Hand Drawn Pointing Finger? Return To Sender

I collect Milwaukee, WI advertising covers. I picked up this 1893 cover this past weekend. I know little of auxillary markings, but I don't believe I have ever seen hand drawn pointing fingers. Can someone enlighten me regarding whether this is common or even if it was added later.

Thanks in advance.

I wouldn't say they are common, but not unprecedented either. There are a few others posted in this thread:
https://goscf.com/t/56523&whichpage=2#495600

The Stamp Smarter Pointing Hand cover database currently has seven examples with hand drawn pointing hands out of a total of about 700 covers.

From that information, one might say that about 1% of the covers could have a hand drawn pointing hand, but this is a really small sample, and I suspect these statistics are skewed even more by the mindset of the contributors, who might be more eager to enter a cover with the hand drawn pointing hand marking more than an example from a rubber stamp.

The ones shown in the link in ZebraMan's previous post are included in the database. Don was persistent in adding new items from that thread into the database. I will add your cover there is you have no objection.

Mike L

Please add it. Thanks for your help.

jmeverdan:

Your cover added.

To view all of the covers with hand drawn pointing hands, go to

https://stampsmarter.org/features/C...dViewDB.html

Select "View by Hand Type" then go to the "Finger Style" column, and click on the header. You may have to do this twice to get the sort order right.

Thanks again. I had no idea that database existed.

here are two I couldn't find in the finger data base

3193zd:

Both are now added to the database.

I remembered the first one from the original discussion about it a while back, and was able to retrieve the reverse of the cover as well for the database.

Do you have a scan of the front of the second cover you can post here?

When possible, we like to include both front and reverse of the covers in the Pointing Hand database..

Incidentally, this Pointing Hand cover database is one of the Stamp Smarter Community projects, which means that anyone who is interested can sign up with us and submit new examples directly to the database. Please contact me if you are interested in working with us.

Thanks,
Mike L

To the question whether the hand drawn pointing figure was added later, I would say no. It looks to be drawn with the same marker used to write "Return" and to cross through the address.

here is front.

3193zd:

Thank you for the additional front cover scan.

Now updated.

MikeL

blcjr:




You raise an interesting point, and this was something we considered during the design of the Pointing Hand database.

We eventually came to the conclusion that there was no absolutely certain way to determine if a hand-drawn pointing hand marking was a post office supplied "endorsement", or the work of a later person. We chose to include them and the viewers will have to make their own decision.

MikeL