Anyone Else Received Non Spray US Machine Cancels Lately?

I recently received this from Earl P. L. Aphelbaum stamps. Although not a great strike (the month is difficult to see), the 2012 year date is visible. I occasionally have mail passed on to me with Railroad, PA (York County) with hand CDS cancels, I have not received an old machine cancel like this in a long time. Granted, I am not in the US so this may be fairly common. Are these non-spray machine cancels common?

On their mail I have never received a spray cancel, only the nice(r) machine cancel. However, on my regular mail I still get some of the old machines, say 1/7 (1/7 machine, 4 1/2/7 ink jets, 1/7 not cancelled, 1/2 /7 CDS)

I was just considering posting a couple I got recently. I got one from Duluth (2 impressions on a large envelope) and one from the southern US.

Post them, please! I'd be interested in seeing what regions still use them. I know here in Massachusetts I occasionally come upon one. Usually they are applied to odd sized envelopes, such as greeting cards or postcards. I think it may have to do with the odd size pieces having to be separated in a different machine versus the standard #6 and #10 envelopes that go through the spray-on machines.

I could be wrong, but there also may be older equipment that is fired up for use in certain areas during heavy mail volume seasons (i.e. Thanksgiving/Christmas holidays, etc.).

Good point wt1, mine came on a folded glossy paper advertisement and not in an envelope. So it may be that is why it went through the older cancel machines.

Without scanning (which I will do... Eventually) I have the following ones received recently with the old machine cancels:

4x Springfield, Massachusetts
1x central, Massachusetts
2x Manchester, new Hampshire
1x Trenton, new jersey
1x martinsburg, west Virginia
1x Santa Barbara, california

Usually when I get mail from my sister in Salina, Kansas, there is a machine cancel. Sometimes, though, there is a spray-on cancel from Wichita, even though she mailed it in Salina.

Well I don't know if this cover really fits here or not but it is relevant in that it's neither a spray on or defaced with a pen. It appears to have been struck once by a machine and secondly by a postal worker because of the weak first impression. Anyone ever see this before? Recognize the black cancel by chance?

My wife just received this yesterday. She was observant enough to think I'd find this interesting. I did.





Edited: for grammatical error correction.

On my stamp club newsletter -



On a recent mailing from a generous person living in Duluth (large envelope)-

I have a few of those... I guess the post office sometimes uses them for stamps found unconcealed in the system.

Does anyone here COLLECT the spray cancels by city or type, especially the first few years (late 1980s?)?

I have a collection of covers from this era.

I have some, too.

Back during the period when there was the transition from the older postmarks to the spray-ons, there was a middle ground where some covers were actually cancelled twice. Back before spray-ons became the standard, they had a digital series of dates and numbers that was also used to identify the mailing facility where the mail was processed.

Then, as the USPS migrated to the spray-on cancels, there were a number of "slogans" occasionally attached to them. For example, there is still a "Just Dance" spray-on that has been used as late as last week that is supposedly referring to the Choreographers Issue that was released earlier this year. Then there was the "Heart Health" slogan before that, and the Valentine's Day slogan before that.

Has anyone seen the October use of a spray-on slogan cancel for "Energy Action Month" in October 2012?

Now I'm waiting to see what the USPS may be doing for Christmas slogan cancels. It would be interesting if they came out with a Santa & Sleigh spray-on postmark that would coordinate well with the Santa & Sleigh stamps for the upcoming holiday season...but only time will tell.

What irks me right now is that the USPS in all their "wisdom" has chosen not to release to the general public where and when spray-on cancels with slogans are to be used, so collectors have to share their finds with others in order to know what to look out for in the variety of slogans that may be out there.

I received this holiday spray-on cancellation in the mail.

That holiday spray-on cancel would look great if (1) it were readable; and (2) it were placed on one of the new Santa & Sleigh holiday stamps.

Yours is dated December 3, 2012, but I can't make out the city. Nonetheless, it's the first one I've seen so far this year.

Does anyone have any holiday spray-on cancels with an earlier date? I suspect the USPS only started using them in the month of December.

I get postcards with a CDS and one of my stamps clubs newsletter which is a folded letter always comes with a CDS. Every once in a while something else slips through.