Stamps That Should Have Been Canceled

Give each person wandering into the stamp show an unsealed letter addressed to Postmaster General Megan J. Brennan and franked with 5-cent and 6-cent commemoratives. Ask them to bring it home and mail it.

The text: If any of the stamps on this letter didn't get canceled, it means your employees are not doing their jobs. Stamp collectors want cancels and you want to get paid, so tell postal workers to cancel all stamps.

If you only use stamps that aren't tagged then the machines won't "see" the stamps. Not all of the older 5 and 6 cent commemorative stamps are tagged. This is one reason why they are not canceled.

Yeah, so when I get mail with uncancelled stamps, I go up to the counter and ask the clerk to cancel them for me. Now they are so use to seeing me approach, they just hand me the hand cancel.

Battlestamps: What did they do before stamps were tagged? That's what they need to do now.

They spent a fortune 'facing' (turning & flipping) the letters by hand.

The tagging enabled analog electronics to find the stamp.

Google "facer-canceler machines".




Nope.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

One can always get a mailer's permit and cancel their own mail. That's a feasible solution, but don't expect postal workers to hand cancel every piece of mail with a stamp. They are not in the business to please stamp collectors.

I have never had a clerk refuse to cancel my mailings - of which there have been many thousands. And often they offer me the cancelling device. But I'm in Canada, and Canada Post likes philatelists.

The clerks at the post office I use are also very nice about hand canceling envelopes for me, including the ones I bring in that were delivered to my mailbox with uncanceled stamps.

Since I know which envelopes were not mailed at that post office, I try to get them canceled so that only the edge of the cancel is on the stamps. That way when I soak (or cut off) the stamps, they will show a cancel, but not an incorrect town and zip code.