Making It Rain With Stamps

Hi all – I just saw this video about stamp fulfillment automation, and was entranced by the case of stamps. Where can I get a case like this? Enough stamps to roll around in properly. Maybe a case of 1-centers?



Relatedly, I'm struggling to find coils. There's a word collision in that "coil" is used to describe single stamps that came from a coil, but I'm looking for an actual coil of say 100 stamps. Any idea how to search more effectively for them?

Also, in the old USPS Philatelic Catalogs, say from the 1980s, they always said that coils were "available in any quantity". So that outfit in Kansas City would spool out and cut a coil from a giant mother coil? The current catalogs no longer say that coils are available in any quantity. I think they're all 100 or something. Are there much larger coils out there from the days when they offered any quantity to customers? If you were buying a coil now from the 1980s, it could be any length?

Thanks.

If looking on ebay there is a separate place for plate number coils. A lot of folks post regular coils on there. By regular coils I mean older rolls with non-plate numbered stamps.


Peter

might try "roll"

Package labels for cases of stamps (whether sheets, booklets, or coils) are decidedly uncommon as they were typically discarded during the distribution process. Getting them would involve having a postal employee in a large post office save some for you, rather than buying cases yourself. Collectors who are lucky to have these would tend to hold onto them, so the modest supply is not readily available in the marketplace.

Although not from a coil, here is a label from a case of Scott 1398 (and a used block for visual reference of that issue), for 25 pads of 100 panes of 100. Quite uncommon, but not expensive if you can find them.


Here is what I would call a "tub cover" peeled from a small plastic tub of 25 booklets of Scott 2470-2474. Difficult to scan! A camera was needed to illustrate this one.


Back to coils, the standard retail sales practice was that window clerks would break a sheet, but coils and booklets were sold only as complete units. The exception being the clerks at philatelic sales windows, who could break coils to satisfy the collectors of joint lines or plate numbers. The Philatelic Fulfillment Center instructions detailed how to purchase coils to ensured getting at least 1 line pair or plate number as well as being a multiplier for the fractional denominations to bring them to exact full cents for accounting purposes.

I enjoy collecting coil leaders and trailers; easier to find than box labels.


Don

John, I'm talking about cases of stamps, not the labels on the cases. I'm referring to the contents of the cases – the stamps. It would be awesome to acquire a case full of stamps.

Heck, it would be cool just to be able to open some cases and help shelve inventory or something – so many stamps! :-) Do you know if the USPS offered tours pre-pandemic? Like of NDCs, SCFs, or the larger/"main" post offices in a city? Or it would be fun to do a Ride-Along in a stamp fulfillment truck doing its deliveries to each post office in a city, kind of like a police patrol Ride-Along, but with stamps. I never notice USPS delivery vehicles other than the primitive Grumman LLV letter carrier vehicles, and maybe big 18-wheelers on highways (but I'm not sure about that – it might be an implanted memory). There must be some kind of vehicle for delivering stamp stock and other supplies to post offices in a city or region, and I assume they can't be the little Grumman LLVs since they'd need to do long highway stretches and the LLVs are too slow and small for that role. I wonder what vehicles they use for that. In the past I think post offices in Southern Arizona, like Tucson and rural towns in a 100 mile radius or so, got their stamps orders from the Phoenix Main PO, maybe via the Tucson Main PO first. The West is very spread out, and they'd need proper highway cargo vehicles like UPS uses.

If you want a full case, then buy it. Otherwise my comments are still valid that any packaging for large quantities is uncommon in collector hands

While behind-the-scenes post office tours happen (and I have been on several), the public is always kept at a distance from live mail and accountable paper. Any non-authorized passengers in a postal vehicle would never happen. As far as I know, stamp stock is still sent out internally via registered mail and requires no special carriers or vehicles.

