Pictorial and Special Cancellations
The United States Postal Service distinguishes between special cancellations which have a caption publicizing an event, and pictorial cancellations, which contain an image of some sort. Special cancellations are essentially a type of slogan cancellations.
In the United States, official pictorial cancellations are almost invariably applied at special "stations", i.e., post offices existing only for a limited time, usually one day, at special events, although there are frequently other pictorial cancellations that are not officially described as such — they are among what are called special cancellations and are special die-hubs added to machine cancels, which usually contain merely a slogan but sometimes contain a picture. There are a very few exceptions in which a particular post office uses a pictorial cancellation on all its mail.
The range of allowable subjects is very broad, and may include a variety of commercial tie-ins, such as to movie characters.
Canada Post uses automated cancellations with computer-printed messaging. In this way, the corporation can automatically print promotional messages on each envelope while simultaneously cancelling the piece of mail. Messages change throughout the year, and include seasonal messages ("Merry Christmas / Joyeux Noel") and promotional messages (such as Canada Post's web address).
Other post offices such as the Isle of Man Philatelic Bureau also create special pictorial cancellations as they did in 1985 to mark the anniversary of the aircraft Douglas DC-3. A special handstamp was created depicting a Dakota flying "free" and not "boxed in".
Read more about this topic: Cancellation (mail)
Famous quotes containing the words pictorial and/or special:
“The difference between human vision and the image perceived by the faceted eye of an insect may be compared with the difference between a half-tone block made with the very finest screen and the corresponding picture as represented by the very coarse screening used in common newspaper pictorial reproduction. The same comparison holds good between the way Gogol saw things and the way average readers and average writers see things.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“A special feature of the structure of our book is the monstrous but perfectly organic part that eavesdropping plays in it.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)