How To Collect "Metered Mail" Envelopes & Items

I have been a stamp collector for a LOT of years now, but really have NOT seen anything that can answer my "title" question of How to collect Metered Mail items.

A lot of you do not consider metered mail as philatelic related, but perhaps there are more of you out there that might!

My first question (more to come if this takes off) is do you collect the envelopes as entire (non-cut), or just cut the meter off and collect it like they did 100 years ago with postal stationery envelopes (imprint only, throw the rest away), or do we cut the meter & the return address portion off and save it as a strip!

I generally do not go out of my way to collect these, but I have been getting a lot of overseas items with meters used instead of stamps, and thought it might make a "different" collectable for my shelves. I always saved the US ones if they had anything to do with the states I collected postmarks from.

Thanks to those that will answer. Just curious as to if there is a batch of folks that think some of these are interesting things to keep.

Await your replies.

Every collector has their own collecting preference. I have seen meters saved as entires, fronts, strips, 2x4 clippings, and smaller pieces. As a broad preservation philosophy, I would encourage anyone to save these (like postal stationery or any postal history item) in the largest format you can conveniently store/mount. The more an item is cut-down, the less the monetary value and the less the postal history value. I would be hard-pressed to buy a meter impression on anything less than a full mail piece.

There was a nice display of meter mail recently at The Royal Philatelic Society in London, so it's not as obscure a subject as one may think. I agree 100% with John Becker that the mail items must be collected as close to entire as possible in order to preserve the postal history element. However, where would you want to stop? Frama labels (and their equivalent in so many countries) are - to me at least - are a half-way house between stamps and meter franking. You can collect them like stamps: used, unused or on an item of post. Then there's the meter franks of commercial entities, often very collectible in their own right for the early ones. Plenty of room in this subject for both collecting, study and display.

Guilty as charged.
But then again, I collect everything.

Agree with John, if I were to specialise, I just collect whatever passes my desk
I have 400 or so Australian
300 or so of US,
All shapes and sizes, mainly all cut to size regrettably, that's how they arrive
in my swaps etc.

Here is a little Pot pourri of mine, in all its raggedness.

In this day and age, the preference is more toward entires and as already said, taking you more into postal history than just basic collecting. Nothing wrong with collecting old 2x4 cuts, but a lot of interesting covers have been lost along the way. Part of that came from the dislike of legal and large size covers because of inconvenient sizes for display and storage.

It's a huge area, what with post office meters and private meters, separate meter labels, rates and on and on. Starting out with general worldwide collection is fine, but unless you have a spare barn or two, I think you'll quickly run out of room. So at some point, you might consider specializing in a country or area. Just a suggestion.

Here's an example how deep and wide meters can go, a mint Spanish aerogramme (1970s??) with a meter impression used for prepayment. Spain had/has different rates for different destinations, so its post office used formula aerogrammes metered in different denominations. Meters instead of stamps certainly saves weight.

This Spanish aerogramme is, indeed, from 1977/79."type N", according Edifil catalog.

Thanks for all your inputs. Was fun reading!

I have found a side collection of these metered mails.

I have been on "non-profit" mailers postmark permit metered mail for a lot of years. Over that time I have saved the envelopes intact. Big box of them in the other room. Here is a sample of the ones I am talking about!

Very little value, but an interesting side collection anyway. Hope you enjoy.

Here is a new one I received in today's mail. A United Kingdom prestamped
postal meter, that Los Angeles, CA (USA) was nice enough to cancel! Very
thoughtful of them. Enjoy!

That's a very nice "Flats" machine cancel.
I get them on my Turkey Bulletins from the US

PoStat4evR,
From your pleasant reaction to the Los Angeles cancel and the 2+ months of replies here to your meter question ... I must assume this cancel is on a fairly large envelope and you intend to retain it. I have to ask ... are you keeping it whole or cutting it down to some degree, if so, how small? I would also be interested in your insight for whatever decision you have reached.

And rod222, the same question would apply to you. How do you save these?

(By the way, I save them whole.)

John,
my regime is to collect everything that fits A4 Binder
If not possible (in Storage box)

My Flats are removed (Standard white large envelope)
"Cut Squares" to hinged to Album Page

Try this website:
http://www.meterstampsociety.com/convention.html

Timm - thanks for the link.
After looking at the auction, I'll have to dig back through the odds& edds boxes (again).
pat
http://www.meterstampsociety.com/au...nsMeters.pdf

to: John Becker:

""From your pleasant reaction to the Los Angeles cancel and the 2+ months of replies here to your meter question ... I must assume this cancel is on a fairly large envelope and you intend to retain it. I have to ask ... are you keeping it whole or cutting it down to some degree,""

This is a rare receipt item for me. I think I have only seen a couple of others. So.... The envelope is a 9 x 13 size, and for now I will keep it intact. Maybe in the future I will attempt to cut it down, but time will tell.

If and when I see any more (which I think I have around someplace) I will post them.

Hope this maybe answers your question.....