As a frequent organiser of giveaways / lotteries that involves sending mails from Japan, I who am based in Canada have often been asked how I manage to do so while staying in Canada. Many people don’t seem to know that generally, a foreigner can send qualified items to a local post office in another country for postmarking, and this service for the majority of countries in the world is free of charge. In this thread, I will use my experience dealing with Japan Post to illustrate how we can request a postmark from oversea.
Sending Postmarking Request from Oversea
Here is how I usually proceed with Japan Post:
(1) Prepare your items with sufficient return postage stamp(s).
(2) Mail your request to a Japanese post office that offers the postmark you want with a written instruction, preferably in Japanese. Make sure that on the envelope you indicate clearly that the mail is intended for post office staff by inscribing after the name of the post office (XXX郵便局) a phrase such as:
- XXX郵便局（風景印押印依頼在中） ＝ (request of pictorial postmark therein)
- XXX郵便局 風景印押印ご担当者様 ＝ (to the person in charge of the pictorial postmark)
And that’s it!
Postmarking qualified items is free of charge, so all you need to worry is how to get enough of Japanese mint stamps to make up the required postage.
Let me share my written instruction template for requesting a post office’s pictorial cancel (called ‘fukei-in’ in Japanese) with you.
こんにちは、リンダ【your name】と申します。カナダ【your country】のコレクターです。
貴局の風景印が欲しいです。押印希望日は MM 月 DD 日です。【Or if any date is OK with you – replace the phrase highlighted in bold with 「どの日付でも大丈夫です」.】
当日、切手の隣に、風景印をカードの表面の記載の指示に従って押してください。そして、カードを封筒に入れて、カナダに送ってください。【if you want them to post directly the card, replace the phrase highlighted in bold with 「カードを直接送ってください」.】
どうぞよろしくお願いします。
リンダ
my email
my Canadian phone number with +1
Roughly translated:
Hello, my name is Linda. I am a Canadian collector.
I would like to obtain this post office’s pictorial cancel. The date of cancellation I want is [date-month]. [or ‘Any date of cancellation is OK’.]
On that day, please apply the pictorial cancel next to the stamp by fellowing the written instruction on the card’s surface. Once done, please put the card into the envelope I prepared and mail it to Canada [or ‘please post the card directly’].
Thank you very much,
Linda
Be careful if you use some kanji that (you think) means ‘next to’ but in Japanese that has a direction: If you use 「横」, the postmark will be applied on the horizontal direction, either on the left or the right side of the stamp. If you use「縦」, it will be applied on the vertical direction, either on the top or at the bottom of the stamp. 「隣」which means ‘in the neighbourhood of’ is a better word to use, but I strongly recommend that you attach a post-it note on the item with a drawing, clearly stating where you want the postmark to be placed. For example:
My note indicates that the postmark should be applied to the lower left corner of the stamp.
If I request the postmark on a particular day, I usually add a phrase explaining the significance of that day to reinforce the clerk’s impression, but this is not necessary.
I also tend to include a picture (found online) of the fukei-in / kogata-in in my instruction, like this:
If on the outer envelope you sent to the post office you only wrote the name of the post office (XXX郵便局), chances are some of the staff would think that the mail is intended for someone else who will come this post office to pick it up but you forgot to write the recipient’s name, and they would not dare opening it to see what’s inside. If they have no way of contacting you by phone, they will keep the mail unopened until the delay for pick up passes, then return the mail back to you.
This has happened to me a few times while I was travelling in Japan. I had a Japanese phone number but no fixed Japanese address, so on the backside of the envelopes I sent to Japanese post offices to request fukei-in, I usually inscribed my Japanese phone number. And I did get a few phone calls from some of those post offices trying to clarify who the recipient of my mail was and if they were allowed to open it. Although it’s long to write, it’s best to address clearly your envelope to the post office staff:
- XXX郵便局（風景印押印依頼在中） ＝ (request of pictorial postmark therein)
- XXX郵便局 風景印押印ご担当者様 ＝ (to the person in charge of the pictorial postmark)
In English, you can specify that your mail is intended for the ‘Postmaster’ or ‘Post Office Staff’.
From Japanese post offices, I had received domestic phone calls while travelling in Japan, but never any email or international call when I am staying in Canada. I suspect that domestic phone call is the only way Japan Post staff are allowed to use to communicate with the customers. This will vary by country, as I had received an email from a Polish post office clerk explaining how their postmark worked after I had sent them my request.
