USPS Owes Mcgee 20¢

The USPS owes McGee 20 cents.

Check out this letter he mailed me...



Notice that he wrote NON-MACHINABLE on the envelope and he paid the 20-cent surcharge with one of those new George Washington stamps.

Looks like he also had it hand canceled with a nice CDS.

And then -- after all his efforts, the USPS ran it through their inkjet sprayer

Oh well, McGee gets an A for effort. And the most important part, the contents, were in great shape.

Thanks McGee,
KS

i never knew about the surcharge,,,ignorance is bliss !!

I never knew about the 20 cent surcharge either until one day I ordered a pictorial cancellation and it came back to me with this note:



Now I had never seen those instructions before, there is no recitation of any postal regulations that suggests whether this is correct or not, and the fact the Postal Bulletin (where the announcement for these cancellations are usually provided) makes no mention of the surcharge, it led me to just ignore it.

No one has since mentioned to me that a surcharge was needed to get any subsequent pictorial cancellation.

Regarding these glassines...I've never seen a glassine franked with twenty cents, paying this surcharge, but it makes perfect sense.

Anyone have one of these to show?

This would be a nice use of a twenty-cent stamp on its first day of issue, performing one of its (sometimes arcane) functions, and the empty, canceled glassine with twenty cents of postage would stump a few people at your stamp club.

Guys, I would be shocked if the clerks at my local post office knew about the surcharge...i was certainly never challenged !!

Ha! That's from me! :) And, grr: they put it through the machine anyway. Oh well: that it got there safely is the most-important thing.

And, yes, I got a CDS for you at the counter. Woulda been nicer if they hadn't put a spary-on over it. :p

@philbp, I applied the surcharge and wrote the note at home. I guarantee you that I know more of the DMM (Domestic Mail Manual) than anyone who works at any post office around here.

@wt1, the surcharge for glassines and rigid inserts is recent: 5 years, max. I do the glassine trick myself, to save myself $0.24, when requesting cancels by post. So odd that it's not in the Postal Bulletin. I checked, and you're right. I could have sworn it used to be. When sending away for pictorials, the clerks normally put a CDS on the glassine, which then gets a subsequent inkjet spray-on. I've never thought to save one as an entire, @Cjd -- I usually just use a 20¢ soakable commem. What a good idea to keep some -- maybe the ones to which they apply the event cancel. :)

By the way: I put the return address on the glassine, not on the envelope. I print them on an Avery-compatible "return address label" (1.25" x 0.6", about 32mm x 15mm). If that helps anyone. :)

Great line, McGee. Although, as a boast, it's probably not that high a standard to meet

KirkS