Why Did This Half-Cent Postage Due Cover Go So High?

John, that's interesting! Never heard of that practice of making the postage due calculations more efficient, but it makes sense as long as several letters were mailed by the same sender.
This is getting into an educational thread on postal history

Blaamand, that is one reason that, at least for U.S. stamps, you frequently see postal receipts with large numbers of high denomination postage due stamps such as this one:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/96-76-FEB-...AOSwEppUOYCB

Rather than pay for each mailed piece individually, the recipient would get a bill with each batch of deliveries.

Stamp Smarter USPO Forms Community Project has over 1550 PO Forms for anyone who would like to better understand how US mail moved through the system over the decades. For this thread, go to this link http://www.stampsmarter.com/feature..._ViewDB.html

Click on 'Search by Name' and enter 'due' to see some of the batch Postage Due forms used.
Don

revenuecollector's link illustrates a "Postage Due Bill" form. Here is a whole sheet of J78 on one such "follow sheet" page (imagine what the entire bill was!) canceled at the Chicago "Parcel Post Delivery" window in 1937.


Serving much the same aggregated $ collection purpose, here is a "top of the stack" piece nicely showing the math to get to the total - and showing why high-value postage due stamps are useful for large accounting needs. Some of the other pieces in the bundle might show due markings, but no stamps would be applied individually.

Postage Due Bill
(Not my image)

I can't comment on the value of the cover but I do know who the second place bidder is and he is not afraid to bid up an item beyond the comfort level of most people. In fact, I don't think he is very accustomed to losing.

Nice Don!

Plenty learned about US postage due in this thread.

To go back to an earlier tangent - half cent change.

Here is a postcard mailed during the April 15, 1925-June 30, 1928 period when private cards were 0.02 each. The penny paid by the recipient covered the due amount and they got an uncanceled half-cent Hale as change - just barely affixed by a corner, but they never chose to remove it and use it.

Very nice solo J68 usage.

Wow, some amazing samples of postage due usages. From single 1/2 cent to 100-sheet of $5's. Did you do the maths? The ratio between the $500 postage due tax and the 1/2c is 100.000:1. Or said in another way, it would have required 100.000 J68's! Imagine that awesome cover....

Thanks to everybody contributing, I learned a lot.

I think that postagedueguy was trolling us, both in this and the other postage due cover thread. When asked to provide justification/evidence for his assessments other than "trust me", he just disappeared.