US Postage Due Bills Or "Top Of Stack" Sheets: Types Of Stamps?

Amazing stuff !! So cool to see odd usages outside the box! Parcelpostguy you have a great knack for finding odd things.

mml1942:

Yes, in the 1990s (for a year or two, I forget the years), Linn's or Amos Press was paying its postage due bill with mint U.S. commemorative stamps – full sheets.

It went like this:

Commemorative stamps were purchased with company money, probably at the time the due postage was about to be paid at the Sidney, Ohio, post office. Then those stamps were given back to the clerk as payment for the postage due. The clerk then canceled or postmarked the full panes (usually 20 stamps) multiple times, and returned them to the employee payer as a receipt for payment, and thus keeping the clerk's cash drawer (computer) and stamps drawer in balance.

The panes became a special type of canceled-to-order item. There had to be many hundreds of such panes created for multiple postage due bills over many weeks.

The canceled panes might have been picked up later because it would have taken the clerk a while to cancel them all. I did not witness any of this. The post office might have required the Amos Press employee to do the canceling.

Those panes, with full gum, then were sent as a gifts or thank yous to customers who resubscribed to some specific renewal offer of Linn's.

Those were the days.

I must disagree with that characterization.

The stamps were properly used for an accepted postal function, that of collecting postage due. With bulk postage due, the stamps need not be affixed to anything, just cancelled. A less common usage but nothing particularly philatelic about it unlike CTOs to sell stamps with no value nor potential of use. They are also cleaner than the hand back cancellation on "postal items" which had no intention to be transit within the mail stream.

Meh, there is really nothing to back-up the "accepted postal function" other than a story.




That is the story for my Russian CTO's and I am sticking to it.

They also come with a lawful US postal cancellation indicating use and collection of postage and fees. That is far more than "a story" rather it is solid verification here in the US.

So when I go to my local PO and my Postmistress cancels whatever I put in front of her and leave with it what is the "accepted postal function"? Does paying money, by default mean a postal service was actually rendered?

How about some modern "improper usages" such as postally canceled duck stamps that I then apply to some mail.

Tell you local female postmaster she is a "postmistress" and see what happens.
She might cancel your male.
They are a "postmaster".

I prefer "postinatrix", but hey, tomato... tomatoe...

That is what she WANTS to be called. This is in rural Massachusetts where the Postmistress wears a tee-shirt and sweatpants to go with her tattoo's and nose ring and she gets upset when you show up at the service window while she is playing solitaire on the computer.

This is not your Father's Post Office nor what you might expect in the "big city".

I laugh when the discussion turns to "rules and regulations" sometimes. Gone are the days of entrusting bags of gold and your child to the Post office.

That is surprising as most women would be deeply insulted, as no doubt all her official paperwork uses the term postmaster.
No idea what you are talking about "bags of gold..."

Lawfully sold over the counter and then later cancelled is the proper collection of postal revenue, is no different than affixing two three cent stamps to pay a four cent airmail postcard rate where the sender had no one cent stamps choosing rather a convenience overpayment for which the two cents in extra postage did not purchase any postal function. In both cases the stamps paid for the postal employee to do the service (work) of canceling postage stamps.

Even precancel stamps were sold at full face value by the USPS, restricted to the use by a permit holder or other approved entity. To anyone else, they are used stamps which cannot be reused even if no service was rendered.

Here there is rain predicted tomorrow but today is a bright sunny day which will be a bit warmed than normal for this time of year. I wish to enjoy the sun today, but rogdcam,you enjoy your rabbit hole. If you wish to expand your subject matter, please start a new thread and stop trying to derail this one.

As to women as Postmasters, there are many and each is or was a POSTMASTER by proper title. Likewise the person bringing you your mail, be they man or woman, they are both a "LETTER CARRIER" by proper title.

https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/p...tmasters.pdf
https://www.google.com/search?q=fem...&sclient=img

Edit for:

Above image from: https://postalmuseum.si.edu/women%E...stal-records

Additional edit because this is a thread on bulk postage due bills and to add a missing"r" above--.

Front and back plus note the booklet is stapled on--



Front--


Front--


Front--


Front and back--



Front and back--



Front only and a partial bill. Note the math with includes 128 x .32 = $40.96 Those 128 .32 stamps, likely affixed to following pages (as such pages were called on earlier issued form) were not included in the listing. Likely separated and now lost as a complete bulk transaction--


Having a party on the front, not all the same transaction, but included to show lower denomination usage.


The above postage due bills are all from the same company, Keen as with the RW64 example I showed earlier, except one of the four bills picture has a different firm name on one.

So, back to the subject. Dan started the topic of payment by stamps for bills due and shows some amazing examples (IMO) of such. Somehow, we ended up with cancelled stamps that are attached to nothing. The Postmistress/Postmaster business was way off topic and for that I humbly apologize to Dan. I do contend that the subject of cancelled stamps which are not attached to anything is what does not fit this topic of "U.S. Postage Due Bills or Top of Stack Sheets: Type of Stamps". That topic of cancelled stamps attached to nothing should have its own thread and I have many examples I am willing to share.