How To Protect Posted Stamps On Cover In The Mails

Whew, that's a long title.

When you mail a parcel or envelope (cover) or letter/lettre there are ways to protect the stamps you use to pay the postage so they arrive in good condition at the receiving end.

One is to place the stamps away from the edges of the parcel or envelope. Edges are where things get bumped into or grabbed or crushed or bent.

Beautiful, worthwhile (isn't everything worthwhile?) and valuable stamps (and cancels) can be ruined or partially destroyed just by being placed too close to the edge.

Example:
Years ago I bought a stockbook with some stamps off ebay from a fellow in France. The stockbook and stamps arrived in good condition but the stamps used to mail the item in the padded protective envelope were placed too close to the corner and edges. They were not right on the edge or right in the corner but a bit away. Even so look at what I received (see below):



The only things salvageable out of this are the FRAMA ATM label and the Pas de Calais cancel on the stamps. A nice bit of postal history.

Part of the problem was that the stockbook was smaller than the envelope used and so could slide around inside the envelope, sometimes leaving the area with the stamps on with a solid backing and other times with just the padded bubbles as backing. The corner could be crumpled and crushed, which it was, and no stamps could survive that kind of treatment. If the stamps had been placed another inch or 2-3 centimetres inwards they would have been hopefully safer.

I know most postal administrations like to have stamps placed up within a certain limited area close to the edge and in the upper right-hand corner so that when the piece goes through the sorting and cancelling machines the stamps have a better chance of getting hit by the cannceller. The above piece was hand cancelled so the stamps could have been placed almost anywhere and been OK really.

The thing to remember is that however carefully and gently you hand over your piece to be posted / mailed, once it leaves your sight and is initiated into the postal sorting centres it is a different story. The idea is to get this piece from point A to point B efficiently and quickly, trying not to run over it too many times with the forklift or drop it out the airplanes or dip it in too many harbours before it reaches its destination.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to place your stamps in the best way possible to protect them on their journey. How can we do that you ask?

If the envelop is big and fluffy, I notice that the stamps get damaged. Envelopes upto half of A4 size and tight packed come very neat and clean.

Excellent advice Puzzler,
totally agree.

One way is to know how your local area postal sorting plants will process the mails, getting this information from the people you mail items to, or mailing things to yourself if you run out of people to mail to.

This postmark was a temporary country-wide one for the 2011 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver.


This stamp is on a legal-sized business envelope and mailed to myself. I was trying to get the postal code on the stamp this time through. I succeeded. I also thought to angle the stamp to see what an angled postmark looked like, if it might be more eye-pleasing.


Some collectors like the socked-on-the-nose cancels and some like the stamp lightly cancelled. With these new ink-jet sprayed-on cancels you usually get the ))))) or 'postcanada' or something. I wanted to try for something different.

Notice the stamp was placed well away from the the edge of the envelope and still got cancelled. There is a margin of error allowed by the cancelling machines. Maybe not much for a single line cancel but still some.

If I had placed the stamp more to the left I could have perhaps got the date on it, a partial sprayed-on socked-on-the-nose thing-a-ma-gigger.

Smaller envelopes here like a #9 or #6-3/4 will only get two lines sprayed on. You have to keep an example handy so you can judge correctly how it will work best.

Here we have a Great Britain machine cancel on a Machin label (nice!). Luckily it was lightly cancelled, thus not obscuring the stamp / label too much.



This makes the circular cancel harder to read but it is still nice.

Note that the label was thoughtfully placed away from the right-hand edge and a little down from the top. Note the cancel is running all the way to the envelope edge.

Now how would you have managed a socked-on-the-nose cancel on this fantastic label / stamp? By knowing where the machine would more or less place the circular part of the duplex (two-part) cancel and moving the stamp over to catch the cancel. Simple.

The trouble is, sometimes you do not know what the envelope is going to go through or exactly what kind of cancel it will receive.

What to do?

Puzzler, aside from the advice you have already given about keeping the stamp away from the edges, the only other thing I can think of is to say a prayer that the envelope arrives undamaged. My only other advice is to make sure that the stamp is well licked and stuck completely to the envelope.
Parcels are another can of worms. I have seen one dealer who cancels the stamps and then puts them under a plastic overlay. His stamps are never damaged.

On a similar note, how to keep a potentially valuable stamp from being damaged? I have a notion to send a stamp collecting friend a letter using a MNH but badly damaged U.S. C13. The value would be the same as a used example. The gum is badly discolored, has a bad crease and very off center.

My intent is to put it on a period cacheted cover. Safe to use the same precautions or are additional needed. Or, am I just tossing $$ in the air?