Commercial Overprint Society of Great Britain

Vol. 3 No. 1; July 1, 2005

Mullens, Marshall & Co.

by Jeffrey Turnbull

According to a copy of Kelly's Directories from the late 1800s, the "M. M. & Co" overprint belongs to "Mullens, Marshall & Co., 4 Lombard Street, London EC." (stockbrokers). A 1/- overprinted stamp is known on a transfer of stock document by bankers Smith Payne & Smiths, dated 2-3-1896. Mullens, Marshall & Co. acted as stockbrokers for Smith Payne & Smiths at that time.

In 1877 the firm, then known as Mullens, Marshall & Daniell, had been brokers for the prospectus for the National Mortgage and Agency Co., of New Zealand, Ltd.

Thanks go out to Mr. Terry Wood and Mr. John Nelson for their research.

Perfinned Commercial Overprints

by Michael Behm

A perfin is a pattern of holes that identifies the original owner of a stamp. However, holes are also used to cancel stamps—particularly in revenue applications. The most common example of this is the "CANCELLED" punch that is found on cheques.

In April 1990, Tony Llewellyn-Edwards wrote an article for the British Commercial Overprint Study Circle in which he described perfins he had with commercial overprints.

This is unexpected—why identify a stamp by a perfin when it is already identified with an overprint? As well, you might expect the mail room, where perfins were used, to be separate from Accounting, where commercial overprints would be used. Given that commercial overprints are used in revenue applications, you might anticipate that some will be found with holes from cancelling devices. Perhaps the perfins in that article were actually cancellations.

Unfortunately, the illustrations in that article were unclear, so I looked through my collection to see if the commercial overprints I have with perforations were cancellations or perfins.

	This Mappin & Webb Ltd. example is clearly a cancellation: "PAID / WITH THANKS"
	This National Provincial Bank example is also a cancellation. The oversized numbers punched at an angle could be the day of the month or the year.
	The confusion of a symbol, letter, and number, and the different sized holes all suggest that this W. C. Jay & Co. example is also a cancellation.
	This example from A. Sanderson & Sons, Ltd. is not the lower half of a perfin, it is the right side of a long cancellation. The two holes to the left of the S are a part of the ampersand.
	At last, a perfin on a commercial overprint. This Stockport Corporation overprint has a CB/S perfin. Perhaps one department of the Stockport Corporation perforated its commercial overprints to prevent them from being used by other departments?
	This General Electric Co., Ltd. overprint also has a legitimate perfin. I cannot guess why both identifying systems would be employed on the same stamp.

As an aside, I should mention that commercial overprints are known to have been used with perfins for postage:

Send comments or questions to mjbehm@kw.igs.net