.
Peter - I bet not many POSTALLY used sets of those Art Of The Desert sets 4 exist globally!
Yours is probably the only one actually.
Silhat it is ME doing the black marker pen!
Silhat wrote: ↑07 Dec 2020 22:58
Parcel posted by Glen the 12th of october and received in France only today. International post is soooo low in those pandemic times.
Nice stamp, fortunately well protected when you see the killer pen mark on it
And now the extracted stamp, which will have a nice place in my collection
I mailed the superb Arthur Gray KGV Auction sale book to Luzern Switzerland recently (SEA MAIL -- air was about $80!)
Sea Post was $50. Well it was actually $47.80, but client wanted the $5 Corner pair!
I used a corner pair of current $5, and a corner pair of the current
$20 ULURU/Ayers Rock top value INTERNATIONAL. (Value VFU thus, more than he paid for all the shipping!) All will arrive with FULL UNHINGED GUM on reverse, but with yesterday's dated cancel on front.
Postmaster neatly cancelled each with a ''Socked On The Nose''
CASTLECRAG cancel - so all still have full unhinged gum. THEN I placed them inside a clear cello bag, and taped that to parcel.
This saves scuffing or damage or creasing en route.
THEN I take a thick chisel point black sharpie/texta market pen I carry with me on PO visits, and added heavy black squiggles right over the top of all stamps as you can see. 
Then PO added all their relevant "0.00" and "SEA POST" labels etc to the package, and dropped it in the mail sack.
Why the ugly marker pen? As I found in some cases, PO staff here or in Europe or Switzerland etc peeled off the cello packet, to steal $50 of cool looking stamps. Send it to India, Thailand, South Africa, Peru, etc these are near
GUARANTEED to be stolen by PO staff somewhere. The heavy black marker lines LOOK like they are right over the stamps at a quick glance, so
no-one bothers stealing them - works like a charm!
Worth all readers keeping this in mind. YES it does take some 5 or 10 minutes of my time at PO to mess about with all this, and a little bit of forethought, but if my client is paying $50 postage (and it is very often $100 or more) I like to see they essentially get ""FREE Shipping""! And this simple trick ensures that.
Indeed, one client abused me last week saying some PO vandal had destroyed his pretty stamps with a Sharpie Pen!
For years the PO here seemed happy for stamp blocks to be cancelled and placed on top of each other, in a clear cello envelope, and a note added as to total franking enclosed thus. So 7 x different $2 blocks 4 placed on top of each, and marked as
"$56 postage herewith" seemed to keep everyone happy for years, and took up less space on parcel.
Recently all Mail Centres here heavily beefed up their
"Internal Revenue Protection Teams", and all Postmasters were advised by Memo all stamp franking needed to be
fully visible at a glance. I can see their point, as I am sure some senders abused the old system, and the image above of course now fully complies.
Pretty much
all senders can mail things like the above I feel sure, in most countries,
IF they are friendly and smiling to PO staff, and most importantly are patient,
and choose a QUIET time of day to visit PO as I do. Arriving at 4.50pm etc, is
NOT a good time for this stuff!
Glen
missing one stamp from the set)
