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Color Cancellations on Official Stamps / 2 |
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Alan Campbell |
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Chronicle, Vol. 51, No. 1, February, 1999 |
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(parts 1&2) |
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Purple (continued from part 1) |
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Purple is an important color of canceling ink for officials stamps because it was used throughout 1878 in Washington, D. C. With this notable exception, it was never used in any large cities. In theory, it should be possible to find the telltale quartered circle of 1878 D. C. on all values of the Continental printing except for the $10 and $20 State (not postally used after 1874) and the 15¢, 24¢, and 30¢ Agriculture (rendered obsolete in 1875 by a change in postal regulations, making it possible for the Commission to send seedlings through the mail free). And indeed, the only values not recorded so far with a purple cancellation is the $5 State, which may no longer have been in use by that date. After 1877, purple canceling ink was also extensively used with the molded vulcanized rubber handstamps purchased by small town postmasters. In Figure 4 we illustrate an early example postmarked Canton, Ohio July 11, 1877, with multiple strikes of an outlined negative star in circle on a reconstructed block of eight of the 3¢ Post Office. This design, which would prove to be one of the most popular commercially produced, is struck in a shade identical to that used through most of 1878 in Washington, D. C. |
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In Figure 5, courtesy of Rollin C. Huggins, Jr., we show the same device crisply struck in the same purple ink on a Bureau of Education reply envelope, postmarked Northampton, Mass. Oct. 13, 1877. According to Bond, Northampton, Mass. had been chosen along with Washington, D. C. for government-sponsored trials of purple canceling ink in 1878, but this cover confirms that purple ink was already being utilized there. It is a great frustration not to be able to do this beautiful cover justice by illustrating it in color, especially considering how rare it is to find an official stamp on cover with a fancy cancellation struck in any color other than black. Purple strikes of similar rubber handstamps account for the catalogue listing for purple cancellations on most values of the soft paper American printings. Prior to 1877, purple canceling was seldom used anywhere, but to the good fortune of officials collectors, it was employed in Long Branch, New Jersey in 1876, where the mail from President Grant's "Summer White House" was posted. All Executive values but the 2¢ have been found with the Long Branch purple star. |
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Violet and Magenta |
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To discuss these problematic shades, we must open with a preamble on the nomenclature of colors. The catalogue has long given separate listings for purple,violet, magenta cancellations, but it is difficult to pin down exactly what these designations refer to. The dictionaries I consulted were in general agreement, and I cite from the Oxford Unabridged Dictionary: purple - "the name of a color now applied to a mixture of red and blue in various proportions...approaching on the one side to crimson and on the other to violet"; violet - "a purplish blue color resembling that of the violet"; magenta "a brilliant crimson aniline dye" (crimson being a "deep red, somewhat inclining towards purple"). R. H. White, in a brave attempt to standardize the naming of stamp colors, adapted the Munsell system for his color charts and placed violet on the blue side of purple. However, he did not use the word "magenta" to describe the reddish purples, and his use of the term "purplish blue" instead of "violet blue" or "blue violet" is infuriatingly inconsistent. Stamp collectors in this country, though, tend to understand color names based on the Scott catalogue descriptions, with the stamps themselves serving as color chips, e. g. "purple" is the color of the 6¢ Columbian, whereas "magenta" is the color of the 8¢ Columbian. "Purple" described the color of the 24¢ Banknote regular issue, the Justice official stamps, and the 3¢ value of the first Bureau issue. Starting with the second Bureau issue, "violet" became the new designation for this color. "Violet", with various modifiers, was extensively used to describe the color of the 3¢ commemoratives of the 1930's and 1940's, with those few stamps designated "purple" having a more reddish tinge. |
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When it comes to canceling inks, though, we run into trouble. In the specialized catalogue, "purple" must refer to the Washington, D. C. 1878 color, since purple cancellations are listed for all values of the Executive stamps except the 2¢, and all values of State through the $2. "Violet" has always been on the blue side of "purple", yet on departmentals, the few cancellations we find bluer than the D. C. 1878 "purples" are usually on Post Office and War stamps. There are twenty listings for violet cancellations in the catalogue, seventeen of which appeared in 1924, the other three having been added before 1931. The listings for violet cancellations on seven values of Navy and seven values of Justice, two departments whose stamps were narrowly distributed, must have been based on copies with the characteristic 1878 Washington D. C. canceling ink. Eugene Costales was editor of the Scott Specialized Catalogue when these listings first appeared, and given his reputation, I hesitate to suggest that he could have been misled by the color of the underlying stamp reading through the transparent canceling ink, and therefore designated some strikes of the D. C. 1878 color as "purple" and others as "violet", or that he could have called stronger, fresher strikes "violet" and weaker, faded strikes "purple". Perhaps he never examined the listing copies himself, but relied on outside sources who had not "synchromized" their understanding of these shades. A clue that there was some confusion is that the original 1924 listing for the 12¢ Navy with a "violet" cancellation was changed to "purple" in 1927, in this field the only example of a delisting to be encountered. |
