United States Precancel Stamps - a Basic Primer

A few months ago I wrote a general introduction to US precancel stamps. Since US precancels are an interesting topic and a very popular stamp collecting specialty, I thought it might be helpful to revisit the topic and go into a bit more detail about these fascinating and very collectible stamps.

As a refresher, a precancelled stamp is any postage stamp, piece of stamped postal stationery or revenue stamp that has been cancelled before being affixed on a cover or parcel, or before being deposited at the post office for mailing.  Precancels allow the mailed item to bypass normal post office canceling, thereby expediting the mailing process, but their use is restricted to permitted mailers.  The original basic design of all precancel stamps features city and state names inside overprinted horizontal lines or bars.

Since the 1970’s the USPS has produced “lines only” precancels (sometimes called National precancels), using lines or bars but with no information identifying a city or state.  Since these lines only precancels were generic they allowed the same precancelled stamps to be used throughout the country.

All US precancels up to the 1986 8.3 cent Ambulance Transportation Coil stamp have these overprinted horizontal lines or bars across the stamp.  Later precancels do not have these horizontal lines or bars.  Current US precancelled stamps use printed inscriptions such as “Bulk Rate”, “Non-Profit”, etc. that are incorporated into the stamp's design.  Stamp collectors differ on whether these stamps should be counted as true precancels or not.

There are two basic types of the traditional United States precancel stamps:

1.  Bureau precancels, which were printed and precancelled by the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington, DC.
2)  Local (city) precancels, which were normally precancelled in the city or town in which they were intended to be used.


Bureau precancels

Bureau precancels were printed when the Post Office Department felt that large orders of precancels could be produced more inexpensively by the Bureau than through the alternative of hiring smaller local printers.  They were ordered andprinted in large bulk lots of at least 500,000 sheet stamps or 250,000 coil stamps.  Bureau precancel overprints were only used on specific definitive stamps and stamp sets.

Bureau precancels (other than the National precancels) always use single lines (never double lines or bars) above and below the names of the city and state.  Several definitive stamps that were normally produced with tagging have untagged Bureau precancel "varieties" - the untagged versions being known to exist only as Bureau precancels.


Local (city) precancels

Smaller orders for precancelled stamps were printed locally using either electroplates or precancel devices such as rubber stamps.  Unlike Bureau precancels, which appear on only specific definitive stamps and stamp sets, local precancels potentially exist on virtually any US stamps.  Many are fairly easy to find but some are quite rare, with only a few examples known to exist. 

There are several main types of local precancels, although there are thousands (if not more) of varieties. 

1.  Typeset and hand-stamped precancels. 

These are easy to identify because they lack any uniform design.  The precancel markings themselves range in quality from very good to pretty crude.

2.  Single Line Electro (SLE) precancels, produced by local post offices using Electroplates.

3.  Double Line Electro (DLE) precancels, produced by by local post offices using Electroplates.

4.  Dated precancels, produced on denominations greater than 6 cents. 

In 1938, the Post Office Department began requiring all precancels with denominations over 6 cents to bear the mailer's initials and the month of use.  Designed to prevent re-use of precancels, the most common dated precancels are MW (Montgomery Ward) and SRC (Sears Roebuck & Company). 


Tomorrow's post here on the Wholesale Postage Stamp Spotlight Blog will talk about how to collect US precancels.  Stay tuned!

Collecting Precanceled Stamps - Full of Variety and Challenge





Precancels (also spelled pre-cancels) have been around for more than 100 years. There are many thousands of varieties, and collecting precancels can present remarkable challenges yet still be pretty inexpensive. Precancel stamp specialists search for those varieties, along with stamp errors such as town or state mis-spellings.



What is a precanceled stamp? The earlier types of US precancels are overprinted stamps, sometimes locally applied, but more often applied by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. These earlier precancels typically consisted of a definitive, commemorative, parcel post, special delivery or Christmas stamp overprinted with a city or town name between two horizontal bars or lines. That practice ended in the 1970s and 1980s, when the US began to produce service-inscribed stamps such as the Butte Nonprofit coil stamp. This type of precancel features the words "bulk rate," "nonprofit," "presorted" and the like as a part of the stamp design itself rather than having any overprint.



But no matter which type, a precancel is what it sounds like: a stamp that has been canceled before being used to carry the mail. Less processing is required by the postal service when precancels are used, so they can be sold at a lower cost to their users. But mailers must have special permits on file in order to take advantage of their reduced price and use precanceled stamps as postage. Most individuals do not qualify.



Because of the plethora of available types of overprints (many different states and even more different cities and towns) as well as the many different stamps that were overprinted, collecting precancels is challenging yet fascinating. How does one begin?



Perhaps the best way is to sort the stamps by city and state. They can then be organized by set, such as the Presidential issue or the later Liberty series. They can be mounted on album pages created by the collector or placed in stock pages.



Precancels are a hot stamp collecting specialty and precancel study groups exist throughout the United States. The Precancel Stamp Society has even created a reference book to assist collectors in identifying the different types, varieties and errors: the Catalog of United States Bureau Precancels.