Catching a cancel in the act

Philatelic Foreword by Jay Bigalke

There’s something uniquely thrilling about capturing a moment of the postal process in action, especially when it involves that most philatelic of topics: the cancellation of a stamp.

Recently, one of my own pieces of mail gave me a front-row seat to a philatelic mystery. Thanks to the United States Postal Service’s Informed Delivery service, I received a grayscale scan of an incoming postcard before it arrived in my post office box. The scan showed the stamp clearly, but conspicuously uncanceled.

When I opened my box the next morning the card was there, but the stamp now bore a mute cancel — a barred postmark with no town name or date applied neatly in black ink. It wasn’t a scribble or marker lines from an irritated carrier. This was a barred cancel from a legitimate postmarking device, likely struck by a clerk at my local post office.

So what happened in between?

Most collectors know that not every stamp is properly canceled at the first handling point. Automated facer-canceler machines sometimes miss pieces, especially postcards, dark envelopes or mail with unusual stamp placement. Normally, an uncanceled stamp slips through to delivery and risks being removed or reused. But some clerks and carriers are trained, or simply take pride, in catching these missed items and give the stamp a proper mute cancel to prevent reuse.

In this case, the Informed Delivery image I received proved invaluable. The image clearly showed the postcard before the marking existed. The final version of the mail item in my post office box told the rest of the story: the cancel was added after the automated imaging, somewhere in the local delivery process.

Here’s how to spot and document a late-stage cancel:

Carefully view your Informed Delivery scans. The images are taken when mail is first automatically sorted. If the stamp appears untouched in the image, make note of it.

Compare that with what arrives in your mailbox. Any added cancel, hand-drawn markings or scribble tells you that a postal employee stepped in to complete the process.

Study the cancel style. A mute cancel, circular with bars or straight lines but no wording, often indicates processing by a counter clerk or the use of a backroom device.

If you see that a pen or Sharpie has been used to cancel the stamp, ask that a proper canceling device be used for your future mail.

Approach the clerk or carrier and explain that you collect postal markings and would prefer a proper handstamp. Ask politely if they would stop defacing the stamps on your mail in this way and instead use an approved postal canceling device. Have the piece handy and be courteous. Many postal employees are happy to help when asked respectfully.

It’s a reminder that for all the automation and scanning in today’s postal world, real people are still behind the scenes ensuring stamps are used and processed correctly. Sometimes, if you pay close attention, you can actually document how your local post office diligently protects postal revenue from stamp reuse.

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