Buying Return Postage Stamps
With this said, all you need to worry about is how to get sufficient postage stamps for your items to be qualified for postmarking. With Japan Post, sadly there is no easy (or ‘cheap’) solution – Japan Post not only does not ship oversea, it doesn’t even accept foreign credit card. So buying mint Japanese stamps is tricky.
Most of Japanese mint stamps are traded on Yahoo! Japan Auction (not eBay because Japanese people don’t really use eBay for auctioning), which requires a Japanese phone number and a Japanese address to register an account. For most of foreigners, this means that we have to bid through a proxy, which increases the overall cost.
However, like most of modern items that are mass-produced, old (let’s say from post-1950 onward), modern mint stamps are not that worthwhile as collectibles. So just like US or Canadian modern stamps, every now and then, you can find a large lot at a discount price on Yahoo. In Japanese, these lots are often marked with ‘まとめ売り’ (meaning ‘bulk sale’) and end up being sold at a price that is lower than the total facial values of those stamps in the lot. So with additional shipping and service fee, you don’t lose too much.
On eBay, for Canadian and American stamps, these large lots are often marked as ‘discount postage stamps’, and allow you to pay less for more stamps. Be careful with counterfeit though – while you don’t need to worry too much about Japanese or Canadian stamps – American philately is known to suffer from mass circulation of illegal counterfeit that is not usable (mails posted with these counterfeit stamps will be returned to the senders). So when a deal looks ‘too good’ to be true – especially if it involves a large quantity of the same stamp – it probably is too good to be true!
Additional Info per Country
There is already a thread that lists many official online shops administrated by each country’s postal agency, I have just added two pieces of information to it: namely, whether a given shop accepts foreign payment methods and ships to oversea addresses. Below I will list the information that doesn’t perfectly fit into the existing thread.
Denmark
Danmark Filatelist Forbund Webshop accepts foreign credit cards but I am not sure if they do international delivery. For my Stamp Out War project, I bought the stamps from their webshop and have the stamps delivered to their philatelic centre directly for postmarking. Also, Danish post offices no longer do hand cancellation. You need to send your request to the philatelic division Danmarks Filatelist Forbund (danfil@danfil.dk).
Germany
India
Please see this post.
Italy
Filatelia, see ‘calendario marcofilia’ section.
Japan
Japan Post’s official (incomplete) repository of fukei-in and kogata-in. On Postcrossing, @mooseontheloose has started a nice thread on fukei-in.
Lithuania
Lietuvos paštas’ online shop accepts Lithuanian payment methods, and ships within Lithuania only. However, they have a contract with WOPA+ who sells Lithuanian postage stamps at the same prices.
Spain
Postmarking Service that Requires a Small Fee
Not all postmarking service is free of charge. Sometimes, particularly the service that involves special postmarks offered at a philatelic centre / shop, it can require a small service fee to obtain them in a certain way.
Canada's National Philatelic Centre in Nova Scotia
The National Philatelic Centre holds the special first-day-of-issue cancels for all Canadian stamps. We have one year starting from the date of issue to request these special cancels. They also have 18 major Canadian cities (St. John’s, Halifax, Charlottetown, Saint John, Fredericton, Quebec, Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Regina, Calgary, Edmonton, Victoria, Vancouver, Whitehorse, Yellowknife and Iqaluit) cancellations that can be used for special dates or current date. All cancellations must be on or after the issue date of the stamp being cancelled.
Foreigners can send a cover to the National Philatelic Center in Antigonish, NS, with a cheque for the cost of any stamps you’re purchasing from them, plus a small service fee listed below. If you are purchasing a stamp to be affixed to your cover, you have to pay the price of the least format in which the stamp is being sold. For example, if an US customer wants to ask them to buy and affix only one stamp on the cover he prepared, and this stamp comes in a booklet of 6 stamps of ‘permanent’ value (which as of 2023 is $0.92 CAD), then
$0.92 × 6 for the stamp booklet + $0.20 affix-and-cancel fee + $1.30 for sending item back to the US
For Canadian nationals, the payment can be made by giving credit card information on the phone.
PRICES:
- Cancellation only - $ 0.15 per cover
- Affix and Cancel - $ 0.20 + price of stamp
- Supply Blank Cover, Affix and cancel - $ 0.25 + price of stamp
The National Philatelic Centre
133 Church St. Unit 1
Antigonish, NS
B2G 2R8 CanadaTelephone Toll Free (Canada and US): 1-800-565-4362
(Other countries): 902-863-6550
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