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🎶Whenever, Wherever
Jun. 1st, 2022 10:16 amYou've heard of USPS Forever stamps, but how about Wherever stamps?
I got a letter from my friend C, who was in Barcelona recently.
"Oooh, a letter from C from overseas!" I thought. Then I looked at the stamp and saw it was a US international stamp. I know these well, as we have family in the UK and Japan, so I buy them often.
"Hmmm, so, she must have sent this letter when she got home," I thought. "But in that case, why did she use an international stamp? ... And why is the cancellation in Spanish?" But the letter was kind of heavy, so I decided she must have used the international stamp to cover the extra cost. As for the cancellation, well, Spanish is a widely used language in this country, so maybe her post office in Pittsburgh just happened to have a Spanish cancellation stamp.
I sent her a text saying how the stamp had confused me, but I'd figured things out.
She replied:
Mind = Blown
I looked at the cancellation again, and sure enough, you can just make out "Barcelona" over the stamp. (If you click through to Flickr, you can see it larger.)
So the Spanish postal clerk either didn't notice, or saw it and thought, "Eh, it's a stamp--good enough."
And now I'm thinking how great it would be if we had international postal reciprocity like that! (Although I really enjoy foreign stamps, so I wouldn't want *everyone* to use their own postage overseas.)
Note: I was so mindblown by the US stamp passing in Spain that I wondered if I've been wrong all this time and you can use your own nation's stamps to mail things home from another nation, and the answer is no. No, you can't.
Here is a Spanish international-mail stamp:
I got a letter from my friend C, who was in Barcelona recently.
"Oooh, a letter from C from overseas!" I thought. Then I looked at the stamp and saw it was a US international stamp. I know these well, as we have family in the UK and Japan, so I buy them often.
"Hmmm, so, she must have sent this letter when she got home," I thought. "But in that case, why did she use an international stamp? ... And why is the cancellation in Spanish?" But the letter was kind of heavy, so I decided she must have used the international stamp to cover the extra cost. As for the cancellation, well, Spanish is a widely used language in this country, so maybe her post office in Pittsburgh just happened to have a Spanish cancellation stamp.
I sent her a text saying how the stamp had confused me, but I'd figured things out.
She replied:
I sent it from Spain! I just happened to have some leftover international stamps and I didn’t even think that they wouldn’t work in the Spanish mail system, LOL! I didn’t even think about that until now!
I looked at the cancellation again, and sure enough, you can just make out "Barcelona" over the stamp. (If you click through to Flickr, you can see it larger.)
So the Spanish postal clerk either didn't notice, or saw it and thought, "Eh, it's a stamp--good enough."
And now I'm thinking how great it would be if we had international postal reciprocity like that! (Although I really enjoy foreign stamps, so I wouldn't want *everyone* to use their own postage overseas.)
Note: I was so mindblown by the US stamp passing in Spain that I wondered if I've been wrong all this time and you can use your own nation's stamps to mail things home from another nation, and the answer is no. No, you can't.
Here is a Spanish international-mail stamp:
