Sunday, June 14, 2009

American Express Printed Cancels: Henry Tolman's Sans-serif Typology

Approximately 2 years ago, part 4 of the Siegel auction of the Henry Tolman revenue collection included a 2 binder lot of proprietary printed cancels on the 1898 series. The main body of that is a gold mine I will be exploring in future months. But in the back of the second volume were several pages of cancels on documentary stamps, notably American Express printed cancels. The late Mr. Tolman had his collection of the sans-serif variety of these cancels classified according to year and the relative placement of the date under the AM. EX. CO. portion of the cancel. I don't know if this typology derives from the work of other philatelists; Tolman left no note to that effect. Whatever the case, there are 8 subtypes of the sans-serif printed cancel according to the classification scheme:

Subtype A: 189x year date, 1 of 189x under the left leg of the X in EX.
Subtype B: 189x year date, 1 of 189x under center of X in EX.
Subtype C: 189x year date, 1 of 189x under right leg of X in EX.
Subtype D: 1900 year date, 1 of 1900 under E of EX.
Subtype E: 1900 year date, 1 of 1900 under left leg of X in EX.
Subtype F: 1900 year date, 1 of 1900 between E and X of EX.
Subtype G: 1901 year date, 1 of 1901 between E and X of EX.
Subtype H: 1901 year date, 1 of 1901 under left leg of X of EX.

Below are examples of these 8 subtypes. In future posts I will show examples of multiple "sub-sub-types," as each of the subtypes below has minor variations which Henry Tolman put in the collection.

Subtype A: 1 under left leg of X.

Subtype B: 1 under center of X.

Subtype C: 1 under right leg of X.

Subtype D: 1 under E.


Subtype E: 1 under left leg of X.

Subtype F: 1 between E and X.

Subtype G: 1 between E and X.

Subtype H: 1 under left leg of X.

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