MIA stamps from ON the parcel. A new one for me, first time in 45 years! | Selling

ricarmic · 2023-01-12T01:31:34.635000Z

Customer in BC contacted me today, as you know I like to put nice stamps on the packages since I'm a stamp seller.This customer is a great customer so I put very nice modern stamps (souvenir sheets for the philatelically conversant) on the 9.5x11 ebay branded cardboard envelope, covering the entire envelope except the expedited label and return address. Note that most of my packages are covered in stamps, normally though they're older stamps doing most of the covering.At some point in the mailstream someone STOLE ALL the stamps off the envelope, front and back! You can see the scrape marks where they scraped/peeled them off, some of the cardboard is missing. There aren't any bits of the stamps which one would normally expect to see because the souvenir sheets are lickem and stickem, they can't be peeled off like the contact cement stamps can be, normally scraping/peeling them off would leave some of the stamps on the cardboard too. I suspect they may have steamed them off, the style of the scrape marks look like that is the case.After they stole the stamps though they put the envelope back into the mailstream and the package was delivered! This part surprises me a bit because one would expect they would have considered the fact that the recipient would complain that the stamps were all taken off in transit, although the takee may have assumed the recipient wouldn't care if the stamps were missing, or they realized afterward it was being tracked.I have had stamps fall off of course and for those who remember the Hockey souvenir sheets ($2.50, $1.80) that looked like hockey cards, I did have some of those peeled off, but never ALL the stamps on the package, this is a first ever event!It is so fortunate that they didn't keep the package, it had several 100 $$ of stamps inside! Silver lining I guess. I'm also glad that as always the stamps inside are enclosed in plastic, that would have protected them if steaming was employed. (the envelope was never opened)Myself and the buyer are going to put tickets in with CP but I don't imagine much if anything will happen. I might get the $25 postage back.If there's anything else newsworthy I'll add it later on....

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MIA stamps from ON the parcel. A new one for me, first time in 45 years! | Selling | eBay Canada EN