First, a new variant of the German inkjet machine cancellation: color pale blue instead of black! I don’t yet know if it’s an accident or if German Post is testing a different color. So far, I have seen only this one instance.
Briefzentrum 60 (Frankfurt am Main), date 18.12.20-21 (18-Dec-2020 9PM) machine letters md
Ireland, inkjet machine cancellation (I know there was also normal cliché machine cancellation, not sure if it is still in use)
right: wavy lines
center: “date stamp” in three lines: location (Athionf or Athlone Mails Center), date (22-Oct-2018), and a number whose significance I don’t know.
left: advertisement, here “Remember to / Use your / EIRCODE”.
Now for some intersting Singaporean machine cancellations. Singapore has only one mail cancellation center with only two cancellation machines, they show C1 or C2 in the date stamp. There was cliché cancellation in the past (which I haven’t yet dug out), what I’m showing today is all inject cancellation.
Regular inkjet machine cancellation: right wavy lines, center date stamp with either C1 or C2 machine number, no advertisement. This is used on most days for the bulk of Singaporean mail.
Example date stamp:
SINGAPORE
3 DEC 2015 (no leading zero for single-digit days)
C2 (or C1)
SINGPOST
For special occasions, left of the date stamp an advertisement space can be added. This is often used for only a few days. All these special advertisements are rgular cancellations: They are used on all machine-cancelled mail during the period of used, and in most cases on both machines (there have been cases where the two machines used a different advertisement each).
50 years Singapore independence, use only in February 2015
World Post Day (always 09-Oct) has been celebrated at least since 2017 with a machine cancellation and at least since 2016 with free postcards issued by Singapore Post. I have cancellations from 2 years and cards from 2 years: World Post Day postcard 2016 and https://colnect.com/en/postcards/postcard/219797.
Another sign of the significance Singapore Post gives to World Post Day is that the re-opening of the General Post Office was placed onto 09-Oct-2017. The letter below has the World Post Day machine cancellation on the commemorative ATM stamp General Post Office (which also makes the letter an FDC), then in the bottom right corner the pretty cancellation of the GPO (this is a regular cancellation, available on any day the GPO is open), and the commemorative cancellation for the re-opening of the GPO.
Then I found an unusual letter. It’s from China (Taiwan), the Taiwanese hand cancellation may be a special one (it’s an FDC cancellation for the ATM stamp from a stamp exhibition). As it was underpaid (9 yuan instead of 13), it got a Taxe-stamp right of the airmail label with manually entered numbers: 4 (missing amount) on top and 13 (correct amount) on bottom. With that information, the destination country Singapore can calculate the missing amount in local currency by multiplying with the correct postage in Singaporean dollars (0.80 SGD). The result (0.25 SGD) plus the fee for underpaid mail (1.07 SGD) = 1,32 SGB is then entered in the Singaporean tax stamp (top center). This happens at the airport where foreign mail enters the country. Then the mail is transported to the postman base of the recipient. There a postage due label is printed and added to the letter and cancelled with the regional base stamp (I have never seen this cancellation on stamps, it seems to be used exclusively for postage due). As the smallest coin still in use in Singapore is 0.05 SGD (5 cents), the postage due amount is rounded to the next full 5 cents, in this case 1.30 SGD. That amount was then collected from the recipient.
Thank you, @Cassiopheia ! Oddly enough, even though the ink is a lot paler than the black ink, the date etc. is better readable than with most German black inkjet cancellations. I’ll send out my collector’s items to the three Briefzentren.
Great catch, @Oo_Hawkwind_oO! It reads indeed “Use your”. I corrected my post. Thank you also for the other Singaporean advertisement cancellations!
A much cleaner scan of a typical Hungarian hand-issued postmark, showing post office “Budapest 181” (Budapest 181 Posta, located in Budapest Airport T2A), Magyar Posta abbreviation “MP”, Date “2020 02 05” and stamp code “NA” (differs by stamp/office)
The 2 lower ones are from Japan. Can anyone tell me a little more about them?
@aerobear the red Japanese special postmark is categorized as a 風景印 Fukei-in. Here is Japan Post’s description. You have the second postmark in black ink, because they need to add the stamp in English for international mail.
Those postmarks are from a Post Office in an outlet mall in Hiroshima. It is Japan Post’s first post office that is dedicated to their mascot, ぽすくま Posu Kuma (Post Bear).
Outside and inside of the post office.
And here is my rare postmark.
USA McMurdo research station in Antarctica.
Postmarks from other UK Mail Centres.
For domestic mail, Royal usually put on slogans of sponsors, at the moment most of them are Coronavirus messages or National Health Service (NHS) healthcare sponsors, most common one is about Mental Health issues.
Most international post won’t receive these Postmarks, normally just the wavy lines, the processing Mail Centres name, date and time, this usually applies to both domestic and international postcards.
Above are (rare for me, as if I don’t receive an Ink-Jet postmark, its usually the Ball-point or Marker Pen! NOTTINGHAM I am looking at you!) operational date stamps for mail that has been rejected or missed by the printers, they are Croydon (South London) and Nottingham which is blue ink.
Ink Jet postmark across multiple stamps from Gatwick Mail Centre
Unknown hand-stamp 2nd Class stamp
And interwoven rings of Post Office Counter Date Stamps of 1st & 2nd Class Large Letter stamps.
Hey guys, sorry for my long hiatus. I’m always like this with forums: I have fun for two days, and then disappear for a month! But I’m back! I have just updated the list in the first post, so that a curious internet-wanderer can easily go through all the postmarks they’re interested in.
All the international mail from North Korea is sorted and postmarked in Pyongyang, even if you send it from other cities such as Kaesŏng, Namp’o etc. It would be super interesting to see what local North Korean postmarks look like but, obviously, it’d be super difficult for us to get them.
I haven’t added these to the list in the first post yet – let’s first find out what these are! They’re definitely postmarks, as can be seen from the letters… They’re probably hand stamps? Idk, the wobbliness in the second picture makes it very unmachine-like