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My first instinct was to reclassify the D. C. 1878 cancellations as "violet", which would be more in keeping with how the Scott nomenclature of this color has evolved, and would have left us the useful term "purple" to describe the slightly more reddish cancellations we do find, which are often mistakenly identified as magenta. But the dean of scholars on official stamps, Rollin C. Huggins, Jr. cautioned me against this, arguing that the existing nomenclature was too well-entrenched. I have heeded his advice, and lumped the results of my survey under the single designation "purple". There was no consensus of opinion among the collectors and dealers I talked to, and the distinction between "violet" and "purple" cancellations has become so hopelessly muddled over the years, I believe that these terms can never be straightened out. |
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We do find on Justice stamps a very distinctive type of canceling ink of unknown origin, a pastel purplish pink in color, often watery in consistency, with some strikes resembling a formless stain or a brushed smear. This same color of ink was also used with a three ring target at Plattsburgh and West Point, New York. This vivid hue, which may derive from the aniline dye fuchsin, is sometimes described as "red" by dealers, but it is quite different from the orange-reds of Washington, D. C. and New York, N. Y.. It is also found on Treasury, Post Office, and War official stamps, but rarely on Navy. From the limited pack of terms the catalog allows us, "magenta" will have to do, although "pink" would be more descriptive, since we also occasionally see deeper, more saturated shades of reddish purple or crimson which must also be designated "magenta". |
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Green |
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The most prestigious of all color cancellations on official stamps, and the one commanding the highest catalogue premium, is of course green. Blue-green cancellations on Post Office and Navy official stamps are sometimes offered by optimistic dealers at greatly inflated prices. Sadly, true green cancellations are so seldom encountered that some specialists who have not yet obtained a reference copy or do not fully trust their perception of color are prone to treat them with great skepticism. Green cancellations are occasionally found on various values of the Treasury Department. Years ago, a dealer claimed to have seen an official cover from Owensborough, Kentucky with a green cancellation, but I have never been able to substantiate this claim. It could be true, for there was an Assessor's Office in Owensborough. Most of the green cancellations I have seen are partial, indistinct strikes, the design of the device (assuming there was one) not being legible. The catalogue does list a green cancellation on the 3¢ Agriculture stamp, and I firmly believe that I own a copy, yet the last time I exhibited this stamp it was specifically challenged by a well-known international judge, on the basis that the underlying golden yellow color of the stamp was so rich that it was impossible to tell whether the canceling ink in and of itself had the proper equal admixture of blue and yellow pigments to qualify as a true green! |
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Yellow |
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Yellow, the most ineffectual and rarest of all canceling inks, is not listed for any of the large Banknote regular issues, and nobody in their right mind would hold out hope of finding a yellow cancellation on an official stamp. If a contrarian postmaster out in the middle of nowhere were still using such an ink in the 1870's, even he might have second thoughts about using it to cancel a Post Office Department stamp going out on official business. Incredibly enough, though, Clyde Jennings, owner of the world's supply of yellow cancellations on U. S. stamps (eight, as of 1984, including four on Banknote regular issues) reported finding one on a 15¢ Navy stamp: a socked-on-the-nose open six bar grid, bright yellow, 13mm. in diameter, source unknown. Now, Navy Department covers are known from a few relatively obscure places, including Warrington, Florida and Mare Island, California, but most of their official stamps were applied at naval bases along the Eastern seaboard, with the letters posted at large cities whose postmarking practices during this era have been well-studied. Rare cancellations from tiny towns are almost never found on these stamps. Mr. Jennings' stamp, which by all rights should not exist, must have been the basis for the new catalogue listing in 1995. As the original owner of the 24¢ Interior soft with a blue cancellation, Mr. Jennings was the first to assemble a complete set of the official stamps with color cancellations. Fittingly, this collection was sold intact to Rollin C. Huggins, who had supplied him the last stamp he needed, a 10¢ War soft. |
