An inexpensive do-it-yourself specialty.


The Stamp Collecting Report, I'm Lloyd de Vries


When a community has a special event or anniversary, it 
often gets a special mail cancellation from the Postal 
Service. If it includes a small drawing, it's called a 
"pictorial cancellation." 


You can send self-addressed stamped envelopes to the 
community's post office within 30 days after the date of 
the event. They'll be canceled and mailed back to you.


You may want to use stamps whose subjects are related to 
the theme of the cancel, or decorated envelopes.  Or you 
can decorate the envelopes yourself.


The hard part is finding out when and where these pictorial 
cancellations are available.  Local post offices are 
supposed to notify their regional and national headquarters, 
but they don't always do that.  The stamp newspapers compile 
lists....almost as good is the list in the Postal Service's 
POSTAL BULLETIN, which can be downloaded off the Internet.


And if YOUR community has a special event coming up, why not 
talk to the postmaster about a special cancel?

And that's Stamp Collecting this week.  

I'm Lloyd de Vries, CBS News. 

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