Why Report Unrecorded Datestamps?
As postal historians we are always looking for information, usually about postmarks and usually in the popular reference books. Sadly, these are limited to what was known at the time of printing. As new and unrecorded datestamps pop up with annoying frequency, it is important that collectors work together to share and list new finds that do not appear in the reference books or on-line addendum.
For those who are new to this, the town datestamp was intended to both cancel the stamp on a letter and also to add its town of origin and the date of its dispatch so that the recipient could see when and where it was posted and the postal authorities see where the delays, if any, were. Looking at postmarks with a view to determining 'when and where' an item came from is fundamental to being a postal historian.
Generally, the philatelist obsesses about stamps - paper, printing, watermarks, perforations, colour, shades, varieties, flaws and errors. Geeky stuff! Generally, if they can afford them, philatelists prefer mint stamps to used ones. Generally, postal historians are the opposite, stamps being only a small part of their hobby. If a stamp has not been used ie. cancelled and made to travel through the mail system, it is of considerably less interest than one with a decent postmark and a story to tell.
The collecting of postmarked stamps, covers and postcards from local or distant places is at the heart postal history. It is about recreating the wonderful story of mail travelling across time and space. As we collect, we develop questions about the postage rates, the routes the mail took and the postmarks used. Those who collect postal history material soon find a need for reference books, most especially ones about postmarks, rates and routes. The stamp adds some colour and attraction to the cover but it is seldom its most important thing unless it is a top value stamp.
We are fortunate as collectors of South African postal history that we can access the research of trail-blazing giants who, starting with nothing or very little, have provided a monumental amount of postmark research. Foremost among these giants is Ralph Putzel RDPSA who with like-minded collectors put together ten volumes of "The Postmarks of South Africa & Former States and Colonies". This work forms the fundamental starting point of all enquiries into South African postmarks. Sadly, Ralph died in 2002 before he could complete his work. What he left behind is magisterial in its scope and scale, useful but sadly incomplete. It is a magnificent halfway point.
To misquote Pliny the Elder who is believed to have said "there is always something new out of Africa", new South African postmarks keep popping up. In Roman times Pliny's quote meant "something abnormal turning up to disturb the status quo.” Pliny valued new discoveries. Among his 37 books his Naturalis Historia (Natural History) became an editorial model for later encyclopedias. Quite incredibly, Ralph also found the time to write four volumes of "The South African Encyclopedia of Post Offices and Post Office Agencies". Pliny died nearly 2000 years ago. Even before Ralph died Alex Visser RDPSA was collaborating with him in his last years.
Alex has picked up Ralph's baton and run with it for over twenty years. Today, Alex has a on-line Addendum that is now as large as Ralph's original work. When combined together the work of Ralph and Alex offers South African postal historians one of the most comprehensive postmark references in the world. We are lucky to have it. Nevertheless, it still remains incomplete even if it is much added to.
Ralph and Alex's attempts to document all South African demands your assistance. If you are reading this, they need your help. Alex's work, like Putzel's, while massive is incomplete. The size and scale of the project is such that it may never be fully completed! As a guesstimate, between them they have documented 90+% of all South African postmarks used since the start of the first post office at the Cape. With your help, we can perhaps within the next ten add half of the outstanding postmarks. Who knows? What is certain is that this cannot be done without your help. Alex needs your unrecorded postmarks to plug the gaps as you find them.
So, if you have a postmark and it is not in Putzel or Alex's Addendum, please send it to him. It won't be more valuable for being unrecorded! There are two things that you can assist with.
1]. Unrecorded datestamps.
This is relatively straightforward. If it is not in 'Putzel' or Alex's on-line Addendum, it is most likely not yet recorded.
2]. Dates of use.
This is more complicated as you will need a database of dates to refer to. Neither 'Putzel' nor Alex's on-line Addendum provide this information.
As part of the study into the mail of southern Africa we want to know when postmarks were introduced and withdrawn. In general postal records seldom detail when a datestamp was issued and withdrawn. Our knowledge of when they came into use and when they were withdrawn is largely achieved by determining their earliest and the last recorded dates of use as found on cover and stamps. However, this is no simple matter and you will need a frame of reference for this if you are not to make a lot of unnecessary work for yourself and others. Alex is the best person to contact about this. There are Cape and ZAR / Transvaal specialist groups that do this.
