Mint Stamps

How can a Mint Stamp that was gummed from the printer be a Mint Stamp now with no gum? Is someone washing the cancel? Some sellers it seems have a couple and some seem to have several. Is something funny going on?

It is possible that some gummed stamps were placed on envelopes and never used or skipped the cancelling machine somehow. I can use the long time DAV Return donation envelope included with mailing as an example. The stamps would be soaked off sans gum. (Currently unless the WAG stamp is used soaking would be futile).

Also....
long time ago.....gum was thought to do damage to stamps.
Some collectors soaked the gum off.
YEP....

This happens a LOT!

I received a USPS flat-rate box this week that was covered in postage stamps, and not one stamp was cancelled. If I needed postage stamps, I could soak these off and reuse them by pasting them using a glue stick to another package/envelope.

Brian

eligies if a stamp wasn't cancelled (Missed being cancelled at the P.O.)yet it is tagged. Wouldn't the machine that checks the tagging pick it up as a cancelled stamp? Maybe I don't understand tagging?

Rileysan I've done that. Not deliberately but having a pile of unsorted stamps and running across a stamp with no gum but no cancel either. I couldn't tell if it was a mint with no gum or used so I just used a glue stick and used it as postage. I normally don't mix them but have gotten them mixed accidentally a couple of times.

I am making an assumption, but I had always thought that cancelling machines were located in their respective post offices.

If my assumption is correct, then if a stamp was not postmarked at the originating post office, they would never receive a postmark - even tagged stamps.

I'm sure there are numerous reasons why stamps don't receive post marks - from broken machines to laziness. Whatever the reason, it happens often.

Brian

I too thought the cancelling machines were at the local post office or perhaps at the regional center. I'm calling it the regional center for lack of what it really is. Like I live in a small town of 1,000 people. We probably don't have a 1/2 million dollar machine. All our mail probably goes to Flint, MI or Chicago,IL where it is gathered from small towns all across Michigan and Illinois and dispersed from there.

I don't know what the machines cost, but even the souvenir post office in Yellowstone National park has a machine to cancel stamps (I asked for one of each type of cancellation on my postcards - hand and machine) , so if your local post office has their own unique postmark, I'd be willing to bet they have a machine to cancel stamps.

Brian

I'll ask at the PO next time I go there.

I have soaked off non canceled stamps and put them in my collection

Also sometimes stamps in a collection end up sticking to things due to heat and humidity. This has happened to me a few times.

Often a cover having two rows of stamps will receive cancellations on the top row, while the second row goes untouched.

Cancellations are now applied at a central processing facility (unless you specifically hand an item to the counter clerk & ask for a local cancellation). Mail is picked up at the street drop box and processed in bulk at the local processing facility. That is why mail pieces put in street boxes in southeastern MA ( 027xx zip) usually have a Rhode Island cancel, the Southeastern MA area a Brockton MA cancel and so on through the country. As for the tagging aspect, that was used so that the automation could, via electronics, locate the stamp on a mail piece & properly face the mail piece to receive the cancel as it went through the cancelling machines. If a Processing Plant ever has a community open house take advantage. The Boston facility in its heyday of automation would process close to 5 million pieces of mail from 3:00pm through 10:00pm on a weekday. During the Christmas period that might jump to 8 million.

If a previously mint stamp has lost its gum then it is no longer mint. I have read, though, that some archivists do remove the gum from mint stamps. What is needed is a better classification term, something along the lines of 'unfranked no gum'. Certainly to describe them as mint no gum is confusing, unless they were originally issued in that state.

Terry

Terry usually if a stamp is Mint but has no Gum they are usually classified as "Unused" not listed as Mint or some are listed as "MNG" which I'm sure you know is "Mint No Gum"