I do! Thanks for reminding me: I now remember I just had started school and shortly thereafter I had begged my parents for many months to be gifted the āPost Officeā ā¦ and eventually ā¦ I got it!
And I / we really did play for hours / weeks / months ā if both younger siblings and younger friends are included āYEARS with it!
Through your mentioning it, long forgotten memories hit me regarding this topic:
I remember all the EXCITEMENT around it, the HOURS of focus (because for me / us, it was of course a REAL post office(!) ā I believe I was 6 or 7 at the time) and I really, REALLY loved to stamp (almost) everything with that terrific cancellation stamp!
Same for Belgium. However, our neighbour, France, still uses cheques on a daily basis. You cannot get around as a Frenchman without your cheque book. School tuitions, grocery shopping, ā¦ pretty much everywhere.
Yesterday my for year old and I had a long conversation about what ācancellingā stamps is, and why I wait in line at the post office to have my nice stamps hand cancelled to avoid being pen cancelled as one of my mail carriers likes to do. She loves stamps and stickers - I need to find her something we can pretend is a cancellation stamp for when we play mail delivery
This is not so much being unfamiliar with the concept of postcards as being unfamiliar with non-current stamps.
I have started getting my postcards hand cancelled at the post office because a lot of them were getting thick marker pen cancels and I like to use a lot of combinations of different/older stamps on cards when I have recipients I think will like them.
I had a different post office worker than usual last time, and she tried telling me I didnāt have enough postage for an international postcard because she was only looking at the forever stamp in the top right corner - I guess she thought the 5 other stamps were just stickers? Once she realized they were stamps, she seemed disappointed I was actually using older ones - instead of collecting them, maybe? None of them are rare or high value stamps.
There are some interesting stories in this Forum topic and I thought I could add one about a visit I made to Oman last year. The people there are truly lovely and very hospitable, so when my wife and I were invited to someoneās home, at the end of the visit, I asked if I could have their postal address so that I could send them postcards during our travels. Blank looks. Postcards ? Postal address ? They had no idea what I was talking about. Yes, there are post offices in Oman and if you are patient, stamps are available. But there doesnāt seem to be an internal mail delivery system - at least, not to peoplesā homes. I was (and still am) very sad that we could not share our travel experiences with these wonderful people. Of course, they all have WhatsApp but itās not the same, is it ?
It happens to me all the time when speaking about postcrossing. Sadly, here in Miami, Florida, sending postcards is not as popular as in other US states. I wish there were meet ups around my area as well.
Or maybe she was disappointed that you werenāt paying in to the system fully now, and instead are using stamps that represent money paid into the system years ago.
Itās something I think about. Itās one of the reasons I prefer to use mostly current stamps and only mix in older stamps occasionally.
But itās the way the system was designed. They benefited from collectors as long as that interest flourished, and now theyāre taking a hit from it.
So interesting, could you tell me more about the process? Do you request a hand-stamp? I recently have been confused because postcards I mailed to others got cancelled across the bottom of the card, leaving the stamp untouched (I was at their house and saw my cards after they were delivered).
Iāve had that same experience. I usually post my postcards in a street mailbox but I was at the Post Office for something else and asked for my postcards to be hand stamped and posted from there. The woman at the counter started insisting that I needed to buy a stamp for the prepaid one and refused to listen to my explanation that itās prepaid and they sell them! She had to get another assistant over to clarify. So frustrating. But not surprising as usually when I go to a post office Iām having to tell THEM where the philatelic file is and yes you have small denomination stamps and yes you have gummed stamps not just the adhesive ones and yes I can use domestic stamps on international mail and yes you have different priced international stamps for different regions etc etc. I think all their training is parcels and documents and someone actually wanting philately is so rare they never learn it!
I just posted one of mine that I got at the tower a few years ago! One of the young men that wear the tall hats. I also have one with a tower raven, but I might keep that one for myself
My understanding is that the barcode at the bottom is for telling the postal machines where to deliver the card, and when they get machine postmarked there is usually a printed postmark in the top right as well.
