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A pen cancel on a Russian postage stamp.
In philately, a pen cancel – symbol – is a cancellation of a
1847 Issue with Pen Cancel.
{{Authority control Philatelic terminology
A pen cancel on a Russian postage stamp.
In philately, a pen cancel – symbol – is a cancellation of a postage
The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letters, and parcels. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid-19th century, national postal syst ...
or revenue stamp
A revenue stamp, tax stamp, duty stamp or fiscal stamp is a (usually) adhesive label used to designate collected taxes or fees on documents, tobacco, alcoholic drinks, drugs and medicines, playing cards, hunting licenses, firearm registration, ...
by the use of a pen, marker or crayon.
Usage
In the early days of stamps, cancellation with a pen was common. Today stamps are almost always cancelled with an inkedhandstamp
A postmark is a postal marking made on an envelope, parcel, postcard or the like, indicating the place, date and time that the item was delivered into the care of a postal service, or sometimes indicating where and when received or in transit. ...
or a machine cancel as this is quicker to apply. Pen cancels are still sometimes seen today when a postal official needs to cancel stamps missed by the automatic cancelling machine.
There are no fixed terms for the different types of pen cancels, but a cancel in the form of two crossed lines has been referred to as an ''X cancel''. Pen cancels may also take the form of notations by the canceller, the city in which the item was posted or the initials of the local postmaster.
A pen cancel may indicate fiscal (revenue) use; however, in the early days of stamps a pen cancel was sometimes used because no handstamp was available, for instance in Nicaragua where pen cancels were used for seven years after their first stamps appeared in 1862.
Values
A used postage stamp with a pen cancel is usually worth much less than a stamp cancelled using a handstamp or machine. In particular, the additional information from the handstamp is lost and the pen cancel may indicatefiscal
Fiscal usually refers to government finance. In this context, it may refer to:
Economics
* Fiscal policy, use of government expenditure to influence economic development
* Fiscal policy debate
* Fiscal adjustment, a reduction in the government ...
(revenue) rather than postal use. Pen cancelling is, however, a common method of cancelling stamps used fiscally. Stamps marked valid for both ''postage and revenue'' use are usually worth less when fiscally used.
Tampering
Some people have attempted to remove pen cancels from used stamps in order to make them appear as more valuable mint stamps.References
External links
1847 Issue with Pen Cancel.
{{Authority control Philatelic terminology