Perfins - Why?

In a different thread warrehouse told me that one of the stamps I had is a perfin - it has letters punched into in with little holes.

Is this still done? What is/was the point of this?

Thanks

JP

Yes, it is still done in some places. I know that the Canadian Pacific Railroad still does it.

The main idea is to prevent a business' postage supplies from being stolen by their own employees. Some companies actually still buy stamps instead of having postage meters, and they want to make sure that these stamps don't walk away, since stamps would be an easy to steal/use item. To make sure this doesn't happen, they will perforate the company initials on the stamps.

You got that right, WpgLwr, plus in Canada official government stamps were perfins as well. "O H M S" perforation was used for official use from 1939-1948.

By the way on US perfins the coolest one I've seen does not use initials
but an emblem "Chevrolet" use their classic logo symbol.

Mike

I would have never guessed this. Can't employees just pocket the stamps and use them from home? I would think that the cost of punching the holes in all the stamps would be more than would be saved by stopping employee theft - but I guess it must make sense or all these companies wouldn't do it.

Yes, they can still steal them, but there's nothing to guarantee that some helpful postal clerk won't alert the bosses.

Then they get nasty, calling it theft, firing the offending worker and prosecuting him. I've actually heard of it happening.

The main problem they were trying to combat was not employees taking the stamps for personal use. The main problem was employees taking a pad of stamps and then reselling them, either back to the post office (some countries permitted this) or wholesale to a stamp dealer or to another business. By punching holes, the post office will not accept, and the stamp dealer or other business would recognize the material being of questionable ownership. This kind of theft can easily run into the $1000++ range, and even more over the course of many years.

It may seem like a petty theft, but even the affluent and powerful are not immune. Does anybody remember Dan Rostenkowski? He was Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, a very powerful position in the House of Representatives, and on the short list for future Speaker of the House. Yet, in 1996, he plead guilty to 2 counts of felony mail fraud (pardoned by Clinton in 2000). His crime? He would take the stamp allotment provided to each Congressman, then proceed to use his signature to frank his mailings (a method honored by the post office on mail from Congressmen). He then would take the stamp allotment and resell it back to the post office and pocket the money!

Oh come on, KHJ -- that doesn't count as a crime for a Chicago-born politician

KirkS

I had been meaning to post some of my stamps like this to find out why they were like this. I have several US ones and I also have some from other countries. I'm home all day today, so I will post them later.

Does this ever make the stamps worth more to a collector? Or worth less? I assume most are common definitives, being purchased in bulk, so you wouldn't find rare stamps like this anyway?

Kirk is right. Oh, for the days when crooked politicians only took a few stamps and not millions of dollars.

BTW, here is one list of the pardons signed by Slick Willie - everything from odometer rollback to narcotics distribution and spying.

Link:http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pardonchartlst.htm

Perfins have had valid reasons for their existence as posted by several of you. I found that both perfins and precancels have an advantage for me. Many collectors consider them as inferior, or as faulty and won't buy them even if on a high catalog value stamp. I have obtained a few HV stamps for a tiny fraction (+/-) 10% of the catalog value because they are perfins or precancels.

Perfins are worth more to those whom collect them. There is a club dedicated to this field of study/collecting.

Mike

I have books in my library from the 40s to present day and I remember a couple of them from the late 50s describing perfins. They went on to describe them as nothing more than junk or garbage and worth nothing in value. The only place for a perfin was the waste paper basket - or, garbage.

Nothing can be further from the truth today. There are societies devoted solely to perfins, and rightly so.

Today, perfins are highly respected. If anyone thinks differently, I have this to ask of you - - - - If you have any perfins that you consider junk, and I am not talking about damaged stamps per se, I will be glad to take them off your hands <G>. Of course as soon as I make this statement, 'some' collectors 'might' come to me and offer them for a price. If so, that says to me that they consider garbage to have a value, no matter how low a value

Cheers

Bujutsu

Stefanib123,
Some perfins are more valuable than the ordinary stamp it was made from (in the catalog anyway). A lot of countries worldwide used them. There are official government ones and private company ones.

I have just discovered the German ones that are little pictures of things made from the dots.

A small selection of us perfins.

Here is that Chevy perfin.

Majority of perfins are punctured so you can read the
perfin from the face of the stamp.
Sometimes they are upside down, as the operator would fold a sheet in half
and puncture the doubled sheet.