I am not into precancels but I am curious about these two stamps. I have never seen any before with the dates printed at the top. Can someone shed some light on these?
I think the 'MW' stands for 'Montgomery Ward', who used a large number of precancel stamps to mail their packages. Remember the Christmas 'wish book', that was used in my home to mark all the various items that you wanted Santa to bring you.
And 'Monkey Ward' was one of our favorite sellers, and many of our Christmas gifts came from them!
I can't believe you both missed his question....an 'F' for you both, followed by detention for 1 hour!!
Yes MW does stand for Montgomery Wards, a huge mail order firm.
"MW - MAY 40" and "MW - APR 46", are known as permit numbers. These were required for all precancels over a certain face value....6¢ I think. The first two or three letters are the firm's ID followed by the month and year. So not all precancel stamps carry these.
4) You can replace everything after the comma (if you can find the comma) with anything you would like to appear instead BUT you must not include a second comma!
{link}http://www.precancels.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/WEBPDAlbumn_081111.pdf,THE NEW TYPE ALBUM FOR PRINTED DATED CONTROL PRECANCELS (PDF){/link}
Those are dates, not permit numbers. Precancels over six cents (face value) were required to have the user (in this case, Montgomery Ward) and the month and year the stsmp was valid. This was to prevent reuse.
David G
Texas and New York State precancel specialist
Ottawa, Canada
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