1/2 Cent Postage Due, Scott J88

Among other things I collect Plate Blocks but don't have J88. Strangely the block catalogues at $120.00 which is probably why I don't have it but I do have the full sheet from when such low issues were only $.25 to buy. Does anybody have any idea why this stamp is priced so highly? I mean the sheet is at over 300 bucks. What happened here?

Whoops, I meant $2.50 to buy at the PO

I don't think you could buy Postage Dues at the Post Office window (face value for the sheet, 50 cents). This low denomination was seldom used, and presumably very few bought by collectors from the philatelic agency; only buyers of the full sheet could have expected a plate block. Therefore = rare.

Geez, what wrong with my math today? First $.25, then $2.50 and the correct amount was $.50.

I also have sheets of other weird denominations like 4.5 cents Hermitage and the .5 cent Franklin. I must have felt rich buying a whole sheet. I think what I did was go to the Philatelic window at the main PO in Philadelphia. They used to have such things. It was just for stamp collectors and I used to go there often.

I seem to recall reading that the 1/2 cent Postage Due Stamp (J88) has never been found with official use on cover (other than for philatelic purposes). It is suggested that such usage would value that cover in the thousands of dollars.

Can anyone confirm if that is true?

Used only lists at $1.10 but I guess that could be a philatelic cancel. I also read somewhere that the stamp is extremely rare on an actual use cover.

I asked my dad that question. He was an old-time collector and never owned that plate block. He worked as a postal clerk for many years in NJ. He said the 1/2 cent denomination was not sent to, or orderable by typical small post offices. It only showed up in some big cities. Mint postage dues were not supposed to be sold over the counter and they were not sold at the Philatelic Agency in DC. The PA was a frequent source for dealers to add to their US stock because the PA supposedly had hand picked centering. In later years, 1970's?, the rules were relaxed and postage dues were easily available, but by then the 1/2's were out of stock/print.

I don't know if this helps shed any further light on the question, but here's an excerpt from the Postal Bulletin dated 05/28/1959 wherein it states, in part, that:

1. The stamps were placed on sale at the 10th Annual Convention of the American Topical Association.
2. No Postmaster may sell postage due stamps in mint condition.
3. The series was available from the Philatelic Sales Agency on or after 06/22/1959.
4. General usage was only after the supply of the 1931-32 issues were exhausted.
5. Postmasters at first and second class post offices requiring these items had to requisition them separately in minimum lots of 10K.

(Even where usage was legitimately needed, that was quite a number of postage due stamps a Postmaster had to order and I imagine manual inventory of them back in the day would have been a real chore, so maybe that's why they saw minimal use.)

Strangely enough, when I was a teen I saw this stamp in the drawer of a very small post office. Since it was just a hamlet and everyone knew every one, the postmaster sold me a pair of the half cent for 1 cent.

Except for the 1/2 cent block, which I have in sheet form, I have the set complete in plate blocks. One would think that the $5 block of four would be more valuable than the 1/2 block but such is philately.

I have a glssine with 4 blocks that came in one of the lots I picked up over the last year. Not plateblocks but interesting background. Thanks for sharing

Even the other half-cent postage due denominations are deceptively scarce on cover, especially as solo uses. The stamps catalog the Scott minimum as used stamps, which implies that they should be common on covers.

They're not.

I'm no expert on the subject of postage dues, and I realize that fractional postage and fractional postage dues has been discontinued for quite awhile, but as a practical matter, wasn't the use of postage due stamps to confirm that payment of underpaid letters was made before delivery?

In other words, if one had a piece of mail that was 1/2 cent postage due, the only way a person could possibly pay that postage due would be with a full penny, making it much more common to use a 1-cent postage due stamp on the cover to confirm payment than just a 1/2 cent.

Besides, even back in the day when pocket change meant something of value, it seems to me that the effort to tear out a 1/2 cent stamp from a sheet and affix it to a cover would represent more work than the 1/2 cent payment of any postage due item.

There were Stamps issued with ½ ¢ denominations in both the 4th Bureau issue and the Prexie issue. Were the Postage dues meant to round out the ½¢ Stamps ?

No, it was intended to be used when postage was 3 ½¢ and only 3 cents was attached (or so forth). The recipient had to pay the additional ½¢ or 2 cents, or whatever. The ½¢ is fairly rare today because the ½¢ wasn't used very much...even when ½¢ was worth something...it means nothing these days.

Back in the early 60s I spent most of a summer away from my hometown. There was a postage rate increase that year. When my friends back home wrote, I often had to pay the extra penny. That was my first experience with postage due. That was coincidentally the year I started a stamp collection.