Post Office Pen / Marker Cancellations - Revenue Protection or Vandalism?

All of us have probably received packages or envelopes with beautiful stamps used to pay the mailing cost. Any stamp collector feels a thrill when he or she receives a desirable stamp this way. In some cases, however, those lovely stamps have been defaced by postal employees using thick marker pens or ball point pens. Their value as used stamps might be fairly high but for these hand "cancellations."

This practice is becoming more and more common, and stamp collectors are frustrated. It amounts to the essential destruction of collectible philatelic items that would otherwise be prized by collectors.

Here's a synopsis of Australia Post's point of view on these obnoxious pen cancels:

"Stamps are cancelled with a pen or texta by the postal services officer or another authorised postal employee when there is no discernible cancel. This is to ensure that stamps are not soaked-off/cut/reglued and reused as valid postage.

Revenue protection such as this is essential for any business to operate efficiently and be able to deliver the high standards of performance that is expected of an organisation such as Australia Post. "

Other postal systems, including the USPS and Canada Post, use similar reasoning.

Although we understand the postal system's desire to protect their revenues by preventing the re-use of stamps, we deplore the practice of using thick markers to hand cancel stamps. Can't the postal authorities use machine cancellations? After all, the vast majority of mail throughout the world is processed by machine.