Postmarks & Cancels 

Great introductory video into the postmark collecting world. Postmarks help the novice stamp collector move into the more advanced philatelist world. Postmark collecting is also the No.1 reason you should join a stamp study circle or stamp philatelic society that specialises in your country. They are invaluable for determining rarity and hard to identify postmarks. If you are unsure of specialists societies for your country, contact the American Philatelic Society. They have a vast network of sister societies to help you! :)

I collect both used and mint stamps and I have a lot of very interesting postmarks and covers, in addition to things like unused booklets, presentation packs, miniature sheets, etc. For example, I have literally hundreds of Great Britain Queen Victoria low values (1/2d, 1d, 2d, 3d, etc) from all over the UK. In particular I like to collect the many different districts of London, there are dozens and dozens of different places in London and most have there own postmarks (everything from the District, the particular post office and the postal area had their own cancels). I also have several covers from the 1850's sent to and from my home city and some of the post office buildings and the addresses that the covers were sent to still exist even today.

Very interesting video! I don't know how common it is, but one niche I like is collecting stamps postmarked in a particular place. The collector might for example collect postmarks from the place where they grew up, or the place their parents are from, or whatever else is significant or interesting to them. I have just barely started a collection like that, and have a very nice SOTN postmark from the place where my mom is from, and where I spent the first 8 years of my life. Now that I think about it, that was where I lived when I first got interested in stamp collecting! It all makes sense now :) I collected stamps for a few years as a kid, lost interest, and got back into the hobby about a year and a half ago. Anyway, I don't know if there's a term for such a collection, but I do appreciate a nice postmark from a place that is important to me!

I was never a collector who thought too much about the postmarks, until now that I understand what you can learn about the origin of the stamp. Thank you so much for another informative video

I love SOTN. !:- ) Long time collecting, still learning.

Now postmarks too :0 I just found a perfect sock on the nose while you were talking. I'm ready to cry, I haven't even scratched the surface of my completely random tightly stacked stamps. Thank you for making it about history instead of money, I would have stopped already ♥

I applied caches to envelopes while on a ship. My next job was being a letter carrier and we had a rubber stamp on our sorting cases to cancel unused stamps. Postcrossing is now a hobby of mine and I receive stamp and postmarked from all over the world.

After watching your videos, I decided to start collecting Machins. I found a set of Mint Never Hinged 1967 & 1968 stamps on ebay. I was excited to get them relatively inexpensive because the seller did not charge additional shipping to the US from the UK. I also had some anticipation for the products arrival because I was certain the seller would use a new stamp to send them. When it arrived, I was thrilled with the contents and the sellers care. Unfortunately, the post office lazy slashed the cover with a sharpie to cancel it. It is my first letter from the UK and the Royal Mail botched it. 😕 Oh well. There are worse things in life. I love your videos. I am very much a novice but you have helped me in starting my collection more than any other philatelic resource. I am also a coin collector. My local coin shop carries a collection of philatelic supplies as a service to its numismatists who happen to also be philatelists. A couple of weeks ago, the owner gave me a free first day cover from John F. Kennedy’s Inauguration in Washington, D.C.!

The next lecture should cover international mail. That topic I think is for specialist. Registered mail covers, returned mail for postage due and the various ways it has been handled over the years. All these type situations are a field for discussion in possible future episodes. Keep these lectures coming. I like them a lot and have become addicted to watching them.

I don't research postmarks, but when I write a blog post about my stamp collection, I obviously look up information about the stamp image. I don't always include the info that I find, but it can be so satisfying to finally get results after struggling to find anything. That being said, I did share a cancellation on a Marianne stamp from France which happened to give her a very nice beard.

Another great quality video .. Great information ..

Just discovered your channel and absolutely love your videos! As if to prove a point about the stories postmarks can tell, the one you showed tells me that I used to live in the same town as you do during grad school 😊 brings back great memories 😍

Another amazing, highly informative video! Thank you

My first serious delve into philately was through FDC collecting and self servicing hand illustrated cacheted FDCs.

I collected stamps in my childhood. I remember once a time a cousin of mine went back from the US, brought me lots of stamps since she knew I collected those. But as a noobs and lack of information at the time, I was saddened and threw away all those gift stamps. It was because my friend who introduced me to stamp collecting said those were fake. It's because the cancelations were obviously printed alongside the stamps. I just knew the CTO thing after I watched this video, 25 years later.

Thanks for this, it was so well produced and so educational. Just learned so much!

I loved this video it is great !! I have learned so much and have been a collector for 50 years look forward to watching more of your videos

Another excellent video. Thank you, I learned a lot and You have inspired me to look closer into see me of the postmarks and cancelations on my stamps.

