Are There Any 0-Denominated Stamps

The 00p Machins were produced by the printer, De La Rue, to provide to other firms for colour matching. There were other printers also manufactuing the same stamps, so they wanted to visually check that they looked the same. They were never on sale to the public, but some have leaked out.

Thank you johan for the complete image of that. To find one on cover used would be a nice little treasure. Also thanks James for that confirmation of what I suspected about those 0's and 00's. Good information to know.

Mike

At times I have seen USPS Postal Clerks run a meter with bar code for large packages requiring a signature upon delivery or delivery confirmation service, with $0.00 postage. This occurs when the sender applies high value postage to a parcel. The bar code has both the office of origin & destination zip-codes for tracking purposes. (I think there was a recent thread showing a multi-postage cover with a metered $0.00 label in the lower left.

In many post offices there are no stamps, only label of thermal printing that is issued by code QR, code of record, amount, date, office, etc., but if you take the letter with the stamps, have to print label with value zero to adhere the codes.

Here a postage registered as that I say and down others certified and urgent in letter without stamps.

How do test stamps get out?

in the US, since they have no postal validity, they are not considered accountable paper and thus are not as tightly controlled, so some went out the front rather than back door. Some were intentionally supplied to some private companies for testing vending equipment they were developing. And so,e were even given out by postal employees who gave talks at stamp shows.

Thanks fo that, eyeonwall. I won't be buying any since they are of no postal validity. Too expensive for "test stamps" never sold by the USPS.

Mike

A couple of examples sold by Siegel.

https://siegelauctions.com/lot_grd....ubmit=Search

Hi Mike,




Well, maybe not intentionally sold, but there are examples of test stamps having been accidentally left inside of postage stamp vending machines and then been used by the public, as in this example of a British test stamp:



Test booklets were used by technicians to align booklet vending machines. They used permanent pens in various colors on the test booklets to help in lining everything up. Fortunately for test stamp collectors, they left some behind in the machines when they were done.



Still other dummy stamps were used as demonstration stamps at various shows, and were sometimes postmarked.



And so on.

Jim

Another batch of "00" stamps, offered for a bargain* price:



https://www.ebay.com/itm/8-AVERY-DE...Hc:rk:1:pf:0

I'd call these "stamp proposals" rather than "test stamps" though.

Jim

*sarcasm

Some US test stamps are cheap as dirt. TD107, TD119-20, TD126-27...

Jim,

Thanks for sharing that lot of state seals essays. I would have to put them in that category because they were a proposed stamp design, not meant for testing any particular equipment.

I wish the design had been adopted; that would make a great looking set of stamps!

Greg

A sloppy example of the 0 ct Dutch stamp on cover.

It shows the novelty of the fact that people were not used to this kind of stamp issue.

The person that used it, used scissors, it is however a self adhesive stamps so no need for that. Mind you, in the Netherlands self adhesive stamps were just recently introduced at that time, not everyone was used to the idea.

To be available to the public, the stamps were send to every household prior to June 29th 1998 the only official day of use allowed.

Of course this date was often ignored, this one has a postmark from June 19th 1998.

Needles to say that this was not brilliant succes.

Johan, nice! A properly used stamp on cover before the usage date. As for the scissor cut it just shows that people use the stamp for it's purpose, and never worry about neatness and that someone may want the old cover for postal history purposes. I can see the barcode across the bottom. From what I can see it appears that the cancellation shows --n 98 22. Is that right?

Mike

I remember having some 00 test stamps squirrelled away somewhere actually - I'll see if I can dig them out after all these years!

This computer-vended stamp from Germany is denominated as 0000 pfennigs. This stamp design should have been denominated in euros, but the post horn symbol in the value tablet shows that the machine was not reset for the new currency and stamps. Michel lists it as #5.2 I.I, but they offer no explanation about it.