Romare Bearden Stamps - USPS Computer Glitch With Scanner?

As most US modern issue collectors will know, today (09/28/2011) was the First Day of Issue for the Romare Bearden Stamps, but my experience with purchasing them met with a slight problem.

I went to one post office who claimed they didn't have them (even with automatic shipments?); then I went to a second post office who asked their supervisor and was told they had them but they couldn't sell them to me today because of a scanning glitch with their computer system. When I pressed them saying I wanted a local first day cancellation on the day of issue, they gave in and sold them to me, with the supervisor handing the clerk the stamps with the request that after my sale he put them away and not sell them until tomorrow when the computer glitch will hopefully be fixed.

As I understand it, the story goes that the bar code used in their scanning equipment is incorrectly charging the 16 stamp pane as a 20 stamp pane and thus they have to manually override their system to adjust for this error. It was suggested that this may be a nationwide problem.

Anyway, I successfully purchased my stamps and who knows, maybe the receipt showing a first day of issue sale of the stamps will be a collectible in its own right!

Has anyone else encountered this problem with purchasing this issue of stamps?

By the way, why do you suppose they made the sheet to contain only 16 stamps when the layout could have easily accommodated 20 stamps? With all the talk about "going green", this is not exactly the way to do it by having so much "open white space" in the pane:



Also interesting is that there is only one plate number, but with the way the layout is designed, it seems as though you could collect the plate number with either the top of the side stamp (as intended) or both or even as an unusual block of three, if one were so inclined:

It has been obvious for along time that the USPS was no longer satisfied with selling plate blocks of four or sex in the 1960's so they started issing plate blocks of 6, 8, 10+. Then they started making sheets, with five or more designs, so you had to buy at least half the sheet to get a decent plate block that included all the designs. Now they are making it so that the only way to collect mint US stamps by plate block is to buy the whole dang sheet.

Problem is there aren't too many plate block collectors left, especially after the shift to pressure-sensitive adhesive stamps. This is why I gave up on plate block collecting past the mid 1970's (and only then because I alreadly have almost all the plate blocks from that era).

Next day update: As stated in my initial post, I convinced the postal clerk that I wanted the Bearden stamps on the day of issue so I could get that day's "unofficial" cancellation on some covers.

So how do you suppose this happened? Three of the four covers (as in top example) have correct postmark; the fourth has NO POSTMARK AND NO ZIP+4 CODE at the bottom whatsoever, yet it still contains the bar code at the bottom and on it's reverse the orange bar code that is now common on most pieces of mail that go through the mails and it is quite obvious that both pieces went through the mailstream.




I suppose I shouldn't complain, as I can always peel off the stamp and re-attach it to another envelope, so I haven't lost any value to the stamp, it's just that I always thought the bar code and postmark were applied in one pass through the USPS's mail equipment, but with this cover as an example, I guess it doesn't quite work that way.

Yet it does seem as though the post office is losing some money by being rather indifferent about whether or not all of the postage applied mail that uses stamps gets properly cancelled.

I get lots of mail that they never bothered to cancel. Usually it's on padded envelopes but letters slip through as well.

Interesting thought on forcing the issue with them. Covers with that date are obviously going to be few and far between - Nice job!

I would insist on getting anice CDS on each one before mailing. But then I am lucky enough to live in a state where many post offices still do that.