Mitchell -
PAX - Difficult to tell on the incomplete (smudged, parts missing) cancels. The 10 - 60 all look good. The 80 probably OK. I can see "19" which would be 7pm time of canceling and strange to put on a fake, 1Fr probably not OK, looks like a scrape above the Dove’s head, and the 3Fr good because the cancel is from Ilanz near Chur an unlikely fake cancel.
The Swiss did provide canceled stamps to collectors that never went through the mails. They have full gum and now demand a premium to "used stamp" collectors because they are almost perfect examples. I can't explain it, I just report it. Same situation must be allowed for when collecting high value postage dues, and other early high values which were used internally by the post office. They didn't soak off the gum internally, collectors later soaked the gum and most often broke up the sheets into blocks of 4. Most should have one cancel per stamp, one central cancel on a block of four most certainly is a favor cancel as it was against postal regulations. I don't know when the regulation changed. This is one reason early block of four have significant premuims when having a single cancel, there aren't many.
Notice on the airmail stamps there is a river at the lower right coming from the mountains. The 50 centimes is OK, but the 30 centimes shows the left fork as a single stream, whereas, the 50 centimes shows it is forked as correct. A small and insignificant variety, almost no price differential.
Along those lines - razor cancels are difficult to find. Keep in mind they were only used at the 12 largest post offices, most often one canceler active at a time. So if one clerk was assigned to use it and there were 50 clerks canceling outgoing mail, 1/50th might have razor cancels at any given time at the large offices. At the smaller offices Bellinzona didn’t like it, so didn’t use it, and Aarau seems to have had one clerk who used it all the time. I can almost guarantee that an Aarau card or letter processed between 1901 and 1906 will have a razor cancel on the front or back. Not counting postage due, collect, etc. If you ever see an Aarau from 1898, I’m first in line, OK?
You will find most razor cancels on green 5 centime post cards uses, and red 10 centime internal letter uses. Then most often international blue 25 centimes stamps. Keep in mind they date from 10 October 1898 thorough 1939. Other than the Chur of 1935, I only have 2 items from the 1930’s! After 1912 there was a quick drop in use as machines were introduced to the largest post offices. Again the first offices to receive machines were the largest, which also had used the razor cancelers. There are no other post offices than the 12 district offices that had razor cancelers issued to them.
Paul -
Most Swiss CTO’s are perfect centered legible cancelations. Fakes would be more likely incomplete and illegible. Higher values were used on packages. The internal letter rate was 20 centimes, and the internaitonal rate was 30 centimes. Most on cover uses are contrived philatelic, registered, airmail, etc. attempting to show commercial use. They were on sale for only one year. Don’t ever buy a line perforated high value, it is fake. All this issue were comb perforated. If collectors don’t know the difference they shouldn’t be buying this set!
Roger
Swiss Razor Cancels
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on Nov-04-07
at 22:46:32 PST
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on Nov-04-07
at 19:51:39 PST
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on Nov-04-07
at 19:36:54 PST
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on Nov-04-07
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I'm a catalog queen - whoopee!!
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