Postage Stamp Chat Board & Stamp Bulletin Board Forum
 

I was going through some Iranian stamps and noticed that a few had US cancellations. Is this common? Some type of diplomatic usage?

Out of the whole mess of stamps these are the only three that don't look like CTO, but the cancels are US.

Here is one with the Smokey the Bear machine slogan cancel from the fifties.



Here's a picture of the entire cancel, from the DC_Machine_Slogan_Cancels document of the Washington Stamp Collectors Club. In that document they list the earliest known use in DC as Sept 1948 and latest known use as Nov 1955.



Here are two more stamps in the series with Washington DC cancels.

The SON cancel reads May 29th, 5pm, 1954 Washington DC. On the 1R value you can only see part of the word Washington and the year 4. Maybe all three stamps were on the same piece at one point?






If anyone can help out explaining why these Iranian stamps would have US cancels, I'd greatly appreciate it. I didn't think any country allowed use of foreign stamps for postage.

Thanks!

JBee

You will find many of these cancelled in Washington D,C. They are mostly from letters posted by US diplomatic personnel stationed abroad. Since the correspondence was personal it did not warrant free status. As per international regulations, stamps of the country of residence had to be affixed.

BUT, shipping these letters with the diplomatic pouch greatly increased the speed of delivery, and, to some extent, acted as a security measure by witholding the private correspondence of US personnel from prying eyes. Hence found on stamps of countries deemed not too friendly or secure or with inefficient postal services. They are great on covers.

Of course, there are other reasons for canceling stamps in a foreign country, letters posted at sea being the most common reason, but also stamps that evaded canceling in the country of origin will be canceled on arrival.

Regards

Memphre

_________________
A man might as well marry ... if he finds a good wife he will be happy ... if not, he will become a philosopher.
Collecting Greater New Guinea & Macropods (Kangaroos & Wallabies).

memphre - have ever read of that before - most interesting.

That is my new thing for today - I always like to think we can learn something every day on the boards!

Glen

_________________
.
Click HERE to see superb, RARE and unusual stamps, at FIXED low nett prices, high rez photos, and NO buyer fees etc!

Here are a few Afghanistan with Washington D.C. cancels, also the slogan which appears on many foreign stamps, "This article originally mailed in country indicated by postage."

Believe it or not, the slogan comes from two different mailings, but it sure lines up nicely.

The last stamp may be simply a receiving cancel, or a Fleet Post Office transit mark.

Hello.

memphre:

Thank you for sharing that.
It's good to know.

doug2222usa:

Nice stamps.

Cheers!

This is a topic that comes up in Linn's all the time (ie. on the page where people send in their unknown philatelic items).

As memphre said, diplomatic staff had to affix stamps of the country in which they were posted to their mail. If the mail were dropped in the diplomatic pouch, it would be put into the mail system in Washington, and machine-cancelled there.

Adding to the facts: the State Department (aka Foreign Affairs) always applied a violet handstamp to such covers that read (more or less) "country of origin of letter reflected by postage affixed". So you could potentially find stamps of most any country with a Washington (and always Washington D.C., obviously) cancel.

One of my collections is covers from embassies; I don't have many USA, but did buy a whack of them in a job-lot on eBay, I'll look through them and see if any display the marking.

If you find a stamp with a cancel of a different country, another possibility is pacquebot usage. The cover was posted on board a ship, and deposited into the mail system at the next port-of-call. A collection of Thailand covers I picked up last week has just such an example, a relatively modern cover (mid-20th century) with a Malaysia postmark. Usually such instances the canceller used will have the word 'pacquebot' in it, but not always.

_________________
Collecting Mongolia; Thailand; Indo-China; Mourning Covers; OHMS.
My online 'store': http://stampsfromaethelwulf.blogspot.com/

Thanks everyone for the very interesting information. I'll have to keep an eye out for DC cancels. Sounds like it would make an interesting collection.