Mystic Stamp's Inventory Of Current US Used Stamps

I'm curious as to how Mystic has a large enough supply of current used stamps that they can sell them in their catalog?

Are they just buying them from the Post Office canceled? Or do they really get so much stuff in that they can have a supply of used stamps that were issued less than 6 months ago?

thoughts?

*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***

If I had to guess they work hard to keep those stamps stocked and have developed many resources for obtaining them.

Not to mention that they've been at this a very long time and those years of experience pay off when it comes to maintaining large supplies of stamps.

It wouldn't surprise me if the low person on the totem pole is required to visit the post office daily to obtain cancellations.

Jack Kelley

Back in the day, Bobby Vee was a local celeb and had a fan club. Our stamp club was the beneficiary ... by the mail bag load of envelops from fan mail. There are many such sources today, including businesses willing to sell envelops from incoming mail.

They probably get quite a lot off their own incoming mail. Every one of their customers is a stamp collector, after all, and they're much more likely to use current commemoratives than the rest of the general public.

They have a arrangement with a few different charity organization were the charity receives POSTAGE PAID envelopes . For example they have $150.00 worth of postage due weekly . When they go to pick up their mail ,they bring a file folder of mint sheets with them . The postal clerk would cancel $150.00 worth of stamps .
The charity would get the bundle of mail plus they would get nicely canceled sheets backs {post office has no need for canceled stamps}. This is done all over the country and then the charity is free to sell the used souvenir sheets or full recent sheets to a firm and maybe recover 1/4 to 1/2 of their postage cost .

Should of added that mail clerks at brokerage firms and banks can do the same thing . Go to the office manager and get a check for $1,000.00 payable to the U.S.POST OFFICE . Go and buy $1,000 worth of postage and when you pick up the POSTAGE DUE mail ,pay for it with stamps and at the end of the week or month hand to the office manager $1,000 in postage due receipts . Then take home your nicely canceled full sheets of stamps .

-------Little note of honesty here -------I started in the mail room .....then became the Office Manager of a Brokerage Firm . LOL

Floortrader--

Thanks. Your answer makes a lot of sense, and gives me some ideas of how to acquire modern used stuff myself.

thanks

Joe

A cool way to get undamaged stamps. I remember the (Scott 2438) Universal Postal Union souvenir sheet of 4 25-cent stamps, and people would cut them apart and use them as postage and the ignorant postal employees would return them to sender, alleging it isn't a stamp. One person even got a Nastygram from postal inspectors about "non-genuine" stamps IIRC. Also a cool way of using up low-value stamps that don't fit on a package and high-value stamps if you only send domestic letters.

One dealer in Utah noted for Postage At Face uses cool stamps to mail out shipments. The deal is, you get your stamps at face value and you mail back the cool stamps used to pay the postage, and he gets to sell those. The dealer is careful to put marking on the package urging postal employees not to over-cancel the stamps, which are already canceled at the time of mailing.