US Offices In China Cancel Question

Greetings. Hopefully I can post the image and I wondered if anyone had seen anything like this - a fancel cancel on a US Offices in China (Shanghai), c. 1919-1922. It's a 40c on 20c, Scott K13.

I wonder if the cancellation is real. It's a fancy cancel at a time when the office there was utilizing government-supplied cancelling devices.

(I will likely have to have this expertized, but wondered if folks had seen this before.)

(Cancellations of this type seen in the 1870s, per book by Frajola, Perlman and Scamp.)

For what it's worth, I think it's extremely doubtful that this is a genuine cancel.

For such a high value, the expected cancel would be a large double oval with "R D" in the center ("registry department"). Otherwise, it was a steel duplex cancel of that era or a slightly larger CDS. In what references I have including a PDF of the George Fisher cover collection (1998 Frajola sale), as you mentioned above, there is nothing even close for the Washington-Franklin Shanghai surcharges.

We could think this would be a cancel added later somewhere along the way to an accidentally uncancelled stamp on cover. But again, fancies like this weren't at all common when the Shanghai surcharges were valid, 1919-22. The Shanghai stamps were sold through the Washington DC philatelic agency for a short time afterwards, so this could have been put on a cover at a later time when fancies were again being made and used, mostly philatelically, in the late 1920s. But this would probably be an illegal usage; the surcharges are in Chinese currency, after all.

Do not try to compare fancy cancels from different eras, like the Banknote period to any other. These were generally used until they wore out, which could be days or months depending on use or materials used to make them.

When you get it back from expertising, please post the results back here.

Thanks for the comments!!!

Yes, as I noted I have not seen any other similar ones yet, but mostly looking at online stamps of the error. I only mentioned the 1870s in China because that is latest fancy cancels from there that I have seen (but perhaps there could be some into the 20th century?) ...

I would not think it was a stamp returned to the U.S. and then illegally used, but I suppose it could have been; or was applied to a made-up cover for fun (or fakery), I suppose.

It is curious, though. I purchased it along with some other used K stamps from a local auction (NOT a stamp auction) via the same collector. All of the others carry standard types of killers. (From the material I saw I would not think the collector was particularly wealthy, but he did have a lot of stamps - including some from People's Republic of China that might have been pretty high value (I did not bid because images were blurry and was not sure, though others did bid high and clearly they saw or thought the saw the same thing). So perhaps, this collector had a thing for China. Trying to find out who he was.

Siegel just sold the Magnolia collection and there was no such animal in the collection.

I would agree that it has a high probability of being fake. No real reason for anyone in Shanghai to even have such a cancel.

revcollector - though, those types of cancels were in use in the 1870s (as I noted earlier ... maybe it was canceled one day when the regular device was lost and someone pulled a cork out of an old drawer - hahahaha) ... no doubt it's an oddity, but I will hold onto hope at least till experts look at it

Certainly they were in use in the US, but in Shanghai????

Yes, the Fisher collection sold in 1998 and the book noted at the top both document use of fancy cancels for U.S. mail in China, though those sources date it to the 1870s. So right now, the use of such cancels after that time period would certainly be low, but maybe not non-existent. That is what I would like to find out.

That's fine, send it in for a cert. But I would be willing to bet that it is fake.

Looks as if the Shanghai overprint may have been applied over the cancel although its tough to tell for sure, both being applied in black ink.

Probably an optical illusion. The overprint looks OK. The problem is the cancel.

We have previously disproved using 2D images to determine under/over topic. I cannot find the thread, but we clearly showed how (on the same stamp) places which looked like the cancel was over and other places where it appeared the cancel was under an overprint. You have to understand how scan/digital imaging software works on why this happens, but it is about the way color pixels are being assigned in the software. 2D bitmaps have no z axis data and therefore it is impossible to determine which is on top or the other, full stop.
Don