Finally, in terms of CoGH postal history, the go-too reference work is Franco Frescura's "Postal Cancellers of the Cape 1853-1910" (Philatelic Federation of Southern Africa, Johannesburg, 2018.) This includes known dates of use.
I found these two postcards in a small Cape collection that I bought. I sent them to Alex.
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I found the following among the picked-over remainders of a collection of postmarks on stamps. The preceding postcards also came from this lot. The first item looks like nothing special but.... it's the best of the bunch!
CoGH BONC 512 RICHMOND ROAD - New Latest Date of Use
In his 'Typology of the Barred Oval Numeral Cancellers (BONCs) of the Cape of Good Hope as Classified by Frescura', David Mordant describes the RICHMOND ROAD BONC 512 as '3-3-3' ie. there are nine bars in total, 3 on top, 3 at the bottom and 3 on the sides which are separated by the rectangle enclosing the central numeral.
In the stamp below we can see with reasonable clarity the BONC's three bars on its right side in the centre of the stamp, as well as parts of two bars top and bottom. However, the thin line of the rectangle that encloses the three numerals is largely missing. A '5' and a '1' are partially visible. Given that the datestamp is the recorded Richmond Road Circular Datestamp of 1885, one made distinctive by a large dot at base, (Goldblatt), it is reasonable to assume that the BONC in question is number 512 which was issued to Richmond Road, (Goldblatt, Putzel, Frescura and Mordant).
As a result, we can conclude that BONC 512 was used in conjunction with Richmond Road's Circular Datestamp on 'AP 23 00'. (Early Cape Postal Regulations required dual cancellation, the BONC to obliterate the stamp and the datestamp to separately date the postal item.) As we can see, both devices were used to cancel the stamp, resulting in a slightly confusing mix of the two. Fortunately, however, this allows us to see that BONC 512's date of use was 'AP 23 00', some two weeks later than the 9th April 00 as shown by Mordant, et al.
MULDERSVLEI JUNCTION - Unrecorded Variety
The postmark on stamp should need no explanation. The DAY plug has been omitted. I am still awaiting confirmation that this is a variety. I think it is worthy of a listing as it is not in Putzel or the Addendum. Maybe it will be decided that not everything is worthy of an entry in the Addendum as this sort of sloppy omission was probably corrected quite quickly once the station postmaster saw it. My thanks to the anonymous postal historian who assembled this wonderful collection of Cape postmarks.
Date precedes Stamp Issue - WOODSTOCK STATION & PORT ELIZABETH
Be aware of and guard against postmarks whose dates precede the stamps' date of issue.
The WOODSTOCK STATION has a transposed '89' YEAR slug. It should be '98' as the stamp was not issued until Oct 1893. It is not recorded in either Putzel or the Addendum. If the plug was reversed - put in upside-down - the date YEAR would be 68. As it is not I assume the postal clerk put the YEAR numerals in in the wrong order. How long this state of affairs continued for I do not know. If it was only a day it is barely worth recording but a week, or worse, a month, should make it a viable variety.
The two PORT ELIZABETH Squared Circle datestamps are interesting as the first, left, is dated 'AP 9 85', some 9 months before the watermarked Cabled Anchor stamp was issued in December 1885 . The second, right, is of the same issue and is dated 'JY 2 85', some 5 months before the stamp was issued. Was this a regular error made by the postal clerk or was the YEAR incorrectly back-dated for most of 1885? I think an error of date like this should also make it a viable variety. Has anyone else seen this before? What dates do you have?
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Just a comment for the Port Elizabeth squared circles. Error in year slugs are not that common and it would have been impossible to have been left uncorrected for the whole year. I have one for July also on an envelope which seems to be the correct year. Also the absence of a code letter does not indicate that one was not used. It indicates that it was processed very early, from memory 6h00-6h30 am. A challenge to find postmarks with the double letter codes. Your comments about recording these dates are so true. What your finds also highlight is that if you collect postmarks you will always discover either earlier or later dates than those recorded and slug errors. I take your point about checking on the date of issue of the stamp, it is a very good suggestion.
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Steve - many thanks for raising this: better knowledge of postmarks adds substantially to postal history (and helps us to weed out fakes and fabrications).
