Classifying Official/Penalty Envelopes

i think instead of trying to find a postal manual for those envelopes for that era you might be looking for the "FEDERAL REGISTER" changes for those envelopes, the federal register being the laws,usc, us code, that were printed out in a register every month to reflect the oh so frequent changes to federal regulations. We (ALL) federal agency got the Federal Register as a monthly publication and as with all publications you got the "change pages" sat down with the manual and started pulling out the old pages and replaced them with the new pages, old pages round filed. Which means you may never find what you are looking for concerning these envelopes unless maybe the library of congress saves the publication by date. You could try library of congress under indicia envelope regulations who knows what you will find?

ugh revised from looking up stuff:
More info that I care to go into lol it just goes on and on

old regulations around 1990
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-CP...101spub9.htm

45. Stationery: Sizes, Quality, Weight, Printing Thereon, etc.--The
Committee directs attention to the Federal Property Management
Regulation which prescribes standards (sizes, grades and weights of
paper, and colors of ink and paper) to be used for printing stationery
and envelopes for official Government correspondence.

TITLE V: AUTHORIZED FEDERAL PLANTS

----------

56. Plants Authorized To Do Printing.--The plants hereinafter named
are authorized to produce printing, as defined in paragraph 1, in
accordance with the provisions of paragraphs 4, 5, and 6 of these
regulations. All departments shall submit reports and inventories
promptly, as required by paragraphs 48 to 55, inclusive, of title IV.

ALPHABETICAL PLANT LISTING BY DEPARTMENTS
(As of February 1990)----->"see link for list it is quite long"

New place to get government printing done
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-CP...101spub9.htm

More info wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franking

About the federal register and link to national archive
http://www.gpo.gov/help/index.html#...register.htm

Further reading - domestic mail manual-3digits-(NOTE)-this sure can mean a whole lot of three digit codes out there for each agency and it has to be a local post office for that agency- METER CODES FOR THE AGENCY AND THREE DIGIT CODES ARE TWO REQUIRED CODES EACH NEEDED TO BE PRESENT ON THE ENVELOPES)

http://pe.usps.gov/text/dmm/E060.htm

7.2License-

The agency must include its 3-digit agency code on each application for a meter license submitted under P030 and may assign one cost code to each license. A meter may be licensed for use at only one licensing post office. The agency must have a license and assigned meter(s) for each post office where it will deposit mail. The agency may have any number of meters under a single license. All transactions for each meter on a single license are charged to the agency code on the license application.

who knows how accurate this stuff is due to it changes daily and google and the different publications can be old but where I could it has dates since we are looking for an era not current regulations since they use stamps now days vs the indicia or should I say along with the indicia they use stamps now.

Penalty envelopes certainly are collected, but most interest is in the earlier envelopes rather than the last 20-30 years. There are some very good usages from the 1880-1950 time period.

I think this thread moved from penalty mail to official mail. I was hoping it would return to the penalty mail since I do collect it :)

I saw a few nice penalty covers this past weekend. One was from the turn of the 20th century with an 8 cent Pan-American solo use paying the registry fee, and another from the 1930's with a 20 cent special delivery solo use paying that fee. Also an example of the first penalty envelope from 1880.

stallzer: does your definition of "penalty mail" include penalty overprinted stationery?

LarryBruce,

Thanks for your research. It looks like we have covered similar ground.

Ah, the Federal Register. Part of one of my first job was to read the thing to see what the Feds were promulgating to see if it affected my organization. I could hardly stay awake!

The reason I suggested the postal regs was that although the Feds authorized penalty mail (who prints it, how much etc.) the USPS still sets the standards as to what is acceptable in the mail stream. From what I can tell, as long as there was an indicia, an account code and the phrase "Official Business, Penalty For Private Use $300" somewhere on the cover, it didn't make much difference. There seems to be a lot of variation in the collection I have.

Maybe eventually I will become an "expert" on these covers. *YAWN*

Dan

You're correct. There is almost zero interest in penalty covers during this era (Post 7/01/71 to the reissuance of official stamps in 1983). Virtually no one collects them and there is no literature that I could find about them. That's why I am interested in them as postal history.

Dan

If it's associated with the Government, then yes.

stallzer,

You might be interested in my penalty overprint flowchart website (http://www.noibn.com/Penover/Penalt...ationery.htm).

I apologize that the Intro section is (tbd), but you should be able to figure it out.

Although this is an old thread, I found a modern envelope I was curious about that seems to fit in here.

The USPS sent me some pictorial cancels I had ordered in a larger envelope as shown below. It was received around 2012 (I think) ... note the 9-digit ZIP Code the USPS used in the rubber stamp return address in the corner.

Anyway, I was surprised to see that it was a Penalty Mail envelope from the USPS when typically their indicia is a "Permit No. G-10 Postage & Fees Paid, USPS." I assume it was an old batch of envelopes that was used.

Nevertheless, does anyone know when the USPS discontinued the use of the Penalty Mail envelopes in deference to the Permit No. G-10?

I'm not sure that this directly answers your question but the February 1998 Post Office Handbook, DM-103, has this note:

"Note: As of January 1, 1995, the use of the standard penalty (eagle)
indicia was discontinued and may not be used. Agency mail bearing this
indicia must be treated in the same manner as matter not bearing
postage and returned to the sender."

Edit: The Handbook also specifies that the G-10 permit be used for mail so I would guess that the G-10 permit was instituted sometime between January, 1995 and the Handbook date of February 1998.

Dan

Interesting. So the USPS used the envelope (apparently illegally) about a dozen or so years after the fact. It's sort of a shame there's no dated postmark to show when it was used, but it nevertheless confirms what I thought ... they simply had some old envelopes laying around and someone unaware of the regulation changes decided to use them up.

Early G-10?
I have a G-10 permit used on a USPS Holiday flier which is dated by the recipient as being received 11/26/1994.

I thought I'd add this Penalty Mail (Dept. of Agriculture) envelope to this thread. It was mailed in 1993 but as you will note the Penalty Mail indicia was overprinted by use of an Official Mail Pitney Bowes Meter label.

My presumption is that it was either used during the time of changeover from penalty mail envelopes to penalty mail meters or it was a specific mailing that required some sort of tracking requiring the meter in order to identify its use and the specific amount of postage required for the item.

I've come across this penalty envelope not long ago. From a David Kelleher auction (#669 - 2015) it's supposedly an unadopted design. An essay I guess. That auction had an estimated date of c.1873. That sounds a bit too early. Anyone here have a possible estimated date? Is it an essay? I haven't been able to find an image of an used one.
Thanks!