Postage stamps indicate that postage is due on mail. In the past, insufficient postage resulted in mail being returned to sender, but now recipients pay the difference. France introduced the first stamp to prevent postal workers from pocketing funds. Stamp collectors can find value guides and notable stamps.
Postage stamps are stamps that are placed on mail by postal workers to indicate that postage is due. Most countries today use a rubber stamp that reads “postage due” with a line to enter the amount of postage due, rather than using special stamps. When someone receives mail marked “postage due,” he has to pay the postage before he can collect the mail. This is often done by placing a notice in someone’s mailbox to indicate that postage due mail is waiting at the Post Office.
In the early days of organized mail, when letters were sent without sufficient postage, they were often returned to sender, with the sender having to rectify the situation before sending them again. There may be insufficient postage because someone didn’t know how much to pay or because someone was hoping to smuggle a letter through postal officials; in any case, returning it to the sender was the approach taken to deal with it.
Eventually, post offices developed an alternative. Instead of returning to sender, they delivered the letter, but noted the amount of postage, with the recipient having to pay the other way. However, some people feared that unscrupulous postmen would take advantage of this practice by marking mail as “postage due” and pocketing the funds. As a result, the postage stamp was introduced, with the stamps pasted onto the letter or bundled onto a stack of mail, and the consumer paying the postage shown on the stamps.
France appears to have been the first nation to introduce the stamp, and it caught on quickly. By being held at the post office, the stamps could be protected, so that people looking to generate extra funds from their postal routes would not be able to pocket postage. These stamps were also sometimes used to charge people for magazine subscriptions and some other mail order items.
Some stamp collectors are interested in postage stamps, although they are generally less valuable than regular stamps. They also tend to be less visually interesting. Value guides are available to people who wish to collect them, and photographs of some notable stamps can also be seen in the guides. Even stamp collectors are often happy to show off their collections to curious people, so those with philatelic knowledge might ask to see some real-life examples.
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