Postage Meter Collecting Question

Danstamps54,

Thanks for the welcome, info, and links. I do have three questions on what you said: (1) What year range do you mean by contemporary, (2)when you say the number of collectors is small what could be a guesstimate in numbers (I don't know if small is three people or three hundred people or ?) (3)When you say bulk swap how many covers are in a bulk swap?

wt1,

Thanks for the link to that book.

dsmith426,

1. By contemporary, I mean the meters currently in use. Most of these meters have a barcode (it's like the QR codes you see everywhere). Take a look at the catalog Wt1 linked. You will see many different styles of meters. Most are no longer in use and are more collectable.
As was mentioned previously, if you don't collect the entire cover it's better to collect a strip showing the return address. This links the unique meter number to an owner.

2. Let me give you an example. I am a member of the Postmark Collector's Club. It currently has 389 active members. Of course, many more people collect postmarks but the number is significantly smaller than the number of active stamp collectors. The same goes for meters and auxiliary markings. We are niche collectors.

3. By bulk swap, I mean making trades like stamps or baseball cards. Each item isn't valued separately. "I'll give you these five covers for those two" or "I'll give you 5 bucks for this box." While there are exceptions (You can see some in the catalog Wt1 referenced) most meters, postmarks and auxiliary markings have little market value. They are just an interesting area of philately to collect.

Dan

Dan,

Thanks for your continued help. Do people also collect permits? If so are they the same people who collect meters?

Also how easy is it to find just a single specific meter slogan cancel? And how would someone go about finding it? (I'm asking this as there is one I wouldn't mind owning)

Thanks again

dssmith426, why do you not let us know what meter slogan you are looking for? Someone may have saved it as a lot of us save their covers.

Peter

dsmith426,

I am not aware of any specific club or organization that is devoted to permits. I think a lot of collectors have them though. I keep old or small permit number or interesting permits but I can't say that I collect them. The closest organization I know of is the Mailer's Postmark Permit Club. http://www.mppclub.org/WhatIs.htm

If you are looking for a specific meter slogan cancel you can try:
1. Searching ebay
2. Visiting a local stamp club. You would be surprised what collectors have lying around.
3. Joining the Meter Stamp Society. http://www.meterstampsociety.com/index.html Although I am not a member (I probably should be ), networking with fellow collectors can help you find what you are looking for.
4. After 50 quality posts here, post your wants in the Buy/Sell/Trade area of this forum. I and I am sure others on this forum have duplicate meter slogan cancels.

Dan

I'd like to take a moment to say a kind word about the introductory materials at the Meter Stamp Society website:

http://www.meterstampsociety.com/terms.html ... HTML introduction

http://www.meterstampsociety.com/Li...orsGuide.pdf ... PDF introduction, 19p, c2011

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

If you're looking to find out which ones you have then look here (If they're US). There is also an international one I believe.



https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Inter...rica,_Part_1


https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Inter...rica,_Part_2

Auxilliary markings are markings made on an envelope to help it go through the mail or to denote that something is wrong, such as "Return to Writer", "Postage Due" and the like.

The following covers are from my own collection.

Here is an older example of an auxiliary marking indicating the letter was sent to the wrong city. In this case it was sent to Charlottesville, Virginia when it was supposed to go to Clarkesville, Virginia. This is indicated by the blue "Missent" marking.



Here is a modern auxiliary marking (and a rather odd one at that). The postal clerk grabbed a blank APC (Automated Postal Counter) label and stamped it with "Returned for Postage".



Transit markings are bar codes and other digitally printed information printed on the envelope.

Here is a cover with an interesting auxiliary marking and a tracking marking. The tracking marking is the black digital line that starts with "Youngstown OH . . ."

Smauggie,

Thank you for the clarification on the terms and although not a meter question, do people collect tracking numbers or is there a source of information about them on the internet? I've seen then and just assumed they might be called OCR cancellations as I noticed the letters OCR in them.

And I love your old cover! I can only dream about owning something that old! When I was allowed to look for stamps in my Grandma's attic as a child I think the oldest found was WWII area covers.

Dan,

Thanks again for sharing your knowledge. Following one of those links I also learned those covers I might see every so often having a weird cancellation on bulk rate stamps are actually mailer postmarks.

IkeyPikey & Stallzer,

Thanks for the links. There is so much good information available out there. I've learned more about postage meters than I ever thought one could. :)

Peter4552,

I don't think I can post a link or photo as I'm a newer member, maybe someone can post or link the image for me. It deals with Mathematics - more specifically a Mersenne Prime Number. Here is a quote from Chris Caldwell's page on Mersenne Prime Numbers:

--begin of quote

After the 23rd Mersenne prime was found at the University of Illinois, the mathematics department was so proud that the chair of their department, Dr. Bateman, had their postage meter changed to stamp "211213-1 is prime" on each envelope. This was used until the four color theorem was proved in 1976. (In 1985 Dr. Bateman printed several copies of the earlier imprint...)

-- end of quote

*** edit: I just noticed while pasting the description the special characters didn't copy over. Instead of '211213-1 is prime' the number is 2 raised to the power of 11213 and then minus one. Or 2^11213-1

Since the discovery of the number was in 1963 and if I read the paragraph correctly, it was in use by the University of Illinois starting sometime in 1963 through sometime in 1976. And then some in 1985.

If you do a google search for: mersenne prime meter
and then click images you will see it in three different colors (not sure why they aren't all in red ink)

I saw a photo of this meter slogan years ago while studying mathematics and just recalled it during the discussion about meters.

Thank you for inquiring

Regarding tracking information, little has been written, and what has been written can be hard to find.

Regarding dreams, they have a strange power to fulfill themselves at times.

dsmith426,

New members can post images here. Since I was googling, I captured the meter images. Edit: The images are poor because the original images were very small. Enlarging the images pixelated them.








The first image looks like a meter tape. Note that all of them have a .00 postage value and have different meter numbers. Since no postage is used, these are made to test the meter and sometimes are produced as tokens to distribute at an event etc. Have you seen one with actual postal use? If so, given the length of time you said it was in use it's likely that copies are still around.

It just takes patience and a lot of hunting to find one. That's part of the fun of collecting!

Dan

I was occasionally allowed to work the Pitney Bowes at work and I know that we sometimes labeled mail with zero postage. It had to be done for mail that had been metered the previous day and, for whatever reason, hadn't gotten to the P.O.

At least that was what I was told. (I was there just to help in a bind.)

I used to do some mailroom fill-in work, too, and you are quite correct that if the date on the meter didn't agree with the date it was placed in the mail, then a zero postage imprint had to be placed on the mailpiece(s) in question. At least that was the case for first class mail.