This general type of marking is (in my experience) more common on damaged mail where the stamp has been lost in high-speed machinery, but still shows enough evidence - like a small remnant or some gum - to give the benefit of doubt to the mailer. It also makes sense in cases like the Halloween stamp as a marking when a clerk is not familiar with the countless thousands of valid postage stamps which could show up on mail. Collectible, although of modest monetary value.
During the 1990s I was on an advisory committee for the Louisville: St Matthews, KY Branch which is 40206 & 40207. I was a principal in a local stamp store, Collector's Stamps Ltd as well. The branch had a Philatelic Window, which for a couple of years had the highest sales of any Philatelic Unit outside of Kansas City. Mainly this was due to Artmaster buying their FDC stamp needs there, but they had other large sales as well. They had an eager clerk, and I got the branch to get her a subscription to Linns and helped her master the idiosyncracies of US new issues and their collectors. One day I was sending out a shipment of about 12 Scott Blues in several cartons partially franked with the 1989 World Expo sheets and the 1997 Mars Pathfinder sheet. The counter clerk had never seen either before and was particularly skeptical of the imperf World Expo Sheets thinking they were cut out from a magazine. She peeled back one of the sheets to see if their was printing on the back. She also called the philatelic clerk out of her shoppe across the lobby to review them. The philatelic clerk took one look at me and said whatever he uses is always ok. I actually got the counter clerk and supervisor to cancel the sheets with both the branch cds and the straight line " postage verified " auxiliary hand stamp. I hope my customer saved them....
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