I had always thought mail was postmarked where it was sent, but it has come to my attention that the mail from my town is postmarked at a post office 5 hours away in another state. Even a letter that was sent to me from 4 streets away from my house had this other city’s cancellation 
Now I’m wondering if other people have their mail postmarked locally or does it go to a big central post office somewhere else? What’s your experience?
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it might depend on where the local distribution center is in relation to where you live? i think the locations may be based on reasons like population concentration, daily average volume of mail, proximity to other hubs or other geographic or staffing reasons if it is in your state or not.
my distribution center is in my state (and directly in my city) probably because of the high population density and mail volume, so mail from my area collected and cancelled there. mail from other surrounding towns/cities are collected and sent to my city’s center to be cancelled and sent to the “regional” facility, then eventually on to the destination’s “regional” facility. for other areas of the country it may be different for other reasons. someone who works for usps want to confirm/deny this? 
this video is linked often but i love this video because i think it shows an informative view on what happens when we drop our postcards at the post office or in a mailbox!
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It’s pretty common in many postal services these days, that mail gets sent to distribution centres away from the sender’s town/city.
All part of modernizing & cost efficiency they tell us!
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Yeah, it’s always been the case for me that the postmark came from the ‘hub’ or just what I assumed was the largest postal center in the area. Of course, currently I live in Los Angeles so it happens to be the same city, but that hasn’t always been the case when I’ve lived elsewhere.
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I’m pretty sure it goes to a hub. All of my mail gets postmarked from Oakland even though I live in a different county.
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if your local post office is not a busy one, you can always walk in and ask them to hand cancel your cards. it will make them more interesting for sure for most recipients.
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Most Australian post offices will apply a hand cancel to your mail on request. If you put your mail in a street mail box it will be postmarked with a machine cancel at a letter centre, or no postmark will be applied at all, or the stamps are frequently defaced with a biro or marker pen.
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For many, many years now the USPS has moved to fully automating its mail processing; it is about 99% of processed mail. If I send a stamped and written card to a member, I really don’t care where it is postmarked. Not infrequently, I have seen requests in the Forum wanting certain states, state maps, etc. When I replied that I could fulfill the requests, I’ve been told that the card(s) must be from the state of origin. Huh??
Only my viewpoint, but such a restrictive qualifier tells me you are interested in the postmark and not necessarily the subject on the front side of the card. Such a shame, I have a huge stock of US cards available.
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Apparently even if you send it from state of origin, it might still be postmarked in a completely different state 
I haven’t tried to fulfill such a request myself, but I do get questions about whether I’m from the city where the postmark is from and I explain not really!
It goes to the distribution center, which may vary in how far it is from you. My hometown actually seems to be split between two distribution hubs, which is kind of interesting.
If you really want a local postmark, you will want to hand your mail in over the counter and ask for a “hand cancel.” For some reason this may not always be offered. (Or, you might end up with a marker/pen cancel that shows no location at all!)
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@silentmagician I have the same thing going on for me. I live roughly 50 miles east of St. Louis, MO and all my mail is postmarked with St. Louis on it, lol. If I send a card to someone here in IL, it’ll go to the distribution center in MO, then back to IL to the recipient.
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I live in one town and work in another; mail from each goes to a different processing center but I prefer the postoffice in my work town. They always have a good stamp selection and nicer employees!
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Of course this all makes sense, I somehow just didn’t think about postmarks much. When I was a kid our post office had different slots for local and other mail, but that is long gone so obviously it all gets sent to the same place now. This was a bit of a scandal because we got a gigantic new post office (in the '90s) to deal with the increasing amount of mail… and then they didn’t use all that space after all when they started sending mail elsewhere. I had forgotten about that 
Now I’ve moved and apparently the mail just travels farther here.
I do enjoy National Park postmarks though, I hope they keep offering those.
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I had no idea! I’m going to totally try this out next time! Hopefully they still have them.
Concerning the discussion about postmarks coming from far away from the senders origin - I find it curious that Los Angeles - as huge as it is on the city and county scale, has their automatic postmarks come from the Santa Clarita distribution center (a city that is in the northern part of LA County, about half hour north of downtown LA). So if any of you are curious as to why LA city postcards have a postmark that doesn’t have “Los Angeles” part of it, that is why. @pcronn
I know some US postcrossers will say that I could get it hand cancelled, but unfortunately I don’t like to stand in line to do so (lines tend to be long and slow in the LA post offices I frequent). 
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I’ve definitely gotten local mail with a Los Angeles postmark, so I don’t think it all goes through Santa Clarita?
Maybe it’s local mail only? You’re totally right though, I do have mail with LA Postmarks.
Or maybe I’m going crazy and not remembering things well 
LA is weird, it could be all of the above! Haha
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LA is definitely weird - and I love that 
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It might be a big ask - but do you, Fellow Postcrossers, recall getting a postcard from Los Angeles (city) postmarked Santa Clarita or Los Angeles ?
I live in Santa Clarita so anything I send from home is going to have the Santa Clarita postmark.
I’m currently on vacation and dropped cards for a RR in a little town yesterday as their post office had a big sign about their special cancellation. Today I’ll be sendin several from Grand Canyon NP for the postmark. I hope all the RR participants enjoy the special postmarks!
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