Some of my delivered cards had thick marker lines through all the stamps - I think when the mail carriers pick them up from my mailbox they can choose to use whatever they have on hand to cancel the stamps instead of putting them in the machine at the post office? I believe this is called pen cancelling.
What Iāve started doing when Iām using nice/old stamps or multiple stamps is waiting in line at the post office (itās not usually very long at all at mine) and just requesting them to be hand cancelled. They grab a round stamp and press it on the cards enough times to mark all the stamps. Iāve had some confusion the first few times I went (not sure if I asked for it the wrong way or they just donāt usually do that), but now all the regular workers seem to be familiar with me and what Iām looking for.
I think going to the front and requesting a machine cancel might also avoid the pen cancelling and might even result in a faster delivery with the machine sorting - maybe Iāll experiment with this later.
The ones with regular single stamps I just put in my mailbox or the slot at the post office.
Interesting! Thanks for explaining so detailed. I just couldnāt wrap my head around how the āpen cancellingā on some cards Iāve received came into being.
I see, postcard is not what they have in https://letterco.online instead postcard is different now I understand! I thought postcard is simple printed graphics mentioned in that website lolā¦
The alternative view is that stamps that were bought a long time ago and never used are effectively a loan to the postal service. For older stamps with flat currency values, these were effectively 0-interest loans.
Newer stamps for many countries change their value over time to match service costs, but one reason the postal services are fine with this arrangement is because it basically represents a loan (just not 0-interest anymore, but still not a terrible deal for the postal services).
Definitely depends on the country. Countries where stamps from the 70s or 80s are still valid have the easiest time.
The 70s and 80s were the peak of overcommercialization of philately (stamp collecting). Tons of people would purchase entire sheets of new stamps and hoard them, convinced that they would be worth more in the future. Ironically, due to the sheer quantity of unused sheets hoarded this way, they are worth almost nothing. Many of those old collections are being liquidated today due to the circumstances of their owners (often death). Thereās more supply than demand for most of these stamps, to such an extent that stamp dealers cannot sell these in reasonable quantities at face value!
And so, what do the stamp dealers do when they purchase a giant bundle of unused stamps at an estate sale for $100, but most of it wonāt sell to collectors? They dump whatever wonāt sell at a discount to face value.
The discount ratios are getting smaller though. The discounts you see today arenāt as big as they were a few years ago, so it seems like the supply is slowly starting to dry up. Discount ratios of 20% are still pretty easy to find in the US though.
I use discount postage really heavily; I remember often being concerned in the past that post office clerks that I hadnāt met previously might be confused where I was getting so much ancient postage (I almost always hand my postcards to clerks for hand cancels), but Iāve never gotten any strange looks or questions so far about it, across tons of different USPS locations, so I guess the practice of using old postage in the US isnāt too uncommon.
This is so interesting.
Ive just come back to postcrossing and sent my first 5 cards from UK last week.
I used to do postcrossing back in around 2010/2011,but then stopped.
I found my old stamps ready to use and my box of cards the other say and decided to start up again.
So i got my addresses to send to ,then i went to nearest local seaside town to buy some postcards of the long pier . I only found some after rather a long search and a few blank faces . A guy on the seafront that had a fishing shop had some.
I found some London ones in the WH Smith stationary shop. Now these had bar codes on so they would go through the till to pay for them.
So i take them home and write them all ,then off i go to post office.
The man behind the counter wasnt sure what the bar codes on the postcard were for and whether or not he could cover that bit up with the stamp . He looked really confused .
Im shocked that someone couldnt find any cards at The Tower of London !!
I work not far from it so occasionally i used to go there to buy London ones ,but that was years ago.
Thanks for reminding me: I now remember I just had started school and shortly thereafter I had begged my parents for many months to be gifted the āPost Officeā ā¦ and eventually ā¦ I got it! 
None of them are rare or high value stamps.
I just couldnāt wrap my head around how the āpen cancellingā on some cards Iāve received came into being.