Pre-Canceled

When a letter is mailed in the U.S., the sender will buy a stamp from the post office and affix it to the top right corner of the envelope containing the letter. They will also put the destination address in the middle to right portion of the envelope, and their return address at the top left corner, usually written smaller. At the post office, first they mark the stamp, they cancel it to indicate it was checked as to being a new stamp and the correct postage. Then the destination address is read and the envelope directed accordingly.

Pre-canceled stamps are stamps that are sold with the stamps already canceled. This eliminates one of the steps described above, thereby saving the post office time – and labor costs. Organizations that do mass mailings, that can be trusted and qualify for their use, buy these stamps at a discount from the normal rate.

You can see on the stamps on this page that they all have fractional face amounts – amounts less than the normal rate for a post card or an envelope on which they would be used. Some are overprinted with cancelation lines and text describing their intended use – some have their usage as part of the stamp’s design.

Non-profit organizations are permitted an even lower rate. For organizations that do a huge amount of mailing, they’re given a bulk rate discount. Some stamps are overprinted with the word, Presorted. That means that the mail is submitted in batches, with a batch for each postal zip code. That saves the post office more time on directing mail to its destination.

Note

This album page has a desciption from Leuchtturn that says they’re pre-canceled stamps. I see only a few with lines across them. All of them, though, have some kind of overprint. The page also says they’re untagged. So I’m thinking that without the phosphorous hidden tagging and the special overprinting, they’re treated like pre-canceled. Perhaps a better term would be cancel not needed – as in, we trust the sender not to cheat.

Contains 12 spots: own 11 – 11 unused, 0 used.
Album or Web Page Last changed Jul 23, 2025

Stamp Details

The table below lists information about the stamps shown on this page of Lighthouse’s stamp album. For more details about a particular stamp, click on its description. That will take you to the related web page of Colnect.

spot

own

catalog

subject

description

comment

Transportation

1.1	✓	2254	Elevator 1900s	5.30c (sep 1988) definitive, black
1.2	✓	2125a	Star Route Truck 1910s Precanceled	5.50c (nov 1986) definitive, deep magenta
1.3	✓	2126a	Tricycle 1880s	6c (may 1985) definitive, red brown
2.1	✓	2127a	Tractor 1920s	7.10c (feb 1987) definitive, lake
2.2	✓	2127b	Tractor 1920s	7.10c (may 1989) definitive, lake
2.3	✓	1902a	Baby Buggy	7.40c (apr 1984) definitive, brown
2.4	✓	2255	Carreta 1770s	7.60c (aug 1988) definitive, brown
3.1	✓	2231	Ambulance 1860s Precanceled	8.30c (aug 1986) definitive, green
3.2	✓	2256	Wheel Chair 1920s	8.40c (aug 1988) definitive, deep claret
3.3	✓	2129a	Tow Truck 1920s	8.50c (jan 1987) definitive, dark prussian green
4.1		1905b	Railroad Caboose	11c (feb 1984) definitive, red
4.2	✓	1905	Railroad Caboose 1890s	11c (sep 1991) definitive, red

Footnotes

Spot refers to the postion of the stamp on the album page (e.g., 3.2 indicates row 3, position 2).
Amt. is an abbreviation for the face amount of the stamp.
Own indicates the stamp status: ✓ for unused; ✗ for used or canceled; ⭑ signifies I ordered one; ; ✨ indicates it was bought recently; ✠ means an auction bid is pending; and ◎ is used, and it costs too much for unused.
To search by catalog number, go to the search box and enter it in the catalog number box. However, it’s a bit broken; I need to fix it.