In the US, there is a process you can go through to be allowed to cancel your own mail with your own special rubber stamp. I believe you can design it yourself within certain parameters.
2 Likes
Belgium
Bulgaria
Hong Kong
Hungary
Indonesia
Latvia
Luxembourg
Malaysia
New Zealand
Oman
Philippines
Poland
Singapore
Slovakia
South Korea
Spain
Ukraine (different from the one above)
I also have cards from Jordan and South Africa, but they don’t have any postmarks.
5 Likes
I updated the index in the first post! Took me a while… It’s because I’m always offline for some reason 
But thank you so much for your contributions! They all look so beautiful! (I’m too tired now to comment them individually haha!)
Omg what’s this? Also it says my birthday… December, 7th!!
@mere5oh Wow! You got a Santa Claus Indiana postmark - that thing is huge!
@ChristianJ https://santaclausind.org/2020-santa-claus-postmark/
Do we need another topic for postal meters or are they welcome here as well?
Some of the cancellations on my received postcards:
USA
Denmark
Sweden
Slovenia
Croatia
Slovakia
Moldova
Hong Kong
Bulgaria
Iceland
Ukraine
Brazil
Oman
UAE
Luxembourg
Singapore
India
France
Finland (not quite sure if commemorative)
Åland Islands
Romania
Russia (not sure about the second one)
Japan
Macao
Switzerland
Australia (not sure if it’s a normal cancellation)
Malaysia
Spain
Guernsey
South Africa
Kazakhstan
Latvia (not sure what the second one is)
Estonia
And some postal meters
9 Likes
I am more than happy to set up a flickr group for folks to post there, or, someone can set up one of those group wiki thingies! lol I learned in the sandbox, but have since forgotten how.)
A wiki post would be awesome, but somewhere at the top… else we need to search for it every time. To do so the poster needs to flag his post and ask to be turned into a wiki (unless the poster has TL3, then he can do it himself)
I think another topic for postal meters is an awesome idea since I have lots of nice commemorative postal meters:)
Oh, I found another hand postmark from NM, United States! It differs from the two existing ones in this topic by the cancellation lines beside the postmark.
It’s actually on the postcard US-6618339
2 Likes
The postmark from Lismore NSW 2480 Australia is a permanent pictorial type which I use on nearly all my mail - the staff at Lismore post office let me apply it myself. The design was introduced in 1987.
There are currently almost 300 such pictorial postmarks in use around Australia.
1 Like
I saw that the Russian one said “международный детский центр”, which means “International Children’s Center” - that intrigued me! Below it says Артек (Artek), and below that is Республики Крым - Republic of Crimea. Anyhow, I searched and see that it was a former Young Pioneer camp and was still a vacation destination after that. More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artek_(camp)
1 Like
@Bowyum, thank you very much for this information and, as it’s a picture of one of your cards,
thank you for making the effort of using this special postmark. It’s beautiful and an eye-catcher among all the normal postmarks.
@saintursula, thank you for translating and for your information. It makes pretty much sense now as the sender (normally living in Moscow) was working on Crimea during the summer. They sent me a card showing the Livadia Palace where the Jalta Conference was held in 1945.
Here’s yet another example of Chinese postmarks for domestic mail, which I got from dropping a postcard in the postbox nearest to home in Shenzhen, Guangdong province (as a test for whether the weathered postbox was actually in use…which could be a practical concern as the number of postboxes is dwindling, at least in my city). The design is largely consistent with that of other places in China. Again, the stamp was canceled by a postmark denoting collection (收寄, shōujì) while another postmark of delivery (投递, tóudì) was added beside it. Not sure what exactly the number following the those service words means, perhaps referring to the number of the hand stamp?
5 Likes
As far as I’m concerned, the English version postmark in black color is used for international outgoing mail and I assume every post office is equipped with one. Sometimes I find the English version quite informative as Japanese place names are known to have way too many irregular pronunciations, making it harder for foreigners to guess.
Usually the postage stamps on such a postcard are directly canceled by that postmark only, but in the case shared above, apparently the sender made a specific request, which I also used to do, for the pictorial postmark
3 Likes
You’ve got a really special card there, from @samquito!!! He’s the one who coordinates our annual meet-ups here in NM. He also creates special cancellations for them as well. That card was sent form the Bosque Post Office, I believe. I find that it’s extremely rare to receive or send a card from your own state. In the 8 years I’ve been a member, I’ve sent 1 card within NM, and received one, only recently from someone in NM, and it was from Sam! I am so honored that I got to receive a card from him!
1 Like
I’m also very thrilled to receive one from him!
I think Postcrossing has taken some measure to reduce the possibility that we got an address near us. Also, lots of people prefer not to receive domestic postcards.
1 Like