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Odd Cape Town Parcel Canceller

Has anyone else seen a canceller like this?  It looks like an odd kind of roller cancel, producing something like a bicycle tyre treadmark, but when you look in detail, it's hard to imagine how it was made or why.   The  blocks are aligned vertically as one might expect; but the blocks aren't aligned horizontally, so the maker would have had to cut every horizontal division individually!  I haven't been able to spot any repeats.

I haven't been able to find anything like it in Goldblatt.

Any comments welcomed.

 

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This is a philatelically stunning and wonderful. I have never seen such a complete example of this obliterator. There are two partial examples of this 'bicycle tyre treadmark' cork canceller in the earlier post, both on single stamps.

Your canceller has the appearance of being designed to save time. It was probably not made out of cork. Given its generally uniform width, I agree that it looks like it was part of a hand-roller although how such a device could have been so evenly applied to an irregular parcel is another matter. The application of the ink seems quite uniform, consistent with a straightforward one strike or one pass on a flat surface. Perhaps the stamps were pre-cancelled, then applied to the parcel in the PO. Perhaps a large rectangular hand stamp is another possibility? It would probably have been best used in a PO with a high demand for such a device / solution, ie. one dealing with a lot of customers sending parcels that required an unusually large number of relatively high value stamps that needed to be obliterated.

Every Cork Canceller collector will be green with envy!

How do you know this is Cape Town? Goldblatt is not much help in this area.

I have just returned to this to say how utterly amazing (in the true sense of the word) and mystifying it is. I hope someone will see this as a new post and comment. There are many cork canceller collectors. Let's hope one joins in!

You are right - though Cape Town is the likeliest office, simply because of volume of post handled, it could be from anywhere else in the Cape.  Any suggestions welcomed.