We owe a great debt, as you say, to Ralph Putzel and Alex Visser, for The postmarks of South Africa and former states and colonies (10 vols, 1992-2003) and its updates (http://linus.up.ac.za/academic/civil/books/); they provide the basis of our current knowledge. But - and this is no criticism of their work - they are incomplete (we are continually finding unreported postmarks), they don't usually give earliest and latest reported dates of use, their illustrations aren't always very clear, and they often don't say enough about the differences between very similar postmarks.
Various more detailed catalogues are appearing or being prepared at the moment, giving greater detail but more limited scope. Among these, Alex and I have, since 2020, been publishing parts of a detailed catalogue of ZAR and Transvaal date-stamps up to Union (May 1910), in The Transvaal Philatelist; the latest Part (9) takes us to half-way through K : nearly half-way! We are grateful to Tim Harrison, editor of The Transvaal Philatelist, and to the Committee of The Transvaal Study Circle for permission to put parts of the catalogue onto the website of The South African Philatelic Federation, where it is freely accessible (https://stampssa.africa/resources/: go to Resources, then to Postmarks, and then scroll down).
The catalogue includes information about each office (including where it is and when it was opened and closed), a description of each type of date-stamp, usually two or three 1:1 images of selected examples, earliest and latest recorded dates, and often comments about differences from other similar types, about use, and other details. (See Part 1, attached below.)
We would be grateful if members would send us scans of any relevant ZAR and Transvaal date-stamps, especially if you think they may be unrecorded or earlier or later dates than those already reported - including examples of post-Union use of instruments issued before Union, or particularly clear strikes. Scans should if possible be in colour, at 300 or 400 dpi, and in .jpg format. We would like to thank Tim Bartshe, Johan Bezuidenhout, Steve Bloomer, Chris Board, Steve Drewett, Morgan Farrell, Steven Gardiner†, Michael Hamilton, Alan Harley, Andrew Higson, Bob Hill, Russell Inggs, Lars Jorgensen, Gerhard Kamffer, Bram Leeflang, Alan MacGregor, Albert Ruijne and Fernando Torres for helping us in this way, and hope that we can add other names to this list! We particularly want scans of postmarks from offices beginning with KR or later, as we haven't published these yet; but scans for offices beginning with A - KO are also welcome, as are any corrections, as we intend to publish updates on the SAPF website in due course. We would also welcome any comments or suggestions.
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Great work Bas, thanks for letting us know. I dont really collect Transvaal, but I have a few CGH Alex Viser might be interested in.
Yes, Yannis, please contact Alex with your datestamps. The chief go-to-guy for CoGH datestamps is Franco Frescura. I understand that Alex will pass any new CoGH discoveries on to Franco with whom he works closely.
This is from a collection of 'railway station postmarks' on cover / postcard. The route is from MALMESBURY '7.45 pm DE 6 07' via the two railway stations of WELLINGTON STATION '11am, 7 DE o7' and CERES ROAD '3pm DE 7 07' to CERES 'C DE 7 07'. This is not a new discovery, rather it is a query about the listing of a new discovery in the Addendum. How does this work? How are numbers assigned?
This Wellington Station datestamp is not to be found in Putzel. It is made distinctive by its very small text. The cancel seen here is only partial but there is enough to see it in Alex Visser's Addendum as his No. 6x. I disagree with the number assigned to it. The pre-existing No. 6 as seen in Putzel is distinctive for its very large text. The datestamp seen here has text so small as to make it a new and different datestamp altogether. It should have a unique number. Readers are invited to consult their copies of Putzel and Alex's on-line Addendum and comment here.
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How numbers are assigned in Putzel and in Alex's Addenda is really one for Alex to answer - but as I don't think he sees this forum, I'll have a go ....
Putzel intended to list date-stamps (and other postmarks) in chronological order, and variants of the same date-stamp with letters after the number - e.g. Put 6a, 6b and so on. Once he'd set up a number sequence, if he found a new and different date-stamp which as clearly older than the last one he had listed - e.g. a new date-stamp that was clearly older than Put 6, his two obvious choices both had disadvantages:
- If he gave the next available number to the new date-stamp, e.g. Put 7, it would be out of date order
- If he inserted it as Put 6, he would have had to renumber his original Put 6, 6a etc. and any other later date-stamp, as Put 7, 7a etc., which would have been a lot of work and risked causing confusion.