Way back when I was starting my Transportation Coil specialized collection it was almost impossible to buy full rolls of these. An exception were the tagged coils - I could get them at the main office in Atlanta. For the precanceled rolls I was send to the Regional Distribution Center which at that time was in Hapeville GA, where the main Atlanta airport is located.
I do know of several collectors who did buy cases, mainly to "plate" the stamps. Personally I could never afford such an outlay!
Another question letterpress is asking is how large the rolls are. Usually all were available in coils of 100 and 3000, but some were as large as 10.000 stamps.
Some of the information regarding the length of the coils can be found on the PNC3 website, www.pnc3.org .


Peter

Thanks John and Peter. So Peter, when you say that "all were available in coils of 100 and 3,000" do you mean all stamps period, or Transportation specifically?

Basically I am referring to regular denomination Transportation Coils. But most denominations were also available in larger rolls, like 300, 500, 3000 and even 10.000 coils. That is why I gave you the link to PNC3 - their website gives all of the possible lengths of rolls. A good rule to go by is if it was a First Class coil it would be available in a 100 piece roll. If the Disabled Veterans of America ordered lets say 5 cent coilstamps they came in a 10.000 piece roll. In other words there is no general length of roll common to all coilstamps


Peter

Thanks Peter. I found some Excel spreadsheets at that PNC3 website that show some coil lengths. That website is brutal though – I wonder if it's no longer maintained. It's littered with broken cent symbol display bugs because they don't have the right character encoding set in their HTML head. All the cent symbols display as #65533; instead of ¢. Since it's a stamp site, the cent symbol is probably the single most important symbol or character of all...

By the way, how big is a coil? I mean diameter or width. Have you ever seen a 3,000 stamp coil?

No, sorry. The largest I think I ever bought was a 500 coil roll.


Peter

It will vary quite a bit for the same length coil - depending on water-activated or self-adhesive, the thicknesses of the layers, etc. The one large coil label I have handy is this 3,000 Bobcat coil paperboard disc, for the self-adhesive on liner version. Its diameter is 5-3/4", and may have had a cellophane wrapper wider than that to go around the actual roll of stamps. I don't know.



This one was bought by a fellow collector who brought it to club meetings for many months before he sold off the bulk of it.

And here is the label for 10,000 of Scott 3762 or 3763, a water-activated stamp. Its diameter is 7-1/8". Not much more, but no backing paper! (But again, the actual roll diameter may have been larger and a cellophane wrapper absent.)


And here they are together with a dollar bill (6-1/8") for comparison.

Peter - I don't think there were ever rolls of 300.

letterpress - First class (first ounce) rate coils were usually available in rolls of 100 and at least 1 large size (there have been a few designs only available in a large size, I do not recall if the opposite was ever true). I think 2nd ounce and postcard rates coil were also available in rolls of 100 (and 2nd ounce also in larger rolls). But the bulk rate, non-profit, presorted etc only in larger rolls.

I have handled (but not bought rolls of 3000), but it was long enough ago I couldn't tell you have big it was. Somewhere I have a cardboard cover for one of the big rolls - I think for a roll of 10,000 and memory says it might be about 10 inches in diameter.

edited to say - I didn't see JB's reply, so use his info on size.

EOW, in the current USPS Philatelic Catalog, I see 3,000 and 10,000 stamp coils for the Star Ribbon Forever stamps, and the 1, 2, 3, 5, and 10 cent fruit stamps. That Additional Ounce Forever deal they have now, with the Uncle Sam's Hat, only goes up to 100 quantity for some reason. I noticed that the commercial stamp affixer machines only work with coils of 3,000 and 10,000, so I guess they're limited in what postage combinations they can apply: https://postmatic.net/item/stamp-affixer/ I'd love to have one of those things.

John, those labels are amazing. I would love to have such an overabundance of some stamps. So does this mean that small rural post offices still had to order minimums of 3,000 or 10,000 stamp coils? They must have lasted a long time in those smaller stations.

Commercial users of 3,000 and 10,000 rolls would naturally know to get their large rolls from large sectional centers where they would also be "entering" (i.e. mailing) their large presorted mailings. (You have to mail it where you have your permits.)

Smaller post offices would never have any of these large rolls in stock, unless by special order for a specific customer - in fact I'd bet that small rural offices never stocked any of the fractional transportation coils at all.