Hope this works. I have asked around and have had no luck identifying this mark. Dahomey is a french colony but the mark doesn't seem to match anything in that area. Been suggested it could be german? My guess was it looked like a revenue mark of some sort.
I've never seen such a surcharge/cancel. But then again, I'm no specialist in French West Africa and I don't collect revenue cancels. It is not listed in my 2001 Ceres French Colonies Volume 1.
If it were a revenue surcharge/cancel, the number font is noticeably inconsistent with the postal surcharges I've seen for Dahomey of the 1920s. But again, I don't collect revenue surcharges/cancels so I don't have those to compare...
But I have to wonder why the abbreviation APR would be used (i.e., I would expect the date to be in French, not English). Maybe Ralph or one of the French-literate members could chime in...
thanks for checking. The date stamp and style is what led one knowledgable guy from our club to suggest it may be german as there was a lot of cross-over to Togo with that issue of stamp. I am just guessing about the revenue suggestion due to the R and 1c in the ring. I have a few revenues from the colonies of that era and not seen anything like that however.
just wanted to bring this back to front..hope somebody new sees it and has the answer.. I am updating my exhibit for Sandical in Jan and hope to have an answer that this is something really cool so I can put it in the exhibit.
I may be totally wrong, but the cancel looks almost computer generated. The typography reminds me of modern office suit fonts, and the sloping lines could be hand drawn with the mouse in a graphics program.
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