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The first adhesive postage stamp was the Penny Black, issued in 1840 by Great Britain.The postal authorities recognized there must be a method for preventing reuse of the stamps and simultaneously issued handstamps for use to apply cancellations to the stamps on the envelopes as they passed through the postal system. [3]
In Great Britain, the first postmark employed for the cancellation of the then new adhesive postage stamps was the Maltese Cross, so named because of its shape and appearance. This was used in conjunction with a date stamp which was applied, usually to the rear of the letter, which denoted the date of posting.
A postal marking is any kind of annotation applied to a letter by a postal service. The most common types are postmarks and cancellations ; almost every letter will have those. Less common types include forwarding addresses, routing annotations, warnings, postage due notices and explanations, such as for damaged or delayed mail, and censored or ...
Then the stamp is affixed to the face or address-side of any item of mail—an envelope or other postal cover (e.g., packet, box, mailing cylinder)—which they wish to send. The item is then processed by the postal system, where a postmark or cancellation mark—in modern usage indicating date and point of origin of mailing—is applied to the ...
While some collectors value mint postage stamps, others prefer to collect stamps that have been used. In practice, it is slow and difficult to build a comprehensive collection by removing stamps from mailed envelopes, so modern postal administrations accommodate collectors by offering new stamps already cancelled.
Postal service in the United States began with the delivery of stampless letters whose cost was borne by the receiving person, later encompassed pre-paid letters carried by private mail carriers and provisional post offices, and culminated in a system of universal prepayment that required all letters to bear nationally issued adhesive postage stamps.
The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) announced the stamp designs for 2025 on Friday, Nov. 15, revealing that one of the stamps will be a portrait of The Golden Girls star, who died in 2021 at the age of 99.
A postage stamp is a small piece of paper attached to mail that indicates that the postage (the cost of sending the mail) has been paid. Because stamps are sent on most mail, the stamp on a received item can be removed and placed on a different piece of mail to be sent, thus reusing the stamp without paying the proper postage.