This is such an informative episode, thank you! I also loved your choice for the mint stamp example. The bluenose is, in my opinion, the most beautiful stamp ever produced.

That 1903 archival footage is so neat

Have not studied the cancellation stamps so this was a nice intro to this subject. Nicely done.

Thanks for the great video! I collect First Day Covers, Pre Stamped Envelopes, and Souvenir Covers, and I love how a cancellation (my wife and I call them “chops” because of the action and sound of applying them) can really add to a stamp on cover. My other collecting area is Australian Colonial Stamps, and I get much joy in researching all the numeral cancels, and finding the towns and cities they come from!

I love being a detective! This goes way back to when I was 7 or 8 and could not find a country named HRVATSKA in my album. This process also made me a believer in an index and a glossary. I can’t wait to try out retroReveal! Thanks very much for the link.

Great save on the coffee cup! Awesome video, as always.

Another great video, very informative. I'll certainly be paying a bit more attention to post marks going forwards!

You should do one on stampless covers... where that cover's journey is similarly documented via the cancellation(s) and (multiple) tax(es). Thanks, for another great video!

It's really challenging and fun to identify the history and travel of a stamp. Thank you for this informative video on postmarks. Great video as usual

After listening to your advice...yes! Is my answer.

Exploring stamps is great and just recently found your site. You are extremely knowledgeable and entertaining for this Old Stamper. I know the world stamp professionals don't like CTOs, but I think they are be rather snobbish. Gone are the days when you can just buy -1- stamp and buying Mint stamps. It is a draw down on my pocketbook & therefore I have so much more Used and CTOs in my collection out of necessity. Too, CTOs are minimally cancelled leaving Today's marvelous face photos nearly completely intact. I find them more pleasureable to view, review & appreciate. True CTOs are way over mass produced in volume (for revenue( & thereby detract in collection value. Yet, if you are interestd in learning a country's history or what that country considers of value to print; it can be very enjoyable

Re: CTOs, I collect them alongside genuinely used examples as well as mint examples. In the early 1980s Belize CTOs constituted a separate orinting on different quakity paper.

Your videos are helping me to understand these stamps I’ve recently been given. I’m not a collector and I don’t know much about stamps so thank you for your content.

I prefer canceled stamps by far but since I collect most of them from Thailand, its often a real challenge knowing where they are from. Still, awesome video. Tks

Wish more people would collect postmarks. Found some amazing (not anymore) torn off the whole envelope recently by a stamp shop to make grab bags. I don't have Smith Flat cancel. :)

Another excellent and informative episode!

As allways extremelly interesting and educational episode. I learn something new with each of your video. i have a suggestion for the next video: You could talk about the importance of the postage and stamps and than visiti BURMA. Why? Because they do not use mail at all. If you want to send something, in 99% of cases you bring your letter to the bus and the bus driver will carry your letter to the next city. The recipient of the letter will be informed and he will wait for the bus driver. Its same if you want to send letters, postcards or even a potato. its 99% cases, its by bus or train. It looks incredible but its working. The only postal office is in the capital Rangoon and several other big cities. Since Burma do not have street names and numbers, they use a different way. Let's say, you are in Rangoon and you want to send a letter to a friend in Mandalay. You go to British post and send it to Mandalay. Of course, you need to write a phone number of the recipient. Once the letter reaches the Mandalay post office, they will call your friend to come and to pick it up. I love stamp and postcard collecting, and if I told them that, they laugh at me because they do not have this culture :)

There are several Greek stamps with charity cancels for earthquake victims and other purposes, I'm sure I have seen them in other countries too

Very informative episode, as always! One area of postmark collecting that I'm particularly interested in is Dead Post Office (or DPO) postmarks, stamps or covers that have been cancelled in post offices that no longer exist, usually from ghost towns or consolidated rural post offices. I only have two in my collection from the ghost town of El Dorado, Saskatchewan, but I hope to find more in the future!

Even though I have been collecting for a while I always, and I mean always, learn at least one new thing from your videos. Personally, I much prefer stamps which have shown their journey. I just purchased a cover at auction from 1856 that was mailed from London and sent to Bombay, but then bounced to Aden in pursuit of the person to which it was addressed. Now that's a cool voyage for a simple envelope to take.

My favorite cancellation is the duplex or "shoeprint" I guess it's sometimes called. I know a lot of people don't like it because it obliterates the stamp, but I like the dark ink and the striking form of the "print", perfectly recognizable amid all the other line or slogan cancels that I'm sorting through. I think they're pretty, is what I'm saying. I'm tempted to try to make a mid 20th century album that is entirely duplex cancels. I also like machine slogan cancels. I'm not really at all interested in mint or unused stamps, because to me the interest is the history, the fact that the stamp was used as currency for transport and that the stamp bears a proof of that journey. I know you talked about CTOs in this video, but I would love to see you do a video about Dunes in particular, even if it might lead to some tomato throwing from the audience. I think there's interesting history there.

