The stamp arrived in this cover. Have blocked out personal info but its a nice cover with a change of address sticker added by USPS that did NOT damage the French stamps!
Then the dealer decided to attach the mounted stamp to the inside center of one card with....ADHESIVE TAPE over both cut ends of the mount.
Fail, EPIC FAIL.
The stamp itself did not shift during mailing. The use of the right size stamp mount meant that it was snug as a bug in a rug. Simply adhering the mount directly to the card would have been the best solution. But the dealer felt that to secure the stamp, sticky tape was needed.
I do not know what the French use for adhesive on their tape, but the stuff would hold together parts of the Space Station.
How to liberate the stamp from its prison. I could not insert a pair of stamp tongs inside the mount since both cut ends were firmly shut by the tape. So my plan was to peel one side of the tape off the card, then use tongs to extract stamp from back of mount. MacGuyver would have been proud.
Alas, the tenacity of the French tape was amazingly strong. It was not going to peel easily. I worked slowly, but soon the Taurus within got the better of me, and I decided to give a harder pull.
DOMMAGE! - the tape ripped, tearing into the mount, and also putting a small rip on the top edge of the stamp itself. MERDE!
The good news is the stamp itself was not particularly expensive, and I did receive a nice cover in the bargain. But, I still have that hole in my set to fill, all due to the overzealous zeal of a dealer who feared the stamp would not survive the Trans-Atlantic journey secured in every way possible.
Well it's a great shame the stamp was too 'enthusiastically' packed! However, at least the stamps were stamped by the post office. Here in England when I receive letters or parcels from stamp dealers with lots of lovely stamps they are invariably NOT stamped by the PO.
ReplyDeleteFunnily enough there was a piece in the press recently about the PO worrying that people were steaming off postage stamps and re-using them. They were wondering how to stop it. I've got an idea, frank the damn stamps when they pass through the sorting office.
Rant over, very nice blog by the way:-)
Just a follow up to my previous post. Received a large envelope from a stamp dealer a couple of days ago and as usual he'd sent it with four very nice Commemoratives and the post office had simply scrawled through them with a black biro!!
ReplyDeleteSurely post office workers know the efforts Royal Mail goes to in printing these stamps and that collectors buy them and look forward to receiving them nicely stamped?
Yes that is very frustrating, but in the end the postal workers are simply making sure the stamps do not get reused, doesn't matter to them what is used, and if there was not a canceller handy then out comes the pen. Perhaps if the dealer had been able to hand cancel them himself at the PO counter (in the USA you can do that, can't speak for UK) then it would be a bit more insurance to preventing an attack by the killer marking pen
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