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An inked impression cancelling a stamp and recording where and when mail was handled.
Also known as: Cancellation, Datestamp, Postal cancel, Killer bars
A postmark is an inked impression applied to mail that does two jobs at once: it cancels the stamp so that it cannot be used again, and it records the office and the date of handling. That double purpose explains the shape — a circular datestamp for the record, and bars or wavy lines extending from it across the stamp for the cancellation. Collectors distinguish the two halves by name, and a cover with a clear strike of both is worth more than one with either alone.
Cancels a stamp so that it cannot be reused, which is why the bars or wavy lines fall across the stamp itself rather than beside it.
Contexts: History, Public information
Records the office and the date an item was handled, which is the half collectors and historians use — a clear circular strike dates and places a letter more reliably than anything written inside it.
Contexts: History, Public information
Has largely become machine-applied, and machine cancels carry advertising slogans, sorting codes and fluorescent phosphor bands that a hand strike never did. A hand-applied circular datestamp on modern mail usually means the item was handled as an exception.
Contexts: History, Public information
A ring enclosing a place name and a date, with a set of parallel straight or wavy lines running out from one side of it across the adjacent area.
Both show that postage has been accounted for.