Are These Stamps Used Or Unused?

I recently received an Insured large Priority Box, the sender was nice enough to use $42 worth of stamps and the PO. made it better by not canceling them. My question is are these stamps considered used or unused?



Thanks,

Ken

In my opinion they are postally used, uncanceled, as they were used to pay postage on a mail piece. Because of that, how could you characterize them as not used?

But you will find that no one here agrees about this. Some appear to believe that a cancellation is necessary for a stamp to be deemed "used." And some will soak stamps off such a cover and market them as "mint, no gum." Plus there is a whole side debate about whether it is ethical to soak off and reuse such stamps, which is not really germane to your question.

Ethics and postal laws aside, the answer lies in semantics. As long as they remain on the box, they are used. Once they are separated from the box, they are unused (presumably no-gum).

Personally, I would be bummed to have recieved this package without cancellations!

Brian

Why the heck did you buy???

The stamps are used, having fulfilled their intended purpose. However, they can be removed from the envelope with a squirt of "Pure Citrus" leaving no ill effect.

Jack Kelley

as stated earlier there are many opinions

Of course they're used...we can see that. They are simply not cancelled...

Agreed. If it's gone through the postal system, it's used. Even if you take it off "cover", it is still used -- you just can't prove it. Therefore, it should be classified as used with no cancel (which most used stamp collectors would consider a major fault). Some sellers might try to pass it off as unused "no gum", but it is most definitely "used with no cancel".

Better than pen-canceled! I would happily collect these stamps...used, uncancelled. :) I suppose you could take them to a friendly postal employee and ask them to neatly hand-cancel them for you. Revenue protection and all that.

Clearly these stamps are not rare or particularly collectible, but I was surprised to learn that even high class auction houses such as Siegel occasionally sell covers with uncanceled stamps and describe them as unused and use the unused no gum catalog price. See following link; http://www.siegelauctions.com/lot_g...lledfrom=lkp

Ignore the 1st item, the next three show my point.

As for the current item I gather from the discussion above that if I sell it on ebay under the "Postal History" category as an unusual cover/piece I am OK but if I use the category "Postage" I've crossed the line? I bet I get about $20 either way.

Let us know if you get the $20.00 bill or not. Now I'm curious.

Although it has been mentioned in other threads and touched on briefly at the beginning of this one, this is the USPIS official stance on the matter. As a collectible, you're fine; but if you intend to re-use the stamps for their "postal value", then you may encounter a problem:

I'd say the majority of stamps on small package deliveries I get, both from Canada and domestically in the US, do not have cancellations. I just wonder how much fraudulent reuse is taking place.

Anyone know the reason why they are not being cancelled? Is it technical, incompetence or what?

Terry

I'm an ebay shipping label guy myself so the fiscal integrity of the USPS is safe with me, but to put the label on this package and not pick up the handstamp is incredibly lazy or very poor training.

In answer to the 2 questions, the package originally contained a Big Blue collection I purchased and I will post the final selling price next week.

I think Canada Post must be monitoring this conversation. I got this delivered this morning.



Got 'em all!

Terry

Item sold for $20.50 as predicted.

This is an interesting topic as I've gotten mail without cancellations. I've always wondered what they would be considered as.