1898 Revenues: GH Mumm Printed Cancels: 2010 Updated List

Sunday, May 9, 2010

GH Mumm Printed Cancels: 2010 Updated List

Time to tread on the good work of our ancestors in the hobby. Franklin Smith in the early 20th century, Clarence Chappell in the early to mid 20th century, and Morton Dean Joyce in the mid-20th century all produced lists of the printed cancels on the battleship proprietary stamps. The last published list was Joyce's update of Chappell's work, and that was completed in the 1950s as an addendum to the American Revenuer. With the help of modern technology including this blog site and Google docs, I will begin today to post working and updated lists of the proprietary printed cancels based on Joyce's work from the 1950s.

For the past three weeks I have posted the printed cancels of G. H. Mumm on this site, cancels which are referenced in Joyce's list. But below is a link to an updated list which is stored in Google docs and which is freely available by clicking on the link. To the original Joyce list I have added provisional numbers, so that each Mumm cancel is assigned its own number with the protocol GHM0xx.

I have also made changes to the orginal list based on cancels available to me that are not included in the original Joyce list. And I have also made changes by simple inference. Where it is likely there should be a cancel with a certain date, I have included a reference to such a cancel and assigned the cancel a provisional number. On this basis there are 80 provisional numbers for the Mumm cancels running from GMH001 to GHM080.

The beginning of the list looks like the screen capture below:

To retrieve and view the pdf file of this list click on this link: GH Mumm Printed Cancel List 2010

I encourage and request that anyone having an interest in these cancels who has a change or contribution to this list write me an email or leave a comment at the end of this post. I will work with you to update this list to enable us to create a more complete checklist of the battleship printed cancels.

This effort will not stop with Mumm Champagne. This site will work to create a list of most if not all of the printed cancels used on the battleship proprietaries. Any comments should be sent to 1898revenues@gmail.com.

No comments:

Unusual Ink on the 1898 Series Dollar Values

THESE STAMPS ARE BOTH SCOTT R191! From fugitive ink to color changelings with unknown origins. These are both copies of R191. Can only exposure to light produce the color changes you see in stamp on the right? Or possibly a soak in bleach or other chemical? I doubt it. These stamps have so many examples of changelings that there must be something else happening. The ink used on this dark green series of stamps was different than that known on any other BEP printed stamps, never mind the varnish square. It is likely the BEP was experimenting with ink on this issue. Inks are discussed further if you click on the stamps.

Collecting Cancels

Welcome to 1898 Revenues, a website that features the stamps used to pay the Spanish-American war taxes imposed by the US Government starting in July, 1898. But while this site features those stamps in general, a focus is on their cancels, and on the firms that applied them. Unlike US postage stamps, which were canceled by the US Post Office and now Postal Service, revenue stamps were ordered to be canceled by their users in such a way that the identity of the user and the date was included in the cancel. This makes the collecting possibilities nearly endless, so that a single variety of stamp, for example, the 2 cent battleship stamp intended to pay documentary taxes, had potentially millions of different users, and therefore as many different cancels. Please browse the site and discover the collecting possibilities, made so much more accessible now through online sales. Cancels on these stamps have become much more interesting and accessible with the massive amounts of archival and historical data available on line. Rather than hours spent in libraries or with heavy volumes to identify cancels, search engines allow for cancel sleuthing at home.

Battleship Proprietary Printed Cancels: Updating the Joyce/Chappell Lists

In the 1950s, Morton Dean Joyce updated a list of printed cancels on the battleship proprietaries compiled by Clarence Chappell. Joyce's is a very long list consisting of more than one hundred companies and thousands of cancel dates. In the years since Joyce completed his list, many new cancel dates have been demonstrated to exist, and an update of the 1950s list is needed.

This site is attempting that update. Using the Joyce/Chappell lists and the former collection of Henry Tolman (ARA #25) as a base, a gradual effort will be made to post updated lists to the best of my knowledge, making a call for those that can contribute new dates and new images of those cancels.

Following in this column are quick links to excel files of these lists by company. Also are links to the posts that I have made on this blog regarding these companies and their cancels.