Spray-on cancel

Due to the need for more speed in cancelling mail, some postal systems began using cancellation machines that would apply ink using spray heads. The cancels appeared much like the output of dot matrix printers.

Canada Post had simple style cancellations beginning in the 1990s. These can be found overcancelling existing cancels as OCR (optical character recognition) machines used to read post codes and apply bar codes would also (re-)cancel mail at the same time.

Beginning in 2006, the USPS began using spray-on cancels with little success, often badly printed that were typically stretched out with unreadable cities and dates. The reason given was that machines needed to be fine-tuned to print properly, but few were found to be fixed. Finally, c.2020, new equipment with better quality was introduced.

Spray-on mailer's postmark permit cancels used by mass mailers exist.





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