They destroyed my stamps

I’ve never heard of the RM special hand stamp centres. Would you mind please educating me how I might go about routing my mail through one?

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Wow! Thanks for the super helpful and thorough explanation.

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This is a letter from UK.
I was very excited with the queen stamps and then I screamed when I saw what they did to the Queen’s face.

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There is a tape over the stamps

:joy:

And look at these stamps. Beautiful mushrooms and trains.
Look what they did to them. Scribble again??? You have that circle cancellation, why did you add scribble :scream:

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they even scribbled the sticker… what the he…rd!

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Yes, very disappointed. They are the only envelopes I’ve ever received from Czech Republic.

Well this postcard from Austria is quite exact canceled, nice on the edge of the poststamp everything good readable.

However most postcards are canceled in a terrible way!

Here a printer and barcode is printed over the stamp and the cancelation is only 50% visible.

Or these just a blob of ink. USPS is very good in blobs of ink.


However sometimes it is almost nice …

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some additional stamps were already vanished on arrival, the remaining two were badly damaged

root cause: rough handling on bigger letter and bad glue of the stamps positioned at the very edge of the cover

an the next one:

the beloved star trek stamps :frowning:

tiny but significant faults due to the maschine handling

pictures with address removed by moderator
please cover it for don’t making it public

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One of the worst obliterating postmarks in the US last fall was an Energy Awareness cancel with an electrical outlet and plug. Now they need to have a “Save Ink” cancel! I’ve seen some stamps that you couldn’t make out the design at all. A real shame if the sender is making the effort to select attractive stamps.

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Oh. Normally I just get the stamped over. It usually on the edge of stamp, just enough to deface it, but not enough to ruin it. Idk

There’s a long thread about this on this stamp forum.

In this thread, I found an excerpt from the UPU requiring pen-cancellation on items that have not been cancelled when they should have been…

I have read somewhere (possibly somewhere in that thread) that in some places, the posties who are delivering the mail are even told to do this - not just the staff in the sorting centres.

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Well you learn something new,

… And what a great shame it is.

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I have often got stamps cancelled with a pen or black marker too. Royalty of course gets doodled over… :

Maybe someone was in the festive mood as they used a red marker instead of a black one in December:


(For some reason it doesn’t look quite as bad).

Worst are maybe the stamps that have been ripped off. I saved this one because it bothers me that I don’t know what it was:


It says princess Ma…so it must be princess Margaret and I am assuming some object, rather than her portrait. Haven’t solved that riddle yet.
(By the way, I don’t remove stamps of postcards, so I don’t do any destroying of my own. These examples have all been on envelopes sent from UK).

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I think I can help you :smiley:


Centenary of the First World War (1st issue) - 2014
(it was fun to solve your riddle!) :blush:

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Meh, I was about to post the same! :smiley:

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Wow, thank you so much! No wonder I found nothing seeking princess Margaret… It was princess Mary all along! That is a nice stamp, though.

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I received today this. I have never received a card that has lost its stamps before. :pleading_face:

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Recieved today.

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Today’s atrocity

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