Collectors furious with Royal Mail after rise in ‘defacing’ stamps

Furious stamp collectors have accused Post Office staff of defacing stamps with biro pens and rendering them “worthless”.

Instead of being “cancelled” with official, dated postmarks, stamps are increasingly being scrawled on by Post Office workers, enthusiasts have said.

Collectors and dealers have reported an alarming uptick in the practice, which is carried out on the orders of Royal Mail to show stamps have been used.

Cancellation postmarks can significantly affect the value of stamps. Pen cancellations, which are sometimes used in place of official postmarks, are held in low regard among philatelists.

Today, early pen cancelled stamps from America, where the practice used to be more common during the 19th and early 20th century, are still worth considerably less than examples with hand-stamped postmarks.

Now, the apparent increase in use of pen scrawls on used stamps is causing uproar.

Joseph Cottriall, director and stamp valuer at auctioneers Warwick & Warwick, said: “Postal staff used to cancel stamps beautifully with rubber stamps which would leave a circular postmark. This would keep the stamp’s value.

“But over the years, more and more, our stamps are being scribbled on with biro. Workers are no longer taking the trouble to postmark them.”

He added: “They have become lazy. I think they are bypassing the process of hand stamping them now, because postmarking does take time.

“Our customers, particularly overseas where we use more stamps on deliveries, complain like mad. It’s frustrated people for a long time, but it’s getting worse.

“Stamp collectors simply don’t won’t want them, so they get chucked in the bin.”

Keith Krober, owner of dealers We Buy Stamps Ldt said stamps cancelled by pen were rendered virtually “worthless”.

One Telegraph reader from Kent, Chris Barmby, in a letter to this newspaper said he now finds commemorative and everyday stamps often arrive “defaced” by Post Office staff.

He said: “I now find on a regular basis that both the commemorative and definitive stamps I receive in the post – which would have been suitable for inclusion in my collection – are no longer going through the franking machine but are being defaced by Post Office staff. 

“There was a time when stamp collectors were valued by Royal Mail, but no more.”

Franking machines are used to stamp official marks on letters or parcels in large quantities to show postage has been paid, as opposed to manually marking stamps. 

A Post Office spokesperson said its contract with Royal Mail to sell its postal services states stamps on large letters or extra stamps on letters can be cancelled by pen, adding stamps on parcels were still cancelled by “date stamp”.

A Royal Mail spokesperson said most stamps are still stamped with official marks as they pass through its automated systems, but admitted “there are occasions where items have been missed during automated sortation and must be cancelled manually by pen.”