Are These Considered To Be Stamps?

I thumbed through Scott Specialized looking for them but I couldn't find them. And I don't know what to call them.

Printed Postage Impressions (PPI) is what there are called in the UK. Ours must have 'Delivered by Royal Mail' mark as well as they do the final delivery to our door. Many collectors here have them as an additional area to collect.

Interesting. I'll have to look out for them, as I have yet to see those in my mail.

One has to wonder what the practicality of these "stamps/labels" are, though. It would seem that printing the indicia directly on the envelope would greatly expedite the mail rather than to have the labor intensive extra work of affixing those "stamps/labels" to a mail piece.

The second paragraph of this short study summary may explain the use of these labels.

I'd look at them as private/Custom stamps, local business/insitution not being very different the Commercial Dated precancels. Yes a Stamp! I'd say!

You need to put the service class on the envelope if it is not the normal first-class mail.

Some print it on, some write it on, some affix labels. Those labels are NOT valid for postage. They only indicate the service class and that the postage was paid. The mail was submitted and paid through the bulk service window, which is why there is no indication of actual postage on those envelopes.

Tomiseksj's post concisely gives the reasons why some groups/businesses use the labels instead of imprinting.

They are stamps (cinderellas/labels), just not postage stamps.

I agree with tomiseksj quoting DIRECT magazine, a publication of the direct mail marketing industry, however it is a very expensive way to achieve a "lift in response" on a direct mail package. (Package is the envelope, letter, lift letter, offer, Response Envelope); Based on the CPM (cost-per-thousand) for perforated labels and CPM for Label application. KEHESS -- Are the three envelopes addressed? Do they show signs of going through the mail?

Similar labels (without perfs) have been used to cover-up a printers' mistake. IF the printed indicia in the BOX/PANEL had incorrect had an incorrect imprint (Permit info., MAIL Classification, etc.) this would be an inexpensive way for a lettershop/mailshop/printer to avoid USPS penalties -- i.e. loss of Permit, Confiscation and Destruction of Mail, re-classification of Permit Mail from a discounted class-rate to being socked full first class mail costs. I have personal experience with this one!

It was 1986, I had a brand new client in Manhattan (New York City). I'm sitting in the owner's office when he gets a call from the owner of the mailshop he was using on Staten Island to process his mail. Here, the client/mailshop had just dropped a 250,00 piece mailer marked FIRST CLASS, with a THIRD CLASS BULK INDICIA, at Church Station in New York. The owner is screaming at my client because his truck driver and helper were sitting in handcuffs on the dock at Church Street Station! The Postal Inspectors had seized the mail and mailshop personnel for "Mail Fraud" -- seems as if it wasn't the first time the Client's Art Department had made this mistake?! To get the mailshop personnel (and mail) released I had to meet with Postal Inspectors uptown, at the Main U.S. Post Office, a work out something -- return of the mail with a label applied over the incorrect "FIRST CLASS MAIL" marking.

KHJ says, "They are stamps (cinderellas/labels), just not postage stamps. As Philatelists, do we now consider "BULK MAIL INDICIAS" stamps? If this marking was hand stamped, made by a "rubber stamp", would it make it a "stamp"? If it walks like a duck. If it talks like a duck. To me it's a duck.

Have the lines in philately become that blurred, because stamps are now produced on pressure-sensitive labels, that Bulk Indica material is now classified as stamps? A Cinderella -- maybe, however, I don't believe these travelled through the mail, even though they may be addressed.

Consider this cover



Cinderalla? Label? Because if memory serves me, they were produced by the same company.

I don't collect cinderellas. But I consider cinderellas to be stamps, just not postage stamps. I really do not think I am alone in that thought.

There are lots of different types of stamps: postage stamps, revenue stamps, postal savings stamps... I honestly don't think philatelists have the monopoly on the word "stamp".

My opinion.

I'm sure this thread will get a lot of comments about what is and is not a "stamp". Today, the lines are blurred because of the use of computer technology and labels producing everything from home printed postage, to third party vendors such as Zazzle or Stamps.com, to meters, and even to labels produced by Automated Postal Centers at select post offices.

