Red Letter Day from Jennie Hinchcliff

[Katerina Nikoltsou (MomKat)]

A rare sighting in the mailbox, and with Lunar Year stamps, too:

dog and pig of past years...

 'Tis always a treat to see mail art from Jennie,

a touch of BLUE, and tiny card in a clever little "pocket:

Thank you so much!

[Katerina Nikoltsou (MomKat)]

So a postal clerk just did a nice "collab" on Jennie's art envelope :-)

Nice thought, i like it now.

[Bradford]

Such pen cancellations are applied late in the delivery process.  After the sorting/cancelling machinery has done its thing, the piece eventually arrives at the delivery post office.  Either a human sorter or the actual delivery person notices uncancelled stamps and sometimes applies a pen cancellation.  It's done in the name of "revenue retention" so as to prevent reuse of uncancelled postage (note: I spell it "uncancelled" as otherwise it looks like "uncansealed" to me).

I've even had foreign postage "treated" this way although I doubt the USPS really cares if British or Portuguese postage stamps have made it through unscathed.

Yes, the pen cancellation here is most attractive compared to the usual line in blue ball-point ink (Yuck!  I hate ball-point pens, hyphenated here to denote clunkiness) so it's a real affront to me.  Like I would tear off or soak off stamps of any country from a beautiful piece of Mail Art anyway.

The postal person used an interesting pen and employed some style in the name of protecting revenue this time.

[Richard Canard]

13.03.20 Dare Ms. Katerina N. & res n., ....considering the fact of the the dramatic" personal touch" cancellation ( a double cancellation actually) one wonders if classical stamp collectors will find such markings of  special interest & value???..(Just wait til they finally discover mail art).  SinCelery, Richard C. 

[Katerina Nikoltsou (MomKat)]

Why would a postal clerk mark such beautiful stamps :-(

US postage has a fine series for the Lunar Years