Your Thoughts On Belgium "Pre-Cancels" Please..............

In sorting out the extra (no space in Scotts pages)stamps, I find that I've got an awful lot of Belgium pre-cancel stamps from the 20s thru 50s.

Are these considered BOB, or regular postage with the collectors?

I don't have the recently ordered Steiner CD, so I wonder if it will include pages for them.

And to be very honest, I am not sure I understand how they were used.

Thank you!

I consider them B.o.b.
Steiner does accommodate.

Their use, as in any other country, simplified matters for the postal authorities, as no cancellation, by hand or machine, was required. Where the pre-cancellation altered the value of a stamp, the stamp is separately included in the main body of the catalogue. Stamps with full gum are collected as "mint", thise without, or with a further, standard cancellation, as "used".

Thank you Rod222 for showing the Steiner page. That is really good!

GeoffHa, I guess I'm still confused by the pre-cancel process. Did an individual or business buy one, put it on a letter, and drop it in the mail? So then it quickly goes thru the PO system and eventually gets to the receiver. And, as the stamp no longer had adhesive on it, the receiver could not reuse it. BUT, why couldn't the receiver simply apply a bit of glue to it?

Obviously I'm missing something here...............

Not necessarily. Perhaps US collectors could explain how the Post Office guarded against re-use there!

www.precancels.com can provide a wealth of information. In the US (and I assume Belgium too) precancel users need to get a (free) permit so the PO knows a little about the user and keep the riff-raff out.
The Steiner pages only list a small percentage of Belgium precancels but they are nice. There are about 20,000 different Belgium (estimated 2 million different US).

Wow, I had no idea there were so many precancels out there!

I checked out the site (precancels.com) and it is obvious this can be a field of collecting all by itself. Amazing!

Thank you all for the information and insight.

Mobilman44

In the US, businesses can pay a fee for a permit that in turn allows them to use precancels at reduced rate.

I have a personal permit which allows me to use pre-cancelled stamps, but I get no discount from the standard rates (i.e., if I am mailing a 1 oz letter with precancels, I have to use $0.49 in postage. My permit also allows me to cancel/postmark my own mail.

In neither case (business nor personal) can you simply "...drop it in the mail". Rather, you have to take your mail down to a designated post office that processes pre-cancelled mail. In my case that is the Albuquerque Business Mail Entry Unit (which is adjacent to the Main Post Office in ABQ). This is how the PO guards against reuse. If you post a letter with precancelled stamps in the regular mail stream, it will/should be rejected for not having proper postage.

Here is a copy of the letter that I got from the PO after completing the process.

The Post Office knows all the tricks that can be pulled with pre-cancel mail . First it is for business mail . Second no business uses them on only one piece of mail at the receiving office . 95% is going out of town so they watch the markings on the stamp .
My local post office lets me use older pre-cancel stamps because I use four or five attached together on each piece of mail and I bring in 5 or 8 envelopes together so that's some 25 or more precancel stamps . They know me and they use common sense when looking at all the older stamps that I put on the mail.

Technically, I do not think you can use precancels without a permit. But it is nice that the postal clerks you deal with give you a pass.