Argentine Cancellation

Here's a Department of the Interior overprint showing a 600 in a diamond frame cancellation. Can anyone please tell me what the 600 represents? Thanks in advance.

Tony Vella
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Lovely intriguing postmark there Tony.

You know, Rod, just out of curiosity I went through all my Argentina 10s, 20s and 30s and this is the only lozenge/diamond cancellation I found.
I got in touch with my BsAs contact last night but his expertise is specifically BsAs and he cannot think of any connection between the 600 and BsAs.
So I decided to have a go here and on Filaposta hoping someone has seen it before. I know I haven't.

TonyV.

I recently went through a boatload of dead circuit books, and Argentine official/ministry stamps were found in many, many of them. I probably looked at more than a thousand, and I would have grabbed your example in a heartbeat, so I can say for sure that none were in that accumulation.

That doesn't tell you what it is, and it doesn't confirm that it is rare, but it tells me that it is unusual, at least.

Collin

I have been attempting to complete a collection of Department Officials for a number of years so I also have been through countless 1000's of them and have not seen this cancellation before so my curiosity is also aroused. I have found one other aberration in a Dept. of Agriculture overprint done with a typewriter so some intriguing things can be found in these Officials.

A friend of mine just advised me by private email that she saw a similar cancellation (450, she thinks, rather than 600) about a year ago on an Argentine regular issue (not official) of the same period. She did ask around, both on the net and through a dealer in Córdoba where she lives but never got an explanation. I also contacted a dealer friend of mine in Bahía Blanca but he has never seen or heard of any such thing. I find it rather intriguing and shall continue searching an answer which I will share when and if one comes along.

I have contacted a philatelic acquaintance of mine who specializes in Argentina. He hasn't checked in for awhile, so may be on vacation or something. I'll post when I get a reply.

I have just been advised on an other forum that this image appears in the Catálogo Jalil. Since I don't have a Catálogo Jalil I still don't know what the cancellation is all about. I shall contact Guillermo a little later and bring my "600" to his attention maybe he can give me some explanation which I will certainly pass on to this group.

However, I must add that I posed this same question about a week ago on the Argentina forum which G.J. follows regularly and he has not intervened with any info, so I don't know really what to expect.

I do have a 2009 copy of the GJ catalogue. The scan comes from the section on Department Officials - various examples of covers are shown in that section, with no apparent explanation of why that particular cover was chosen as an example. In the case of your scan, the stamps are Ministry of Marine M.M. stamps, with the number 192 inside the lozenge. There is an emblem stamped in the lower left corner of the cover which reads "Faro Comodoro Rivadavia", and "Comodoro Rivadavia" is also legible on the CDS cancels.

Around 15 other covers are also shown as examples, using various Department or "Servicio Official" overprints, but none of the others show the lozenge postmark.

Ryan

Hi Ryan.

I wrote to Guillermo a couple of hours ago asking for help. I know that every time I have written to him he has always answered, not immediately perhaps, but always. I shall definitely let everyone know of anything I discover. I am currently putting together a series of pages with my entire departmentals collection indicating the missing ones. I have been collecting them ever since forever it seems but there are still a number I simply cannot find. This will be another avenue to explore.