As I mentioned in the introductory post to this blog, the subject matter herein is prone to abrupt changes based on whatever thoughts happen to pop into the mind of this grizzled old gray head at any given time.
Thus, the sudden change from music to philately.
Actually, this post is loosely related to the last one, being prompted by writing about the old Sears Catalog.
I was reminded that, back in the early to mid-20th Century, some U.S. postage stamps bearing interesting overprints could be found.
These are known in stamp collecting circles as 'pre-cancels'. As the name implies, the Post Office would supply regular issue sheets of postage stamps to businesses who did a lot of bulk mailing. These stamps were overprinted with a city and state name situated between horizontal bars. The business entities could purchase the stamps from the Post Office at reduced bulk mailing rates.
There are virtually thousands of varieties of such stamps in existence, taking into account the many city and town overprints on many different stamp types and denominations. Very few of these kinds of stamps are of any significant value, due to the huge numbers printed, but they do constitute a popular collecting specialty.
This small assortment of stamps I have scanned for this post goes beyond the normal pre-cancels with the addition of some extra overprinting - "SRC" followed by a month and year designation.
These, of course, were produced for use by Sears, Roebuck, & Company.
It took me a while to locate these stamps, as they resided in a box mixed in with about a thousand other loose, unsorted regular pre-cancels.
In addition, I found a handful of other similar specimens bearing a "MW" overprint.
Any guesses as to which business entity made use of these ones?
Cheers!
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