The term "stamp", as I had always understood it, was based upon it being a "receipt" showing that payment of postage was made to postal authorities. If a mail piece is placed in the mailstream and bears said sticker/label/stamp/meter that shows "receipt of payment", does that legitimize it so it may be referred to as a "stamp"? It's a gray area that is defined differently by different people. Is there a right or wrong answer? Probably not. It's up to the individual collector to make that determination.

I've often played around with similar terms as it relates to "first day covers", too. As most will know, if you send for a first day cover either by buying it from the USPS directly or preparing your own covers by buying new stamps at the post office, affixing the new stamps to covers and mailing them off to the first day of issue city for a postmark, they are rarely ever postmarked on the true "first day of issue". In fact, these days, since you have to buy the stamps and affix them to the covers before mailing, and most (if not all) are sent to Kansas City for cancellation, virtually no first day of issue postmarks are ever applied on that specific date and/or location of issue.

Taking that idea a step further, if I buy a newly issued stamp on the first day of issue and apply it to a cover and mail it to myself, that's a true (although "unofficial") first day of issue postmark, as it would be illegal for the post office to adjust the date of the postmark to other than the actual mailing date of the piece once it enters the mailstream. Yet, the USPS does it all the time to respond to collector requests for special first day of issue cancellations.

You aren't getting enough junk mail!

I get more than my share of junk mail but haven't seen those labels/stamps applied to mailpieces before. I have argued (unsuccessfully) with charities that send self addressed STAMPED envelopes to potential donors for return of a requested donation as being a waste of money given the percentage of people that will not respond and will reuse the stamp for other things.

The direct mail industry may disagree with me, but I don't buy into the idea that a mail piece with a stamp on it gets opened more often than one with just a postage paid indicia. Most people are a lot more intelligent than that, even if the direct mail industry may thing otherwise.

Maybe others aren't so diligent on this point, but personally, I open ALL my mail -- including every piece of junk mail I receive -- as everything these days is so personalized, I make certain that anything with my name and address on it are shredded before discarding. It's the safest way to make certain my personal information isn't getting into the wrong hands and potentially exposing me to identity theft.

KHJ, please... don't misunderstand. Maybe I could have phrased it better --- I wasn't trying be be offensive, I was simply throwing the term out for discussion.

In fact, Bulk India is technically a stamp... it used as a payment of postage in lieu of a stamp for the conveyance of mail. It makes it "philatelic" though normally not collected because of not being identifiable by Permit Holder, Rate of Postage Paid, and Date of Mailing, a Receiving Cancel, etc. In fact, a "Bulk Indicia" is a postage stamp, just of unknown denomination. ('ll catch flack on this one too).

My discussion of the term "stamps" is as in "Philately" or "Philatelic" and items that were never 'PHILATELIC" to start and then to fall into a " stamp collectors" hands.

As an example: "FOR TESTING PURPOSE" Coil Issues. These "FOR TESTING PURPOSE" Coil Issues were used by machine makers (Pitney Bowes) appearing at DMA (Direct Marketing Association), CATALOG AGE/DIRECT, shows spitting 100s of samples on covers with test coil-end strips & test singles just laying around (some I were able to grab at the booth while no one was looking). They were NEVER suppose to get out of the booth; they weren't in a Post Office calibrating a machine-- they were demonstrating the machines to Lettershops & Mailshops. Does that classify them as applied for "FOR TESTING PURPOSE" as per USPS original intent? But, I digress.

Is the example I illustrated above a: Label, Cinderella, Postal History, how is this classified. Because in 100 years, after I'm long dead and gone, and these items will still remain, and then who will know what they really are.

I've gotten the non-profit type labels that Kehess showed, and I think I've also gotten some of the business 1st-class presort shown by Kehess.

Even my APS mail comes with a label instead of postage stamps, although the label is quite colorful. There's also another stamp company that used one of these labels once, I think it was on a piece of my Mystic junk mail.

I confess to clipping them and tossing the into my "on-paper" bin, even though I don't really collect them. They are still in one of those bins.

k

I don't think anyone took offense. It's a good point for discussion. There are a few old threads on this from a few years back. I'm pretty sure I stayed out of it back then. Agreed that things have gotten all mucked up quite a bit since then. Plus, a lot of collectors tend to be biased toward "what is a stamp", influenced by what they actually collect or think is worth collecting. I know a lot of collectors who call the modern self-adhesive stamps "stickers" instead of stamps.

k