Favor Cancel From Warm Springs, Georgia On Custom Cover Possible?

Good evening all. My brother is making trip to Warm Springs this weekend and I had an idea to send with him a couple of self made covers with FDR cachets to be hand canceled there at local post office. Has anybody here done anything like that with success?

Some clerks will allow hand back cancels, some will not.

Greenskull, why not just call the post office in Warm Springs to make sure?


Peter

Or, just address them back to yourself? If you ask most clerks nicely they will give them a hand cancel rather than sending them to the processing center.

To expand on Peter's post ... you will want to contact them to confirm their hours of operation, which are often short at smaller offices. This will also give you the opportunity to make small-talk so they are expecting your brother's visit.

And obviously, asking for a hand-back service should not be done when they are busy. Wait for any other customers to be serviced and when the clerk has a quiet moment.
Don

Many thanks for all the great advice. I will be calling them to see if hand back cancels are possible. If they have to be sent through mail delivery is okay if I can at least get a hand stamped cancels.
The covers I'm making are very simple with inkjet printed cachets.... didn't think of getting some old FDR stamps to affix on 'em. I may have to pilfer some from my collection.
I will post back with pictures, if successful.

Just got ;em! My brother was able to get a hand back cancel. I went ahead and addressed them just in case. The clerk said they used to get a lot of like requests, but not anymore.
Made up a few special covers for Memphis, but there wasn't time that day to get a hand cancel, so he just dropped in box when visiting that area..... I told him a meter cancel would be better than nothing.
Overall, I think it was a successful mission.
Thank you for looking!

I've asked for hand cancels in the past (not even for me but mail that I was sending that I wanted to make sure got a nice CDS) and my clerk refused, said there was new policy that prevented them from doing it. I know that's BS but I'm just saying never assume postal clerks know or care about what they're doing, maybe you'll get the one petty clerk who thinks he knows something

There are some local smaller post offices I go to that accept my requests to have the covers "hand canceled". Only problem has been that some have applied the canceller to the envelope next to the stamp without touching the stamp... Never assume! I have had to request/instruct them to actually TIE the stamp to the envelope, to actually CANCEL the STAMP too.

"I've asked for hand cancels in the past (not even for me but mail that I was sending that I wanted to make sure got a nice CDS) "

The problem with that is they often put it with the rest of the uncancelled mail, so it ends up getting a machine cancel too.