Excellent video. I learned a lot. Greetings from England.

Very educational and informative.......never knew there were so many types of cancellations.

I'm ambivalent about SOTNs - they're great if you're just collecting stamps...but if you're into covers and postal history it's often better having the cancellation properly "tie" both stamp and envelope together, proving they actually belong...there have been cases of cancelled stamps being affixed as an addition to previously posted covers to help fabricate a scarce combination or type of cover...

Love the 'Jumbo Cover' ! 😍

Two of my all-time favourite stamps right off the bat! Bluenose and Canada's first. Another excellent and very informative video. Thanks mate!

I love Postmarks more than the stamps! Abit like passport stamps, it shows the journey a postage stamp and an item mail has taken. Like yourself, I don't have any Postmarks from any in-transport offices like trains, in the UK up until the mid 2000s each Travelling Post Office (TPOs) on the railways had its own postmark, which displayed the name of the train, direction of travel (to or from the Capital, London) and date within a double-ring handstamp, every now and then a cover will pop up on ebay.

Another great episode. You mentioned mute cancellations but how wars affected mail could be an episode itself. Patriotic covers, censored mail, the ragged perforations on some WWII era stamps, etc.

I watched many of your videos and this is most interesting. I like all kinds of stamps - CTOs included.

Thanks a lot, amazing content. Particularly grateful for the CTO bit, up until now I had just assumed they were errors or fakes.

Excellent job, I learned a lot more and I was happy to see the Lyon envelope that I sent you in this video. Thank you. Michael.

Oh oh another awesome video from my favorite youtuber. I also love to collect postmarks as well. I even try to make my own postmark lol. I once made birthday cards and then add a stamp with a fantasy cancellation too...

I have been collecting a long time and never knew so much info or fun can be had. Great presentation 👍

Hehehe SOTN something new term for me, you’re a great stamps educator Graham ❤️! Thank you for sharing!

Thank you for your well researched interesting videos. We started a brand new stamp club 9/6/23 and meet at the Postmark Museum in Bellevue, Ohio. We plan on showing your postmark video at our next meeting 9/20/23 as well as many of your great videos at future meetings. I have learned so many new things from your videos. Thank you, thank you. Dave Gill of the newly formed - Fire Lands Stamp Club.

I have been colecting these ctn stamps for years

good episode, my France and Swiss collections are predominantly used. Its great fun with low value stamps replacing unclear postmark ones you already have with clearer post marks or SOTN examples. I also want to avoid stamps where boxed or slogan cancels encroach onto the stamp.

exploring stamps showed his own PO box time to send mail for philatelic purpose because that my new corona hobby.

Socked on the nose, I love that term! I only have a few myself....

For British colonies I love the website postmarks. Very informative and growing

Thank you so much for this episode! Lots of interesting info, but also you answered a question I was struggling to figure out with my own online searches. I recently acquired a gallon sized bag full of stamps and now have a growing collection of pre-cancels! I've been keeping them together b/c I think they are interesting but had no idea why they were like that. And I've been searching different ways of describing them but with "overprint" as my main keyword. I hadn't thought of "pre-cancels", lol! I appreciate all the research you do and the enjoyable format you present it in 😁

Scenery is gorgeous. Great video

Great show and explanation!

The UK postal service had a 'Collect stamps' picture cancel which was very fat, essentially turning the stamps into blackened pieces of paper, uninteresting for collecting ;-) I reget that I no longer have a sample, this must have been in the 70's.

I have making FDCs and getting the USPS pictorial cancellation which I find to be quite large that it encroaches in my cachet design. Several other cachet makers have also commented that the USPS pictorial cancellation are very wide. I noticed you show a Wonder Woman pictorial cancellation without a cachet.

Very Interesting topic!

Loved this one. I added several pages to my album just by moving and labeling stuff I already had. My favorite post marks are the ones that clearly show the origin of a letter or package that someone sent to me. :-)

Suggestion follow up episode: people de-inking canceled stamps, then reselling them. IIRC we had a recent court case about this.

Hey.. I was eagerly waiting for a video from you for quite some time. Happy to learn about marcophilately.. This is indeed a new term in my philatelic vocabulary. Also i would rather prefer to collect mint postage stamps than used one since they somehow destroy the stamp art that the postage stamp tries to showcase. Also about CTO stamps i seldom collect them except when they are truly pieces of art and irresistible. Thanks again for the wonderful video.

