Cleveland Zoo Local Post

If it uses a postage stamp and is cancelled, it has to be "officially authorized" doesn't it?

Here are two issues of a local post, fund raiser I imagine, that I have absolutely never run across before. The 1975 envelope claims to be the first such issue and it obviously ran for at least another year as well. Did the practice continue?

Very Cool! Those are very detailed and well made. I really like the Bison and Penguin issues.

are cinderellas?

with Stamperdude! Very nicely made!



Not necessarily.

USPS rules allow you to affix almost any other stamps (official or cinderella) as long as they are far enough away from the actual stamps used to pay for postage so that there is no confusion as to which stamps are being used to pay for postage and which stamps are for "decoration". Otherwise, you would not be able to use Christmas seals... on your mailings. I've never known any postal clerk to actually enforce this rule (i.e., reject a mailing because a cinderella/label was too close to the actual postage stamps.

A few dealers will occasionally decorate their mailings with some cheap mint foreign stamps. You may also apply whatever cancel you would like on the extraneous stamps.

That being said, I don't know if those cancels at the upper right in your pics are actual USPS commemorative cancels or a private cancel. Somebody who collects commemorative cancels might be able to tell you. The cancels over the local post stamps are clearly privately made/applied.

Thank you for the comments. As usual, even something that was obviously a fund raiser for the zoological society manages to raise more questions than it answers.

Does anyone out there know whether the cancellations applied to the US postage were actually legitimate or were they privately applied by the Society?

As to whether or not these are "Cinderella" Issues, I suppose that I would classify them as such if the simple definition used is something that looks like a postage stamp but isn't. However, I am not sure if local posts actually fall under this because some of them actually prepay some sort of delivery service in the same way that a postage stamp does. Does this mean that they have a category of their own?

Mind you, I don't think that these particular issues paid for much of an actual service whether they were carried by a dog team, a span of oxen, or not.

I think that the pictorial postmarks used to cancel the US stamps might be official USPS because of the city, state, zip code in addition to the month/day/year. I am positive that cachet envelope, local post stamps, and local post cancelation were privately issued by the Cleveland Zoo. I imagine that the event was fun to watch the "mail" be carried via dog sled and a cart pulled by oxen. You should contact the Local Post Collectors Society about any information they have in regards to these Local Post issues.

backroads,

Local Posts are most often placed within the Cinderella umbrella.
That is to say, they are often found in the same section of dealers lists, Auctions etc.
Many like to keep them seperately from other [non-postal] labels. I'd say it is an individual choice.
To me, they are a branch of Cinderella collecting. Others here will disagree.

Londonbus1....agrees with most things

Londonbus1

That is pretty much how I treat them as well. My Local Post material tends to go in the back of the country album they originate in even if they do carry postage from that country as well, like these do.

Any collecting and display tends to come down to personal preference. The more formal designation only comes into play if someone else wants to know what in heck you're talking about.