Forever Stamp Sticker Used As Postage

I have always dabbled with stamp collecting and was very interested to find one of our christmas cards came with the big forever stamp (and its cancelled) used as the postage. How does this happen? I have a picture but I don't see how to attach it.. Its pretty cool.

Welcome to Stamp Community Forum, Penner1!!

Yes, please show us a pic. In your editing window, at the bottom is a little green camera icon (in the screenshot below, it is circled in red). Click on that to upload a picture. There is a 90kb file size limit per picture. Anything larger than that, you will need to use an off-site host and provide the link.

Kim

Ok.. will do shortly.

There you go.

Thanks! Yes, that is illegal usage.

However, some people do it because they really do think it is a stamp!

It's a keeper as a great conversation piece!

k

I believe my aunt(she is 91) really thought it was a stamp. My grandmother was a postmaster and we are amazed USPS didn't catch it.

Yes, a lot of people actually do it unintentionally.

USPS doesn't catch a lot of things.

It's no wonder they are looking at billion dollar shortfalls.

Now there's an interesting piece. I can only imagine the treatment you'd receive from the Royal Mail as a customer receiving that item over here. It's very likely you'd be hassled on your doorstep for postage costs to cover the sticker use.

An alternate way to attach a photo is to use a photo hosting website and place the direct link to your picture within an img command. I'd give a short tutorial but the code function doesn't seem to be working .

Neat...definitely an illegal usage, but a real conversation piece, and definitely a keeper.

Lovely cover... Wow!

David

you can say that again. Now why I didnt think of that all these years remains a mystery to me. Maybe some one can illustrate?

wow....maybe the machine just automatically cancelled it without checking if its a stamp

Nice catch! Most people would have missed it. Now you have a piece of USPS folly history on cover!

BTW -

and to think its prophetic when it says its forever :)

This is a problem that USPS has pretty much given up on after making early efforts to combat.

The automatic sorter/cancellers are basically only checking for one thing in regards to a stamp -- whether there is luminescent tagging present. The machine optics are not looking for a denomination or a shape or a design. So anything that luminesces at the proper wavelength range for the machine optics will pass. Yeah, I've seen luminscent stickers that passed through the system, and even hand-drawn illustrations on luminescent selvage. I don't condone doing those things, of course.

This is why USPS no longer tags low-denomination stamps (i.e., 1c, 2c, 3,...). To keep unethical people who know, from using lower denomination stamps for first class postage. Of course, there's nothing to keep them from using older tagged 1c, 2c, 3c... stamps, except ethics.

For the self-adhesive label parts, USPS has tried circleX die cuts to prevent intact removal of labels, "NOT VALID POSTAGE" messages... but some people still try (sometimes unintentionally).

The only resource that USPS has to stop this problem is an observant letter carrier. But with stamps with no denominations and stamps that look like stickers now, even the letter carriers can't figure out what's a real stamp and what is fake.

Penner1 has an interesting cover to have. What I like about it is that it was done unintentionally. A sort of "natural" cover, rather than some philatelically contrived cover.

Would someone post one to me! I'd love to have it and not just a conversation piece. I think this type of usage of Cinderellas (I suppose it is a Cinderella) is collectible.