So the option he chose was to leave the numbers as they were, and to insert the new date-stamp with the appropriate number to fit what he thought was the likely date sequence, but with a letter after the number that was at the other end of the alphabet, e.g. Put 5x: the number at the other end of the alphabet signalled that it was a different canceller from Put 5, not just a variant.
Alex has basically followed the same pattern; so another new date-stamp that looked as if it fitted chronologically between Put 5x and Put 6 would be called Put 5y, and so on; and if, then, a variant of Put 5x turned up needing a number, it would be called Put 5xa.
When Alex and I started with out new catalogue of ZAR and Transvaal date-stamps. we had the same difficult choice. We could have given a new set of numbers, which would, with the benefit of more knowledge, have been closer to the true date order; but we would then have face the same difficult choices if new date-stamps were found, or new earliest dates of use didn't fit the assigned numbers; and allocating a new set of numbers always risks causing confusion. So instead, we chose to continue with Putzel's numbers and give new numbers to new date-stamps and variants following the same approach as Putzel. However we chose to list the date-stamps in order of the earliest know date of use, even when this meant that the Putzel/Addenda numbers would be out of sequence.
We are very aware that this isn't ideal - but given the probability that new date-stamps and new dates will inevitably be found, there is no ideal solution.
Interesting discussion on numbering/coding. Over the years different authors used different systems to try and encode useful information in the postmark. Ultimately each encoding scheme has its advantages and disadvantages and they all fail in edge cases. This is similar to indices in any database. If you recall the RSA book-of-life had the first digits encode your date of birth. From this ID though you cannot see things like if you married, have a drive license or your eyes are blue. I tend to favour an alphanumeric code, similar to what Goldblatt used, although this is also limited. A similar system but more verbose was proposed by Frescura. For example Frescura suggests DC.EMB for a double circle with an emblem at the bottom, so you might have DC.EMB-01 for a solid maltese-like cross or DC.EMB-02 for a hollow. If you wanted to distinguish though between a postmark in Middelburg Transvaal the same one in Middelburg Cape, you would need additional fields such as the name of the town. It gets complicated if you want to cover all the variations, how about if it was stamped in blue, green and red ink. Ultimately only a relational database is the correct answer, otherwise yo end up with codes that arre as long as locomotives. I think also this is the reason why Frescura's scheme did not find more wide-spread use, despite being better. From a collector's point of view these issues come up when writing up the collection or buying items described by a dealer or auctioneer. Writing-up a postmark collection, has different challenges. One would aim to write it up, by type, as writing it by village/town would look like a dictionary, although the latter is most useful in a study and for storing stamps in an album. This is obviously a different subject all together and maybe Steve can start a new topic, as to how best to present a postmark collection in an exhibit.
Thank you for that, Bas. I am no academic. You have cleared Alex's system up. I think he tried to explain it to me once in a lot less detail. I now understand that 6x is a new postmark, which is how my recent inadvertent OUDTSHOORN discovery should be recorded. I agree that the system is mperfect but until someone, not me, attempts to relist all postmarks afresh in the order in which they were issued it is probably the best compromise we have. I also think that hosting a catalogue on-line, not in print, is the best way make them updateable and accessible to all.
Yes, Yannis, I recall the SA Book of Life. I still have mine lying around like a green mamba somewhere. (In the bad old days of Apartheid I met a South African world traveller in Turkey. He told me he was travelling on a "green mamba", a South African passport, one likely to bite you every time you had to dig it out.)
This discussion shows to some extent the progression of CoGH numbering systems from Goldblatt, (which most people still use much to Franco Frescura'a dismay) to Putzel to Frescura who provides the most and best (latest) information. I think the major short-coming with Franco's book is that unlike Putzel he does not show an example of each datestamp, As a collector seeing the best example of a datestamp is useful. I want to see the postmark in order to make a comparsion with what I have. I don't want a cryptic code that attempts to describe all postmarks sight unseen. Who knows what subtleties in the postmark we will miss in such a system?
This Forum exists to be useful. I am happy to start a new Topic. What shall we call it?