Terri's Adventures with the Bermuda Post Offices
Dec 30, 2019 20:37:09 GMT
Bas S Warwick, Mick, and 12 more like this
Post by philatelia on Dec 30, 2019 20:37:09 GMT
A while back I purchased a medium sized Bermuda collection because it had a few nice Key Plates that I needed. About a third of the QEII material was used, the other two thirds were evenly split between hinged mint and mint unhinged. I had nice margin copies of most of those sets so I started wondering what to do with those hinged mint. I mostly collect used and didn't have nice used copies for a lot of those mint stamps, so what to do? Hmmmmm
I decided to put them on covers, mail them in a packet to Bermuda and ask them to cancel them and toss them in the stream. Just out of curiosity to see what would happen, I sent a handful covers to five of the different Post Offices in Bermuda. It seems surprising that such a small island would have multiple post offices, but Bermuda has NINE. I opted to send to Perot, Warwick, Flatts, St. George and Mangrove Bay.
Today the first covers arrived back in Florida - but not as I expected. The ones sent to the Warwick branch were the first to arrive. Instead of cancelling and putting them in with the regular post, they hand cancelled and returned them to me under cover with a nice stamp on the envelope! Freaking awesome! Yeah, technically they are CTO, but they now fill some gaps in my “used” collection. Better than an empty space to me. Plus the stamps weren't damaged or sharpied by the USPS on the return trip.
But the odd part is that they only returned half of what I sent so I'm wondering what happened to the rest of the covers. Will they arrive in another envelope? And will Perot, Flatts, St. George and Mangrove Bay also be as generous? I'll let you know what happens.
Oh one more odd thing about Bermuda - they don't appear to have any way to order their stamps online. The website has a philatelic page, but no buy option. I should hire someone in Bermuda to buy and put them in the mail to me.
I decided to put them on covers, mail them in a packet to Bermuda and ask them to cancel them and toss them in the stream. Just out of curiosity to see what would happen, I sent a handful covers to five of the different Post Offices in Bermuda. It seems surprising that such a small island would have multiple post offices, but Bermuda has NINE. I opted to send to Perot, Warwick, Flatts, St. George and Mangrove Bay.
Today the first covers arrived back in Florida - but not as I expected. The ones sent to the Warwick branch were the first to arrive. Instead of cancelling and putting them in with the regular post, they hand cancelled and returned them to me under cover with a nice stamp on the envelope! Freaking awesome! Yeah, technically they are CTO, but they now fill some gaps in my “used” collection. Better than an empty space to me. Plus the stamps weren't damaged or sharpied by the USPS on the return trip.
But the odd part is that they only returned half of what I sent so I'm wondering what happened to the rest of the covers. Will they arrive in another envelope? And will Perot, Flatts, St. George and Mangrove Bay also be as generous? I'll let you know what happens.
Oh one more odd thing about Bermuda - they don't appear to have any way to order their stamps online. The website has a philatelic page, but no buy option. I should hire someone in Bermuda to buy and put them in the mail to me.
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