Post Office War On Collectors??

Maybe I'm odd, but this doesn't bother me too much.

Post offices are in business to deliver letters (or parcels) and not to cater to collectors. Apart from their attempts to separate us from our cash if we constantly purchase all the new issues, most postal administrations really don't care about collectors - we're at best an after-thought or a group of eccentric odd-balls who keep what most people throw away when they get their letters.

Their job is to deliver the mail, and to make sure that people who send mail pay the proper fee for doing so. These pen cancels, while ugly, help to ensure that the stamps cannot be re-used, thus protecting their revenue stream. If you collect postal history, then a pen-cancelled stamp is simply an example of the natural evolution of the mail system.

Of course, if you want a nice CDS cancel, then these pen markings don't cut it, and they do look out of place on their own in an album. I don't buy pen cancelled stamps, but I'd rather have one cancelled like that than have a hole in my album.

What you say KD, may or may not be true, but, one question I would like to ask is - would you try to pass off a pen cancelled stamp in a trade as a used one? Nobody will take them, which is my main point.

Chimo

Bujutsu

KD - beyond ruining the stamps for collectors is an issue of principle: defacing what is equivalent to "coin of the realm." I see pen cancelling stamps as no different that striking a line across currency as I hand it to salesperson. It is nasty, messy and offensive.

PLUS. There is a reason why cancelling devices have locations and dates on them. Those devices officially and legally "register" the item in the mail processing process.

And were I a postmaster I would make *&^%$ sure none of my employees did it.

No, I would not try to trade one - I know that most collectors consider them garbage. As I said, I'd rather have a pen-cancelled one than a hole in my album, but I'd rather have a nice CDS cancel than a pen cancel, too. But when I get one on a stamp that I don't have, I'll take it until something better comes along.