Hi all! I'm not sure what I've got here. I've done a little searching on the web and couldn't easily come up with anything here. I came across thi s (I believe a Scott 634 - but it's a 10 1/2 on the sides, and an 11 on the top/bottom) and it has what appears to be the letters "PRR" in the stamp. So honestly, I have no idea what's going on with this stamp, and I don't know if I'm the ballpark with guessing it's a 364. Any thoughts?
I'm closer to my answer - I just delved a little more into the perforations, and came up with the "PRR" stands for Pennsylvania Railroad". But no more information than just what it means. Why they perforate it that way, etc.
Hi Notional, A Scott 364 is a 10c yellow. Did you mean 634? It could be a 634 or 634A, but I don't see the accented hair so it's likely the 634. That's a very nice perfin nonetheless Notional.
Hi Notional: Back in the days when businesses used stamps for postage, employee theft of company stamps for personal usage was a problem. The perforations in the stamp, usually some combination of a company' initials and shortened by stamp collectors to "perfins," was a theft prevention measure. Collecting perfins is a whole subfield with its own society. See: https://www.perfins.org/ Don
Privately applied perfins are not to popular with most stamp collectors. F.i. early british perfins usually sell cheaper than "un-damaged" stamps. It´s a different matter with official perfins,like from Bavaria (1912-1920) or POL perfins from Germany (1926-1945). However as forging perfins is an easy task,many collectors will abstain.
Werner - thanks for the info. This is the only one I have, and actually have come across in my collection. I don't think I'll go too much further in collecting these, but it's finally good to know what the mystery was all about! Thank you everyone!
