I hate when postal service ruins a beautiful item
One of the eternal complaints from stamp collectors is how postal service (more or less frequently) ruins the philatelic mail sent. In US “killers” (cancels) are a sure way to make the cover not so collectible. In UK many postal officers seem to fancy pen cancellations – if cancelling cover at all. And in Finland? Well…
Below is a beautiful cover by sent by fellow blogger Pablo. The item left Argentina in good condition, and it even managed to land Finland about week later in good condition… But somewhere in Finnish Processing and Distribution Center(P&DC) a huge red registration label (with non-soakable gum) was added on top of stamps (only one stamp – the eagle on the right bottom – was saved)… The minute I got the cover I started to peel off the label (using solvents) as I knew the longer it would be left stuck, the harder it would stick… For my luck just one stamp was permanently damaged in removal operation.
2009 Cover from Argentina - Finnish registration label was placed on top of stamps. Now you can see only traces of it on the damaged stamp.
The largest item on the cover is Argentinean “Save the polars and glaciers” m/s. The stamps on the sheet have a bit disappointingly somewhat ordinary “take a photo+ add some text” design. But the tabs on sheet’s left corner are very interesting. They use colors and recycling related symbols to tell about actions to fight climate change.
2009 Argentina "Save the Polars and Glaciers" miniature sheet
Below the sheet is a $5 tractor stamp. This got severely hit while removing the label.
This is what might happen if you need to peel a registration label from a stamp
And finally there are two extremely beautiful wildlife stamps:
2009 Argentina - Argentine Tortoise (Chelonoidis chilensis) stamp
2009 Argentina - Crowned Eagle (Harpyhaliaetus coronatus) stamp
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Nice to see them again after 12.000 km!!!!
It’s really sad if soemthing like this happens.
Fortunately the German post usually takes care not to place a registration label over the stamps (at least if there is enough free space on the cover to put it next to the stamps).
But I receive many covers where the stamps are damaged by the sorting machines.
And there are other things that could happen. For example mail from some countries (for example Switzerland and the Netehrlands) to some regions isn’t delivered by Deutsche post anymore, but by private postal companies (usually TNT), because they care cheaper. Unfortunately, some of this companies put barcode labels over the stamps.
Ungly or completely missing cancellations are also a problem. For example the ink jet cancellations from the USA are quite ugly and often completely unreadable. And sometimes the stamps aren’t cancelled at all. This seems to happen quite often for example in Finland, but also in other countries.
Oh is so bad to see this…
I received a card from a friend this saturday… He sent it because he learned I started to collect stamps and I dont know why the dutch postal service put the sticker ON the stamp…
I managed to rescue it with hot water, but now is not so pretty as it would have been without the sticker
Here is my cover: http://stampsandcovers.charcotrip.com/the-netherlands/my-first-cover-arrived-from-the-netherlands
you can see a little bit of the stamp
i mean they had space to put the sticker in another part but noooo they put it just there 
and the stamp was super because the postmark was very nice almost all the name of the city in the stamp… buaaa…
Guys of the postal office if you can read this please dont destroy the stamps T.T
@tim: I agree. Finnish post has developed a very bad habbit of NOT cancelling covers/cards. I don’t know if they’re trying to save ink or something similar
Partially service quality is affected by the fact that postal services have been cut drasticly.
@Olga: seeing that cover makes me want to cry too
Hi Keijo, nice website. I live in Houston TX and frequently receive letters from Europe with beautiful stamps damaged by mail sorting and/or stamp-canceling machines. Especially badly damaged are stamps on thicker envelopes; damage is always found at the right edge – result of improperly adjusted entry slot (or whatever it is called).
@Audrius:
Thanks
I agree that “edge/corner damages” are somewhat frequent nuisance especially with international mail. That is one of the reason I try to leave at least 10mm space between the cover edges and the stamps.