UK Stamps From 1970, Can I Still Use Them For Postage?

Hi all,

I'm collecting Christmas stamps cancelled, and have the UK set from 1970 in MNH. To get them cancelled I thought of having a friend send me a letter from the UK using those stamps for postage. Are they still valid, and how much is the fee for a 20 g letter to the Netherlands?

Thanks in advance.

Klaus

Hi klaus,

As I understand it, only all post 1971 decimal GB stamps in whole number values are still valid for postage but must be used in multiples to prepay the correct postage for the item being mailed. However, stamps with a half penny in the value are no longer valid used singly but may be used in pairs to give a whole number value of the correct postage required. This would make any stamps from previous years, including 1970, invalid for postal use.

This could change, and might well do if Scotland achieves Independent Nationhood, as Royal Mail may re-design the whole GB stamp issue.

Terry

According to the Post Office [main offices only, not sub-post offices] those stamps with ½p values are valid but do not count. So if the stamp has a value of 16½p it only counts as 16p.
The only exception being the ½p stamp which can be used in multiples to make 1p, 2p etc.

I regularly use the values with ½p when in the UK and my family use any I give them without any problems.

As Mr.Collins points out, ONLY stamps issued AFTER Feb 1971 can be used on mail today.

Londonbus1

Even if you were able to use them in the mail, the cancel would be a philatelic cancel, not a genuinely postally used cancel, at least by most people's standards. Of course you can included philatelic cancels under your definition of "cancelled". But since it appears that these stamps can't be used today at all, getting even a philatelic cancel is impossible.

How is that Hieronymus? If 1971 stamps, are accepted as valid postage then they are being postally used when stuck on a letter and posted. I see no difference in a four and a half pence stamp accepted as a 4p stamp and a stamp overprinted to change its value. For me both conditions are postal use within the rules of the stamp issuing authority. Surely that is what determines valid postal use.

Terry

Edited to add that I see you are referring to 1970 stamps, so yes, they would be invalid for use post 1970, and any cancel obtained for such use would also be invalid.

When commemoratives from the 1930s are used on mail by a dealer today, the 2014 cancel would be considered, at least by purists, to be philatelic. If you want to use the term "postally used" I won't quarrel with it. But I have seen, more than once, people on this forum distinguish between a cancellation roughly contemporaneous with the stamp issuance, on the one hand, and stamps used decades later. As far as the OP is concerned, it certainly would be cancelled by the criteria he is using for his "cancelled only" collection. But I have seen the decades later usage put in a different (and lesser) category by people on this forum.

I'm not sure if this is the same in the UK as in the US, but we use the term "contemporaneous cancel" when referring to a postmark on an older stamp or postal stationery item that was during its period of use.

In other words, if we use an old stamp or postal card today and it gets a 2014 postmark, it's not the same as one that was used during the intended period when they were available at the post office to reflect a current postage rate. Sure, it may have been postally used, but would not be viable for most collectors because it wasn't used during the time the denominated postal rates were in effect.

Although for most contemporary stamps it makes little difference, if you look at some postal stationery items (postal cards and stamped envelopes) they are often worth only a fraction of their value "mint" as compared to "used"; but the key is you can't just take them and get them postmarked today and "increase their value". The postmarks have to be "contemporaneous", (i.e. properly used in the mailstream when the postal rates identified on the stamp or postal stationery item were in effect.)

Wt1--that's the terminology I was searching for: "postally used" as distinct from "collectably postally used" -- both are postal use but one is not very collectible by those for whom postal use is important.