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Brown |
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Brown cancellations are listed in the specialized catalogue for a few random official stamps. Over the years, I have come across the occasional cancellation which appeared to be washed out or oxidized changeling from red, but I am not certain that I know what a genuine brown cancellation should look like. Would it be a deep sepia ink derived from squids? Willard, in his magisterial work on the 2¢ red brown of 1883-1887, wrote about canceling inks: "In order of frequency of use from our experience we list: 1. Black, 2. Magenta, 3. Brown, 4. Purple, 5. Violet, 6. Red, 7. Green, 8. Orange." Accordingly, the catalogue premium in 1998 for a brown cancellation on #210 is a princely 30¢! As printed, Willard's list is incomprehensible to me, both the commonness attributed to brown, and the complete absence of a listing for blue. It makes a lot more sense if we assume a typographical error was made, and substitute blue for brown in the color ranking. Joe H. Crosby agrees with this revised ranking, and proved that the commonness ascribed to brown was a mistake with a citation from an earlier article by Willard stating that brown cancellations on No. 210 are not known. |
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Fraudulent Color Cancellations |
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Except for red and green, the premiums assigned to color cancellations on official stamps in the specialized catalogue are too negligible to have provided much incentive to the fakers. Several years back, I predicted that given the high demand for used official stamps and their relative scarcity, combined with the glut of unsalable unused copies without gum or off-center, we would soon start to see fake cancellations on official stamps. This has already come to pass, and the forgers have decided that while they were at it, they might as well try to fob off on us some pretty color cancels. The ones I have seen, mostly red, are technically quite good, in that a variety of not-too-fancy designs were used, weakly struck off-center, in a shade that was not too brilliant - in short, they were not so impressive as to immediately arouse suspicion. But anytime we encounter red cancellations on high value Agriculture stamps, or on soft paper American stamps printed long after red ink ceased being used on Washington, D. C. local mail, a closer look is warranted. Most of those I have seen had an uncharacteristically uneven distribution of ink, stronger towards the perimeter of the strike and very faint in the interior. I have also seen blue cut corks on the 6¢ Executive and the 15¢ State, both of which of course cannot be legitimate, as well as unnaturally vivid greens and magentas on various other low value official stamps, especially on the remaindered soft paper stamps which are so cheap unused there is no risk financially to the faker. Insufficient philatelic research rather than technical limitations has foiled the fakers so far. In Europe, hundred-year-old ink pots have been revitalized to create fraudulent postal markings, and the renaissance of calligraphy has made inks formulated with authentic iron oxide pigments widely available. Overall, though, fraudulent color cancellations on official stamps are not yet a significant problem. The greater risk is in buying blue-green cancellations misrepresented as green, or magenta/crimson cancellations misrepresented as red. |
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Color Cancellation Census |
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To begin with a common frame of reference, I sent to all the participants a color photocopy of selected stamps from my own collection, with each color of canceling ink shown on the stamps of as many different departments as possible. I identified the Washington, D. C. 1878 cancels as "violet", and the 1879-80 cancels as "indigo", and the Plattsburgh, N. Y. 1879 cancels as "magenta". I have since concluded that the distinction between purple and violet is no longer viable. In the following table, for each of the current catalogue listings, I have entered the year date when the listing first appeared, while new discoveries are listed as "NEW". Those preexisting entries that were not found in this survey are shown shaded. I have lumped all reports of violet and purple cancellations under the single designation "purple", and in totaling the original listings not found in this survey, I did not include those for "violet". The reports of indigo cancellations have all been confirmed as being from the devices typically used in Washington, D. C. in 1879-1880. |
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I did not tabulate the number of copies found of each color cancellation, since I did not intend for the results of this survey to influence the premiums assigned by the catalogue, which for the most part seem to be fair and reasonable. The philatelic writer still actively collecting does not want to write too enthusiastically about his neglected field and then find prices rising overnight. If this article generates new catalogue listings, that will at least curb the prices some dealers can ask for unlisted varieties represented as "discovery copies". Except for the new indigo category, most of the new listings are based either on a single discovery copy, or a second confirming one. In addition to the basic colors of canceling ink recognized by the catalogue, many intermediate shades such as orange-red and blue-green can also be found, especially on the widely distributed Post Office official stamps, whose neutral background makes even subtle differences easy to see. These shades will become of increasing interest to specialists once their towns of origin are identified. |
