Richard Fullerton limted his documentary printed precancel list to railroad related companies, perhaps because so few other firms chose to use printed precancels. However, just as there is evidence of two trust companies in Philadelphia making use of printed precancels on bonds, there are at least two, and likely more, proprietary firms that used these cancels on 1898 documentary revenue stamps.
To the E. S. Wells cancels on the two cent documentary shown in a previous post is added the Dr. Fahrney & Son cancel. The example on the half cent documentary stamp shown below was shown on this site for the first time in 2014. It is reprised here as an example of a printed precancel that should probably be in an updated list of these cancels.
This cancel appears fully legitimate as a printed version of the Dr. Fahrney cancel, as it appears almost exactly like the cancel on the five-eighths stamp further below. The question remains, then, why Dr. Fahrney might have used a cancel on stamp primarily intended for use by insurance companies. My only theory is that the stamps canceled to help uprate a surplus of lower value proprietary stamps so that the proprietary stamps could be used up. Based on the example of the five-eighths cent stamp below, we know Dr. Fahrney & Son used that value. A half-cent stamp would have helped uprate an oversupply of eigth cent stamps for items taxed at five-eighth of a cent. Other combinations were possible.
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