Some postcards do not have cancellations on them.
Why?
You can see my reply a few posts above. It is how it happens. However, why it happens? Because the management couldn’t care less about the letter mail.
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Missing postmarks is wrong but I’m not disappointed at all. From my 44 received cards I found 4 without cancellation postmarks. Though it’s too little to think about statistics. Now I’m getting interested in postmarks.
@CorvusCorax, I got 4 of 5 Finnish postcards (my most beloved country 
) postmarked, seems I’m lucky 
The postmark resembles our machine cancellation with waves.
I’ve never seen pen cancellation and would be interested to receive it, I find it something old-fashioned 
Though maybe I’ll change my mind when I get bored of it.
@ChristianJ, I fear I might achieve “Offtopic Mastery” badge, so I’m just answering and won’t continue 
postbot taught me to hide details
I don’t know much about how Russian Post works (now I’d like to learn more). As I get it, in St. Petersburg mail from street mailboxes is collected every night and headed directly to the automated sorting center. At local offices operators cancel stamps manually, and then they forward mail also to the automated sorting center, that’s why it can be slower. By the way, in our largest museum the Hermitage there is a special post office with its own museum-shaped postmark. I sent some postcards from there, the postmark was dated few days after I dropped postcards into mailbox. (However, I would send postcards from there all the time if I didn’t have to buy a ticket to get inside.)
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A “pen cancellation” is simply a slash drawn across or on the stamp with a ballpoint or felt-tip pen. It could easily be mistaken for a stamp that someone’s child accidentally got their hands on. It is absolutely not “old fashioned” and has nothing to do with old-style hand-cancelled stamps.
Don’t worry, if you stay with Postcrossing long enough you will get your share of these! 
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Yes! Big black Sharpie scribble - Canada seems to be the worst for that.
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Since I noticed that everyone is talking about postmarks, I decided to open a new thread where we can properly discuss them, as they’re not really “travel scars”. Click here! → “Your country’s postmarks and cancellations”
We can keep talking about real travel scars here 
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This is … some kind of a stamp but I still consider it a “scar” since it doesn’t seem to be a cancellation stamp and I’m not sure where it came from, I guess transfer from something on top of it.
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From a few years ago, damage in front of the girl’s face looks like she’s talking. I ended up amused by it, I appreciate travel wear, except when there’s orange barcode 
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This card came in a plastic bag - it’s hard to see, but it’s horizontally torn.
Holding together only because of a strip of clear tape on the address side …
this wasn’t meant to be a puzzle postcard but it became and now it’s the most peculiar postcard of my collection.
some years ago i received an envelope from the italian mail public service, poste italiane, containing these pieces of a postcard a friend of mine sent me: it didn’t travel around the world, it only made 250-300 kms, but somewhere along the way into a mail office it got sliced and a diligent employee put the surviving piece into this envelope, apologizing for the inconvenience.
did it happen something similar to you?
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Hi @stefbot75, there’s a similar existing thread about this called “Mail travel scars on cards” here! 
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Yep, I got one like that recently in a bag from USPS. Unfortunately I never took a picture and didn’t keep the card. In three pieces, the stamp corner had gone and it was so sad that I didn’t want to keep it…
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…And also another one called Damaged cards where I posted my amazing recent specimen.
This one has the best title, but still… 
I wonder if they can all be merged?
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That’s really too bad. Can you ask the sender to send another?
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(I wanted to quote South Park, haha)
That’s terrible! It hasn’t happened to my postcards, but it happened to an envelope with “ear-savers” I ordered through Etsy, just two provinces away from me in the same country. The envelope arrived, destroyed, in a plastic bag, and only one of the four ear-savers I ordered. Canada Post apologized on the envelope.
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the sender was a friend of mine on holiday who couldn’t come back there to send me a new postcard 
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That’s terrible, maybe you could order one online and have them sign it.
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anyway i visited that place some years ago and i found and sent home that postcard which arrived safely
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Epic story!
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