I wanted to add some cancellations of rare countries aswell but sadly they are all more or less smudgy blobs of ink. If someone is still interested in seeing them please drop me a line here.
I always asked myself, whether these machines only check if there is any stamp or also check for sufficient postage. Does anybody know?
The UPU prescribes an ink line or the side of a cancellation stamp, but a special stamp is indeed much more fun.
I’m interested. Difficult to read is still better than no picture at all…
I don’t have any information if (and how) that may be done in Germany, which could be because they don’t want anyone to get ideas how to trick the system…
In Germany, in addition to the dateless and locationless “Nachträglich entwertet” stamp that every mailman is supposed to have, cancellation with the full regular date stamp is permitted as well, in that case a large N (for nachträglich) must be written next to the date stamp. I’m not sure if that’s allowed for foreign stamps as well.
Finally I have dug out an “Ortswerbestempel” from Germany. It’s advertising for the town, and it’s a regular cancellation, all outgoig mail from the mailboxes in that town was cancelled with it. Note: As the cancellation is from 1972, it uses the old West German 4-digit postal code (East Germany also had a 4-digit postal code, but it was in the top of the cancellation). When after reunification (1990) the new 5-digit postal codes were introduced on 01-Jul-1993, those towns willing to pay for a new stamp got a new one (same or different design) with the 5-digit postal code. All Ortswerbestempel were discontinued with the introduction of the Briefzentrum (letter center), the initially 83 Briefzentren (now 82) were opened between 1994 and 1998. So depending on location these cancellations vanished at different times.
Top: Edenkoben (town name)
bottom: 6732 (postal code)
a bit higher: -9.6.72-13 (date: 09-Jun-1972, at 13:00 / 1 PM, the time is not time of cancellation but time of mail collection or office closure (some offices close over noon)
above that: advertisement, illustration of wine grapes and sun, text “staatl. anerk. Luftkurort”
left: “Wald u. Wein” (forest and wine)
right: “Sesselbahn” (chairlift)
Sometimes mistakes happen. Here the advertisement part (government advertisement to work together against COVID-19) was inserted upside-down in Briefzentrum 68:
here’s an early inkjet cancellation from the test phase, Briefzentrum 48 dated 29-Nov-2018 with two advertisement spaces - the final machines, e. g. at Briefzentrum 60, only use one space, but I don’t know if the second space is still technically possible.
Large envelope inkjet cancellation (never has advertisement): Briefzentrum 20, dated 26-Aug-2020-21
Inkjet cancellations are not error-prone… double cancellation, one regular orientation, the other upside-down, Briefzentrum 20, dated 23-Nov-2020-21, large envelope cancellation machine (I’ve never seen upside-down inkjet cancellation from the regular-size mail machine).
sigh …
I got this beautiful Canadian stamp today, but with the horrible grease-pencil cancel. Oh, Canada!
By hand from the Czech Republic on a shaped card:
Carefully handstamped from Finland:
A different one from Finland:
Also, Moomin Museum from Finland:
Oh, I often receive pen-canceled stamps from Europe:(
I went through my received postcards and took photos of stamps that got “Nachträglich entwertet” :
And I found this. Does anybody now something about the “Mailer’s Postmark Permit”?
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.
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.
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
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:)