Rhinelander

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18 Oct 2010
10:09:02pm

re: Washington Bicentenial and Century of Progress

Thank you Perry, for the nice articles. I'd like to comment on the Century of Progress exhibition. As you show, the stamps issued on occasion of the exhibition provide for quite some possibilities for specialization, considering the Farley sheets etc.

An additional philatelic angle on the exhibition are the promotional postmarks for it. You show one philatelic event cover postmarked Chicago (main post office), May 25, 1933, with slogan "Century of Progress / World's Fair / June 1 - Nov 1 /Chicago 1933." The cancellation was impressed by a "Universal" machine manufactured by Pitney-Bowes. This promotional slogan for the exhibition is only known from Universal machines and, maybe more importantly, was only used in Chicago -- at the main PO and a few stations. Chicago is a big city, so multiple machines used this slogan and can be distinguished by the machine number. Your cancel identifies machine number 47. The slogan came into use maybe a month before the offical opening (mid-April 1933) and use continued until the close of the exhibition. This is for the most part a common slogan cancel, however, if you aspire to collect as many different machine numbers as you can find, you will run into a real challenge. The highest machine number I have with this slogan on cover is 55, but not all machines are known to have used this cancel (or may be unknown as of yet). Good luck hunting!

Now, the real interesting aspect of the promotional slogan cancels used for this exhibition comes about by the decision to re-open the exhibition again in 1934. The exact same slogan then was introduced but now bearing the year date 1934 (instead of 1933 as shown on your cover). The 1934 cancel was also used on several machines, albeit defintely not as many as were pressed into use for the inital 1933 promotion. The period of use was also shorter, running from approx. mid-May to October 1934. The 1934 variety is uncommon, if not to say a scarce cancel.

Finally, maybe because not enough 1934 dies had been ordered to replace the earlier 1933 dies, some 1933 dies were reused in 1934 except that the last '3' in the year had been removed. These reused slogan, thus, read '193_'. This group is yet more seldomly encountered and certainly scarce. Usage of reported specimens of the 1933 slogan adapted for 1934 use is from July to October 1934 only.

All in all, the three major varieties, 1933, 1934, and 193_ (used in 1934) should account for 60+ different slogan cancels promoting the Century of Progress exhibition (again, taking into consideration that not all machine numbers probably exist, but that on the other hand probably more machines used this cancel than is currently known).

Finally, a post office existed on the exhibition grounds, which also contributes some collectible postmarks. We can conclude that a collection of "The Postmarks of the Century of Progress Exhibition, Chicago 1933-34" may last you a collector's life to assemble.

Thanks again,

Arno

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Parkinlot

re: Washington Bicentenial and Century of Progress

Very interesting articles - I really like the Washington Bicentennial stamps.

Bob

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