Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy.. 27 Jan 2017 03:35:51pm
re: 1/2 cent Ben precancels
On the one hand One might feel the urge to say "Too Many."
On the other it would be an interesting topic with near endless possibilities.
The basic overprint was used in many towns and cities over a long enough time to generate many variations; upright, inverted, sideways either way and different formats. Just thumbing through my precancel album pages you can see where certain large cities have used multiple lettering arrangements and even different fonts.
I do not see any limit, other than one that is self imposed..
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".... You may think you understood what you thought I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you think you heard is not what I thought I meant. .... "
There are two types of precancels.
Bureaus - Overprinted by USPOD centrally and sent to the named post office. These are very neat in appearance. There is a catalog and albums for bureaus.
Locals - As you can figure, these are cancelled by the local post office upon a customer's demand. I remember the precancel device being able to cancel multiple stamps at a time, but not a full sheet. These look like they were rubber stamped for the most part. There may be a guide as to what offices have been seen, but they were cancelled locally without any records so anything is possible.
Are you collecting the 1/2 cent Ben from BOTH the Prexies and Liberty Series? Or just one of those?
Precancels are fairly common and easy to acquire. I like the challenge of collecting them on cover. A bit harder!
The US Precancel Stamp Society sells Bureau catalogs and City and Town (local) catalogs. I own both catalogs but don't have time to count the number that are 1/2 Bens. Perhaps you could find something on the Society website or ask around.
I know of one frequent contributor on the SCF stamp forum website is a pre-cancel society member and was unofficial promoter of said society at one point. If you posted the same question there you would likely get a more detailed response than I can give.
Actually if you are talking about the 1/2 cent Franklin Prexy, Scott 803, a similar question was posted in a PDF on the precancel website. The author had 8,300 such stamps and wonders how many more he need to be complete.
Can I say a "yuge" amount? had a comprehensive precancel catalog but it burnt up when my home burnt down in 2012. also burnt up my precancel collection and my desire to collect precancels. Had about 100 Steiner pages with stamps on them. Collecting precancels is Herculean task.
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" I have a burning love for stamps. Lord A'mighty ,feel my temperature risin'! "
I have a relatively complete (except for the high-dollar) bureau collection, but did not know if there was any commonly known number for the locals. I will sign up with the Precancel Stamp Society soon. I agree that precancels are daunting, but having finished the bureaus, I think I will continue.
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