1898 Documentary Perfin Cancels

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P & Co

+4

30

01

Perfin cancel with initials and date.  This is the most complex and interesting perfin cancel that I have seen on the 1898 revenue stamp series.

Perfins.  For the unitiated, they serve to cancel stamps by punching small holes in the stamp that encode information.  They are often used to precancel stamps.  In a few cases on the 1898 revenue series, period size holes might spell out the initials of a brokerage firm.  Perfins are somewhat scarce on the 1898 series of documentary stamps.  They became a common form of cancel from 1914 on, and entire collections can be built on those perfined stamps.  But today will highlight 1898 perfins.  This post includes 3 unidentified perfins, 7 different NYSE firms, and 2 insurance companies.

Unidentified perfins:

• P & Company (possibly Pearl & Co.)
• FB... (possibly Finley Barrell & Co. or several others)
• AN & Company

New York Stock Exhange firm perfins:

• Price, McCormick & Company
• Ladenburg, Thalmann Company
• Edward Sweet & Company
• DeCoppett & Company
• DeCoppett & Doremus
• Lazard Freres
• P. J. Goodhart & Company

Insurance company perfins:

• New York Life Insurance Company
• Metropolitan Life Insurance Company

For the purpose of this article and in general, perfins do not include punch cancel initials or large punch outs, shaped or not.    These types of cancels will be featured in a comprehensive post in the coming weeks.  This post will also not cover generic perfins like those that spell out Cancelled or Paid, include only numbers, or are shapes.

The upper left stamp and the pair on the right are perfin style generic cancels, not specific to the user.  Cancels in the same class include those that say PAID. The bottom left stamp has simple punch cancels, not perfins.

Letter punch cancel, not a perfin cancel

The first example, and the most complex type of perfin on the 1898s, is that shown at the top of this post.  The cancel remains unidentified but possibly comes from the New York Stock Exchange firm Pearl & Company.  

A similar type of cancel to that above was used by a firm with the initials FB; unfortunately this is only a fragment of the cancel and there may be additional initials we cannot see.  It is clear, however, that firm initials and a date was encoded in the perfin cancel.  

FB??

+1

16

??

Finley Barrell (with a seat on NYSE) out of Chicago is a possibility, but there are other fims that might also be possible, including F. B. Cochran & Co. of New York.

AN & CO

A final unidentified cancel.  This perfin uses an identical ampersand form as that for the firm Edward Sweet & Company below, so it might be a stock exchange firm, or a company based in New York.

The perfin using firms that follow have all been identified.  They all used a simpler form of perfin that included only the initials of the firm and no date.   

Price, McCormick & Company

Ladenburg, Thalman Company

Bill of exchange fragment.  Dollar values are perfined.

Edward Sweet & Company

The old Scott catalog number is penciled on back

DeCoppet & Company

DeCoppet & Doremus

Lazard Freres

Bill of exchange fragment.  Perfins on stamps 10 cents and up.

P. J. Goodhart & Company

The old Scott Catalog number is penciled on back.

New York Life Insurance Company

Metropolitan Life Insurance Company