Savings stamps as postage: permitted or not?

U.S. Stamp Notes by John M. Hotchner

The United States Postal Service, over its history, has done many things well, other things not so well. One area of consistent failure has been stopping the use of stamp substitutes — stamps not meant to pay for postage.

A good example of this is the use of U.S. Treasury Department savings and war savings stamps on envelopes entered in the mailstream during a period from the 1940s to more recent times.

Over the years, I’ve accumulated just over 50 examples of this sort of usage, used from 1941 to 2012. Some examples are solo uses of savings stamps attempting to pay the entire required postal rate. Others are combinations with actual postage stamps that in total would pay the applicable rate if the savings stamps were valid for postage, which they are not.

Despite their appearance, savings stamps are invalid for postage, according to Postal Service regulations regarding the payment of postal fees. Money raised from the sale of savings stamps was to be turned over to the Treasury Department with the revenue collected meant for the purchase of U.S. savings bonds.

Thus, the use of these stamps on mail that slipped through the mailstream, without being charged the proper postage due fees, represents lost revenue for the USPS. One of my favorite covers showing this misuse is pictured in Figure 1.

The 1942 $1 war savings stamp (Scott WS10) on this 1954 cover was used in place of a 1¢ stamp to make up the 3¢ first-class letter rate. It is just one of 46 savings stamp covers I have that went through the mailstream free of any postage due fees. This did not happen out of inadvertence.

Among my covers I’ve collected in this regard are registered, insured, special delivery and airmail examples. Postal clerks handled these and apparently verified that the postage was correct before sending them on their way.

Maybe they didn’t know these savings stamps were not valid for postage. I can accept that for modern uses, but not for those examples from the 1940s.

Maybe the clerks felt that the collection of postage due fees was not worth the effort? Maybe for a penny, but a lot of these examples were 10¢ or more in postage, making the total loss significant for the Postal Service.

It is startling to me that of the 52 covers in my collection, only six were correctly identified as postage due mail. A few of these properly processed examples are described below.

My earliest postage due cover is ...

To read the rest of this column, subscribe to Linn's Stamp News.

Connect with Linn’s Stamp News: 

    Sign up for our newsletter