Cancellation (mail)

[1] The portion of a cancellation that is designed to deface the stamp and does not contain writing is also called the "obliteration"[2] or killer.

[3] Britain soon abandoned the Maltese crosses and in 1844 began to employ cancellations displaying numbers which referred to the location of mailing.

[4] A similar scheme was used for British stamps used abroad in its colonies and foreign postal services, with locations being assigned a specific letter followed by a number, such as A01 used in Kingston, Jamaica, or D22 for Venezuela.

These methods generally involved the scraping or cutting-away of part of the stamp, or perhaps punching a hole through its middle.

(These forms of cancellation must be distinguished from perfins, a series of small holes punched in stamps, typically by private companies as an anti-theft device.)

The range of allowable subjects is very broad, and may include a variety of commercial tie-ins, such as to movie characters.

In this way, the corporation can automatically print promotional messages on each envelope while simultaneously cancelling the piece of mail.

Other post offices such as the Isle of Man Philatelic Bureau also create special pictorial cancellations as they did in 1985 to mark the anniversary of the aircraft Douglas DC-3.

[21] In order to get the postal clerk to cancel the stamps lightly, collectors may rubber-stamp or write "philatelic mail" on the envelope.

Many stamps are rarer, and consequently much more expensive, in unused condition, such as the Penny Black, which in 1999, catalogued for $1,900 mint and $110 used.

[25] Collectors generally view modern cancelled-to-order stamps or CTOs as philatelic junk, and they rarely have any significant value.

For example, the Scott Catalog used value listings for the German Democratic Republic are for CTOs from 1950 through mid-1990, over 2700 stamps.