I bought a pack of 100 envelope corners at the last show. There were so many different types and they were interesting. Could you do a video about different types of envelope corners?

A great video! I always save different cancelations. I usually put them on the opposite page in my album where the stamp goes. Likewise, if I use a mint stamp such as the new dinosaur T-Rex 🦖 , ( so you can see the special effect) I always try to have a canceled one too. CTO’s are not my favorite, but you can see the stamp nicely, I always combine with a stamp that was used by mail if I can find one. Does anyone know where you can find pen pals that will exchange stamps with you every month? I used to have some really nice pen pals but due circumstances I was not able to continue for a few yrs. now I have time and would like to find pen pals again. 😁

Great video!

The best channel ever. I learn so much every video

Really interesting video, I love cancelled stamps, even that I collect both mint and used. The used ones show the history of the stamp, but some times is difficult to get a really nice cancellation. I collect Germany GERMANIA stamps, and I am trying to collect all of the cancellations from that period, very difficult 1900 - 1920.

I love stamps, its my life

When he almost spilt his coffee 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Do you have stamps from Yugoslavia,show them,they are beautiful

Please make more videos. You are the coolest person in stamps. Cheers from Australia. J//

First, omg! Thanks for telling me about keyboard translators for non-Roman letters! I always have a booger of a time with Cyrillic and East Asian printed stamps. I never thought to search for a translator. When I was sorting my coins. I guessed at which country and coins. It worked but was laborious. Are you South African? I love your accent! I just discovered your channel yesterday and I am now obsessed! Great content and I’ve learned a lot!

Great video. Nice desk magnifying glass too. Which brand and model is it?

Hello! I enjoy watching your videos and good to see that You have new episodes or just basics about stamp collecting, when I was in Bath in Somerset I visited Bath postal museum . really advice to visit . there is nice Art gallery as well

Very good video Graham,

Love the episode, I've been collecting postmarks for about 30 years and am currently working on building a collection of Free Franks, I'm currently at about 1500 examples 😂 I'm only 46 items into the cataloguing though because there is soo much information you can find out about the people on the covers. For example I didn't know that most early Free Franks used water colour paints to get the red hues needed for a free frank marking.

Very informative, I also appreciate the production work you put in the videos. Please consider doing videos on the value of cancelled vs non-cancelled stamps (why some cancelled are worth more than non-cancelled stamps or vice-versa according to the historical period of time). Also, glue patterns on the back, storage and display advice... Any "technical" and factual aspects are off great interest.

I was told by our local postmaster (Susan Elgin Or.) that the bars or lines coming off the right side off the machine cancel to obliterate the stamp are called "killer bars" Thanks Gary

Another great show, with a lot of good information.

You show several precancels from Indiana including Depauw Indiana. Actually Depauw is a private college in the town where I live....Greencastle! Fascinating!!

Love your videos!!!

I only collect CTOs when they are from the 60s and 70s in North Vietnam. I like the crudeness of them applying on the stamps of that time. I really really hate the modern postmark on old pre-unification stamps of Vietnam

thanks for the info. It is indeed an interesting lecture into the philatelic world .

This was an awesome breakdown!

I like having a mint stamp along side a few examples of different cancellations.

awesome video, yet to get started on my own collection but certainly postmarks seem interesting to me

Hi, I just found your channel and I have been collecting stamps since I was a child. I look at them, put them back in a box and back in a drawer. Those books you have are very nice, do you use a certain brand? Also where do you get them from? Thanks for your time and I am checking out most of your previous videos as well , take care.

Great channel

you need too do the Graf zeppelin postmarks :)

Great video as always. CTOs - I have very mixed feelings about CTOs. I used to hate them as a child (we used to call them "wallpaper") because they seemed false. But later I mellowed, especially when the topic of the stamps was regional (local flora & fauna, for example). I have read that some countries have their CTOs printed elsewhere - so these stamps never even enter the country that is supposedly issuing them! Still, some are so nice I cannot resist. The only ones I still hate are ones celebrating something that has nothing to do with the country - like stamps from African nations celebrating US TV shows - UGH.

Newbie here: loving the videos!

Please more videos ❤❤❤🚨

Love your videos. I found them when looking for the best way to remove the self adhesive stamps from paper & yours was the best. Though I've been collecting stamps since I was 8 yrs old, I've learned many new things from you. Can you please tell me where you got the magnifying glass on the stand that you had in this video? Many thanks!

Hey can u tell me some history on some stamps I have like my 2 cents Washington with (Go Military Camps)cancelation

I have old Cuban stamps with cancels that have messages such as "Buy Cuban Sugar" or "Smoke Cuban Tobacco" etc.