01¢ Vs 10¢ Kestrel

This was a birthday card my aunt sent me,she was in her late 80's at the time . In the card she apologizes for the incorrect postage. Can't blame here the numeration is a bit confusing. Can anyone explain the design?



*** Edited by Staff to clarify topic title. Titles are important! ***

The letter rate to Canada was 40 cents in 1994. Paid correctly here, if that is the destination. The first stamp is a kestrel bird, denomination of "01", used here upside down and looking more like a 10 cent stamp. That is the reason the kestrel stamp was reissued without the 0, people were using it upside down as a 10 cent stamp.

Here is a domestic cover from 1995 apparently overpaying the 32 cent letter rate by a penny, but actually having only 5 cents on it.

The second cover is really neat. not one but three up side down 1 centers and it was not caught by the PO

Use of the "01" cent Kestrel stamp upside down to make it appear as if it were a "10" cent stamp became a real problem for the US Postal Service -- so much so that they reprinted several low denomination stamps to avoid confusion. Here's a link to a period newspaper article about the controversy:

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/...-3039529.php

For a moment, I thought we had a duplicate thread. Not to slight the OP's poor old aunt, but the new title is important. And the subject is interesting, one I was not familiar with.

The USPS loses far more money by other schemes, but the the 9 cent cheating was obvious to the public and got ink from the press, so an easy target for the USPS to address. Eliminating the "0" was a small visual changes to the design, but the real change was to cease tagging low-denomination stamps of 10 cents and less beginning in about 1995.

Increased automation made it far too easy to get any tagged stamp through the system. It is even easier to get underpaid mail through the system today with machines taking a bin of mixed mail, facing it, (maybe) canceling it, and after more machines and transporation and more machines having it eventually arrive to the carrier in delivery order sequence - all without ever being seen by a person.

Here is another example from 1993. It bears two inverted 01 kestrels appearing to generously overpay the 19 card rate by 1 cent, yet costing the sender only 2 cents. The stamp is tagged and thus easily machine-faced and canceled. In reality, it is an oversized card at 5.5" x 8", so requiring the 29 cent first class letter rate at that time, so an underpayment of 27 cents. Successfully mailed for 2 cents.

Hmmm...looks like 6 cents to me...

Remember there are 3 types of people in this world...those that can count and those who can't.

Well, my adding was close. So much for taking differential equations in college!