Postal marking
A postal marking is any kind of annotation applied to a letter by a postal service. The most common types are postmarks and cancellations; almost every letter will have those. Less common types include forwarding addresses, routing annotations, warnings, postage due notices and explanations, such as for damaged or delayed mail and censored or inspected mail. A key part of postal history is the identification of postal markings, their purpose, and period of use.
Service marks provide information to the sender, recipient, or another post office. Advice marks notify about forwarding, missending, letters received in bad condition, letters received too late for delivery by a certain time, or the reason for a delay in mail delivery. (For example, a letter may be marked "snowbank" if snow accumulation not cleared by the potential recipient, or for whatever other reason, makes it difficult or impossible for the carrier to deliver the mail.)
Auxiliary marks are applied by an organization other than the postal administration. For instance, 19th century mail delivery often relied on a mix of private ships,
Shortly after the outbreak of the American Civil War, the Northern authorities declared the existing postage stamps invalid and issued new types. Letters using the demonetized stamps received a marking "Old stamps not recognized", an unintentionally humorous comment much prized by collectors today.
Post offices may add
The traditional way to apply a postal marking is with the use of a rubber or metal
Although it is technically possible to query postal services to find out what kinds of postal markings they use, in practice they do not seem to know about all the kinds of handstamps used in their offices, and previously unknown types of postal markings, both early and modern, regularly come to light. Hundreds of specialized works make up the philatelic literature of postal markings.
See also
References
Some representative works:
- Konwiser, Harry M. (1980). Postal Markings.
- Simpson, Tracy W. (1959). United States Postal Markings and Related Mail Services, 1851 to 1861.
- Simpson, Tracy W. (1979). Simpson's U.S. Postal Markings, 1851-61 (revised and enlarged ed.).
- Kane, William. Catalogue of the postal markings of Dublin, c. 1840-1922. ISBN 0-9507548-0-3.
- Leathes, John (1997). Postal Markings of the German U-boat Arm During the First World War 1914 to 1918. ISBN 1-902101-00-6.