NOT mention the 1851 date as wrong and it is clear that it has sharp corners like a 5 not a 6. The letter did not originate in that envelope either, obviously. Whoever rigged the cover, misread the date too. He spent a lot of time adding the stamps, he could have touched up the date too to be thorough. This is a good example of why Weiss certs do not hold much weight. The old gum line cannot be wrong nor could that mark be created any other way other than the removal of stamps. I bet you cannot get a PF cert on it. They will not fall for it. Sorry if my opinion upsets you. I originally thought that was what you were looking for, others to find the added stamps.

Sinclair, take a look at the upper right corner of the stamps (as shown in image). It appears that the corner of the stamp was lifted from the cover and bent over. The corner does not touch the envelope according to the image. See if that is true and if the cancel goes under that stamp. I will bet that it does. It is the only area the cancel gets close to the stamps. That cancel at the point should be on the stamp. There is no way that it can get that close to the "lip" otherwise.

Jaxom: you just keep stepping further in it. Nobody who has any familiarity with 19th century US postal history would think this is an 1851 cover for even a second. The style of postmark (which is a standard government marking) didn't exist in 1851, and in any case Dubuque was using a different marking in 1851 but I'm sure you didn't bother checking that. For that matter, duplex handstamps didn't exist in 1851. It's 1861, not 1851, period, end of story.

At the very least, the #9 imperfs were added after something was removed. They were put on because they were damaged anyway.

It is a 5.

I tend to agree that the CDS says "1851," but that does not mean that the proper year date was used when the cover was postmarked.

The penmanship on the envelope is all wrong too. Doesn't match the letter strokes inside

So I'm finally just sitting down to look at the cover on a real computer. I've been out of pocket all weekend until just now. Identifying a 46L12 late at night on the iPhone was interesting.

My first reaction when I first saw the cover was that it was weird as heck, but perfectly legit.

Ok, first comment - I love the 71L1L left margin, Winston. The invert is there, and is awesome !!
I used to really search for inverts with big left margins. Very nice.

The Dubuque cancel is listed and correct for 1861 in the ASCC. No problem there.
For the record, it is a double circle cancel, and not a duplex cancel. A duplex is a combined CDS + killer. This is just a double-circle CDS. Nevertheless, this DC CDS is only known in 1861.

The comments on the board about there is no 1851 year-dated cancel are absolutely correct. Of course, I'm ignoring the well-known Sonora, CA straight lines and a very few others. For normal CDS's -- they simply don't exist with 1851 year dates. So, I won't argue that there is a strong resemblance to a 5 here, but it simply isn't. Whether its cancel distortion at work here, or an odd 'font/serif' that was used for the 6, the fact remains that it is a 6, regardless of what your eyes tell you. This truly is something you just have to get some background with to fully appreciate. You'll just have to take our word for it.

I was initially worried about the lower left stamp placement together with what looked like water damage -- which is always a red flag of potential stamp-replacement, but now that I can actually see the cover on a big screen, I realize that it is gum-soak, which likely happened when the stamps were applied and probably smeared a bit until they found a sticking place. That's fine.

With regard to late, out of period usages, there are always some wacko cases, this being one. I've seen a pair of #9's used in the mid 1860s obliterated by a real duplex cancel. Looked weird as heck also, but I couldn't find fault with it, at least from just the picture I saw. Stuff happens.

It is true that I've seen quite a few #24s mixed with #9s or #7s on cover for mixed usages. Those are neat, and findable. I don't off-hand recall seeing a Plate 11 or Plate 12 stamp used with a #9. Those plates are mostly if not exclusively 1861 plates so its a rare find. Obviously not impossible.

My take on this cover is its totally awesome. I agree totally with Winston, that its like Baskin Robbins. Very apropos title for this thread. This cover definitely has 31 (or more) terrific flavors to it, depending on what you want to collect on a given day!

Tex, I am glad you appreciate the cover. I know an Iowa postal history collector and he provided these images of covers originating in Dubuque. One of them was postmarked only 4 days before mine. Note how unreadable the year-date is on that cancel. As I said, the year-date is notoriously difficult to read in these cancels. His earliest example of the killer cancel is March 21, 1861.

Txstamp, is this not water stain marks from possible removal of stamps? Is this what you saw and decided it is gum-soak? Across the writing? The ink is even smeared.

Ditto.

And I believe the digit is a 5. The little ball serif and straight back clinch it for me. The following images illustrate how typical 5's and 6's looked on coins from the USA in this era. The 6 is completely made of curves and there is no "ball serif" in the lower left the way there is in the postmark. And, the postmark does not have a ball serif at upper right the way the 1856 coin has one.

Nothing in the image tells me the third digit is a 6, it is definitely a 5.

Believe in what your eyes see. It is a five. No amount of prestidigitation changes that.

You cannot compare metal to ink.

jaxom - yes that area.

Regarding that, and in general - I haven't examined the cover in person, and I try to keep an open mind. That said, given what I see at the moment, I've stated what I think, for whatever that is worth.

I'm far from perfect, but I collect covers these days, almost exclusively, and I spend a lot of time evaluating new ones. It is a learned skill, like anything else, and not everything about it is necessarily obvious.

As I said, it also looks like a 5 to me, but comparing struck coins to a hand applied ink postmark is a real apples-to-oranges exercise. There are many extant examples of circular date stamps with demonstrably incorrect dates (such as "Feb 30"). By my lights, even if the year slug says 1851 that does not mean, in the presence of other evidence, that the CDS could not have been applied in 1861.