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The 1998 edition of the specialized catalogue has 338 entries for color cancellations on O1-O120, but 47 listings were not found in this census (aside from the 20 obsolete listings for "violet"). But 21 of the listings not found are "magenta" cancellations, and I suspect that the original understanding of this color was much broader, whereas I chose to define it narrowly as a specific intense crimson shade. Another 17 listings not found are for various color cancellations on soft paper printings, and I would attribute this partly to a shift over the years in the classification of the problematic Continental intermediate papers. I am also extremely skeptical of three of the original listings, based on our new understanding of how the official stamps were distributed. Magenta and green canceling inks were never used in this period in Washington, D. C. or New York, so the listings for green on O58 and magenta on O57 and O60 are highly dubious and must have derived from misperceptions, changelings, or fakes. In fact, Rollin C. Huggins Jr. reports that what was probably the listing copy for the magenta cancel on O57 is a fake, the "cancellation" having been applied to obscure a "SPECIMEN" overprint. So all considered, the results of this census are relatively accurate and complete, and they conversely confirm the validity of the current catalogue listings. For the official stamps printed by Continental in the basic cancellation shades of blue, purple, and red, only three listed items were not found in this census: O12 blue favor cancel, O22 red cancel, O67 blue favor cancel. |
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The 119 discovery copies which came to light in the census break down as follows: 5 new listings in blue, 19 in purple (although 9 of these reclassify the obsolete "violet" listings), 19 in red, 22 in magenta, 25 in the new "indigo" category, 6 in green, 14 in ultramarine, and 7 in brown. If we set aside the obsolete "violet" listings and the three suspicious items that deserve to be delisted, this represents a 38 % increase in the total number of catalogue entries, from 315 to 434, clearly confirming that an exercise such as this was long overdue. Naturally, I would welcome hearing from other collectors who believe they own the discovery copies of other color cancellations on official stamps not reported in this census. Good color photocopies would be useful, so that I can confirm the shade designations before reporting to the catalogue editor. |
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Conclusions |
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1. A note should be placed in the catalogue, explaining that the listings for blue cancellation on Executive and State official stamps are for the double oval receiving handstamps used on favor presentation sets. The listings for blue town postmarks on some of these stamps are redundant and should be eliminated. A similar proviso should be included to explain the new listings for red cancellations on the $5 and $20 State. |
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2. A new term, "indigo", should be introduced to describe the distinctive canceling ink used in Washington, D. C. in 1879-1880. In this census, 25 different official stamps were reported canceled with this ink: O12, O25, O27, O31, O35, O37, O48, O49, O50, O51, O52, O58, O59, O60, O61, O62, O66, O73, O74, O75, O76, O77, O86, O107, O109. Certainly this number will grow in the coming years. |
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3. All listings for "violet" cancellations on official stamps should be eliminated, as the difference between "violet" and "purple" has been so muddled over the years that. |
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Magenta: O17, O24, O25, O26, O28, O29, O30, O31, O32, O33, O34, O37, O38, O81, O83, O86, O87, O90, O91, O111, O116, O117. |
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Green: O72, O74, O77, O79, O81, O82. |
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Ultramarine: O17, O18, O26, O27, O37, O38, O40, O75, O80, O85, O89, O90, O92, O116. |
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Brown: O24, O49, O50, O72, O77, O97, O117. |
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5. Delist the following impossible color cancellations: green on O58, magenta on O57 and O60. |
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Acknowledgements |
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Roger D. Curran, the editor of U. S. Cancellation Club News, Rollin C. Huggins Jr. and Lester C. Lanphear III were kind enough to review an earlier draft of this article, and I am grateful for their suggestions and comments. Joe H. Crosby, John Donnes, Lester C. Lanphear III and Dr. Dennis Schmidt provided important leads in my research. Mr. Lanphear constructed the table showing the census results. Finally, I am deeply indebted to the fellow collectors who participated in the census: Ralph Ebner, Rollin C. Huggins Jr., Lester C. Lanphear III, Dr. David Lobdell, Theodore Lockyear, Robert L. Markovits, Dr. Dennis Schmidt, and Steve Sims. |
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e-mail: alan campbell |
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copyright © 2000-04 fran adams |
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