Hi John,
The reason I asked to see the back is because most times but not always the ink applied when faking cancellations bleeds through. I don't see the elephant part of the cancel bleeding through. It still don't look right. The way the ink looks thicker around the edge of the elephant. Another test to try is dampen the tip of a Q-Tip with water and wipe the cancel to see if any ink comes off, a sign that it is water based, not oil based that was used at the time of the stamp issue.
The ink used for the CDS and the ink smudge on the right side of the stamp appears to be different then the ink of the elephant.
This elephant looks very familiar to me. As a child I had an old zoo parade of wooden stamping blocks that were made in the 30s/40s and if I remember correctly that was what the elephant looked like. If you stamped correctly in a tight line/row it looked like they were holding the tail of the elephant in front of them with their trunk.
So I imagine this might have been an art-related project where children were handstamping used stamps with black ink pads in the 50s to 70s perhaps.
I made the same remark about the elephant in a phone call.
I had a set of those wooden animals even had stars, moon etc.
Thank you for all your remarks.
Save your money, that is not a Waterbury cancellation. Stamp issued too long after the use of the Waterbury Elephant. As Don points out the CDS is a problem. It is not duplexed to the cancel. Also the cancel looks too watery and the build up of ink around the elephant is also problematic. The size of the elephant is also too large. There is nothing that says this is a genuine cancel.
