A Collector's Guide to 1898 Documentary Printed Precancels: The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad's Collectible Varieties

The CB&Q's precancels have seemingly endless variations, some more or less collectible.  This post features what I consider to be the unambiguously collectible varieties and for this post, excludes more ambiguous and transient varieties and varieties subject to individual interpretation.  

The first two variants are the most eye-catching, and as usual these are the varieties caused by errors during the process that printed the cancels on the stamps.  The first example is an inverted cancel; the second is a doubled cancel.

1 cent roulette with C.,B.&Q.R.R.Co. invert precancel

1 cent hyphen-hole with doubled C.,B.&Q.R.R.Co. precancel

This cancel looks very similar that the example provided by Fullerton in his list, though examination makes it clear they are slightly different.  I suspect this cancel came from the same sheet of stamps as Fullerton's example.

The four stamps below represent a single variation, one that repeats with great frequency on the battleship stamps with the type 1 precancel.  All four of the stamps below have a small, round, low period after the "Co" in the cancel.  These periods have a different shape than all the periods that preceed them on the same stamp; the normal periods are vertical rectangles, these are round, and significanly smaller.  They are also set much lower than the rectangular periods.  

Some years ago I acquired packets of HH copies of the type 1 cancel, totalling nearly 200 stamps, all apparently soaked from bills of lading by a single person, where roughly 25% of the precancels have the low, round period.  This is a consistent and regular variety, intentionally created by typesetters, who I would guess ran out of periods from their principle set of type since the CB&Q cancels used six periods each.  The typesetters made an executive decision to place the odd periods at the end of the cancels on multiple stamps rather than using all odd periods on a limited number of stamps.

In the next post will be discussed what I consider to be the less collectible varieties.

1 cent roulette; type 1 cancel with low, round period after "Co"

1 cent hyphen-hole; type 1 cancel with low, round period after "Co"

2 cent roulette; type 1 cancel with low, round period after "Co"

2 cent hyphen-hole; type 1 cancel with low, round period after "Co"