quote:

Originally posted by Rightwire:
Did anyone else notice the lack of cancellation marks on those rows of stamps on all of the packages apparently delivered by USPS?

Most of the packages were never delivered as they were ID'd at the USPS processing facility. They guy sent them all via the same location.

quote:

Originally posted by Rightwire:
Did anyone else notice the lack of cancellation marks on those rows of stamps on all of the packages apparently delivered by USPS?

Nothing necessarily uncharacteristic there. I have been collecting the stamps off of all my mail in the last decade or so, and for some reason about half of my stamped mail doesn't get cancellations.

I don't know why - seems stupid, to me. Some of the uncancelled stamps are from local sources but most are from out of state. Some of the unstamped mail has other USPS stuff - zip+4 sticker on the bottom, etc. Why they would process mail and NOT cancel it seems odd. I went to the post office to ask whether they had gone to some sort of UV-only cancellation in some cases and they said no.

Anyway, just pointing out that the lack of cancellation in this case may not be related to anything forensically relevant.

I’ve seen many pieces of mail with uncanceled stamps these days, and even with the cost of postage, who’s going to bother trying to reuse a stamp? The self-adhesive types are virtually impossible to remove without destroying them even if the effort was worth it; steaming doesn’t work any more. And then there’s the question of who mails anything these days? Remember the discussion here about people who don’t even want a mail box? (I mail a few things with stamps, but then I’m old.)

Furthermore, the vast majority of mail pieces I receive have some sort of “Postage Paid by XYZ” notice instead of a stamp that someone stuck on it. Those pieces don’t have a cancellation over the notice, so they must be processed differently than the stamped letters, and I imagine some of the latter slip though.

And finally, something like a bulky package with stamps would have to be canceled by hand (there used to be a requirement to mark thick envelopes “non-machineable” for that reason), and who’s going to go to that trouble?

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
The self-adhesive types are virtually impossible to remove without destroying them even if the effort was worth it; steaming doesn’t work any more.

Just a side note here: we stamp collectors know how to do this. "Removing Self-Adhesive Stamps From Paper" My approach is the Pure Citrus air freshener spray which the local Home Depot stocks.

It takes a bit of extra work after spraying if you want to get all the adhesive off the back of the stamp so you can store them without them sticking to one another....but if someone wanted to reuse them, they could skip that step and wind up with mint-looking, sticky-enough-to-use uncancelled stamps.