How Did This Slip By The Cancel Machine...?

Very strange that this went through the Postal System without going through the cancellation machine.

Robert

Opinion.
Common, I regularly get uncancelled mail from Canada and the US.

Here is yesterday's philatelic mail. Both are #10 envelopes.

In the industrialized nations, they don't seem to care too much about cancelling stamps these days
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Happens regularly, particularly from Canada

That is true guys,

Robert

They are used. And this has been talked about here for a long time.

Peter

While they are used, it still surprises me that with the best and fastest sorting machines that detect the stamp tagging to apply cancellations, they don't. And yet they can read the postal code and often print an individual identification string on the back and in flourescent ink, and sort it to the proper route. Go figure.

I have brought envelopes back to my small post office for a cancel, I guess these are a type of CTO at this point!

OzwaldO, Nothing wrong with that, especially if you just need a nicely cancelled used copy of recent stamps for the collection.

Mike

I do like to have an authentic representation of used stamps and even have non canceled, even pen cancels and markers! The non canceled are dull looking (in a used collection) but real! It seems so many stamps escape the canceler these days, I'm tempted to cancel or mark them myself but can never bring myself to do it, may-be I could become an agent of the post and make my own fancy cancels, ha-ha!

It's annoying that most postal administrations don't bother to cancel outgoing mail. Whenever I send something to another collector I have to go to a post office so they can cancel the stamps with a handstamp, because if I just post them in a postbox they tend to arrive uncancelled.

On the other hand, MaltaPost cancel 99% of local mail (for obvious reasons, since it would be easy to reuse those stamps).

It is my understanding (right or wrong) that the cancelling machines are now triggered by the optical recognition of a stamp design. I heard somewhere that Canada Post did not load all stamp designs into the OCR device so stamps more than five years old don't get cancelled. Whether that is true or not I don't know for sure (but it's a good story and I will stick with it until I hear otherwise).

GJP

GPortch, If I follow your understanding, then if I want to use older stamps and have a cancellation, I should also put 1 recent stamp on the envelope..

gportch...You must be reading my mind..Last night I was thinking why cant they just read stamps, put a value to it and kick out any covers for not sufficient value...I hope Post Canada realizes that they will have to incorporate stamps right back to Scott 1...That would e a lot of input and reading, but I guess it could be done.

Robert

so, what's the point in applying tag bars then?

This seems far-fetched. Can someone provide actual proof from an official source so this doesn't get spread around as "truth" if it is merely a made-up story. I'll happily apologize if I am proven incorrect, but this sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory.