I’ve finished imaging the revenues I picked up this past weekend at COMPEX. No major finds but a few nice pieces. I did send 2 stamps that I bought on extension to the PF on Monday, and if they end up being good I’ll post them. The one item in particular is about the most aesthetically pleasing example of its type that a cancel collector will find, as the vast majority are found with manuscript cancels.

So… on to the new pickups…

A nice little shield cancel. Nothing scarce, just aesthetically attractive.

A nice red socked-on-the-nose cancel. The stamp is munged, but the contrast is stark.

I’m not sure what the company is and the stamp is oxidized, but you don’t see many printed cancels on the 6-cent.

A red cancel on a red stamp is fairly tough to discern. This is an example of how well the tool at http://www.retroreveal.org works. The cancel is Earl & Hatcher, Lafayette, IN.

A nice “leather & belting” dealer cancel.

An American Express cancel type I had not seen before.

Another nice boldly struck cancel.

I’ve got several examples of this next one and I still don’t know what the company is. This is the first one I’ve seen on a part perf though.

A nice large oval custom house cancel (Hughes & McDaniel) from San Francisco.

The left-right margins on this one are bit narrow, but the cancel is bold and one I didn’t have.

This one is strictly for the cancel, as the stamp is cut into the design at bottom. Bold strike though.

Nothing particularly remarkable, just a nice petit sharp cancel.

A lovely large shield insurance agency cancel.

The stamp is munged, but LOVE the dual cancel strikes!

Another bored clerk adds to my collection of “doodle” manuscript cancels.

This one is cool less because of the stamp but more about how it was found. I was chatting with a dealer and he was telling me about this “cool $2 red stamp with two ALASKA cancels” that he had sold the prior weekend. I asked him how much he sold it for. He said $15, and I told him he sold it way too cheap. It’s easily a $50 item (Pacific Mail Steamship Co.).

Not less than 15 minutes later, in another dealer’s inventory, I found the stamp below. Talk about timing! This one is a silk paper. I took it back and showed it to the first dealer and we had a good laugh. It’s a little rough around the edges, but for $8 I’ll take it!

Most examples of R6b you find are marginal… questionable… iffy. This one has 3 ginormous margins. Yes, given the quality control of the era, it *could* be a trimmed R6c, but you won’t find a bigger no-brainer off document or not in a multiple (actually, I’ve never seen a multiple of R6b in person).

R134 is a slightly better stamp, and you don’t see them frequently with nice SOTN cancels. I thought this magenta cancel was aesthetically quite attractive.

Doubled handstamped cancels are fairly common, printed cancels (where the entire sheet was run through a printing press) less so.

I bought this one more out of curiousity than anything else, particularly because I thought the price was right. Scott only lists a block of 4 price used… and does not give any price for never hinged versus hinged. The only unused price is for a hinged single. So how would you value a never hinged block of 4?

And lastly one that I bought purely for margins. These are frequently found with narrow widths. This are the widest left-right margins I’ve seen on this particular issue.