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SPS Erred in Ordering Tagged Sea Coast Coils

Tagging on nondenominated (5¢) 'USA NONPROFIT ORG' Sea Coast stamps that was issued Oct. 21 is not an error made by the printer, as the philatelic press was previously told (Stamp Collector, Nov. 18, page 6).

Rather, when the U.S. Postal Service reported the technical details for the self-adhesive coil stamps, it said it would be printed on prephosphored type II paper.

U.S. stamps with face values under 9¢ have not been tagged since Jan. 1, 1991, when tagging was limited to prevent use of tagged, low-value stamps to cheat the Postal Service out of money.

That 1991 policy caused difficulties for many bulk mailers that used low-value stamps on their return envelopes, especially the Disabled American Veterans.

The DAV requested a tagged stamp it could use so that its contributions would not be ejected from postal machinery as unfranked.

The USPS in turn, suggested that the DAV put tagged rectangles on its envelopes, as used on modern U.S. stamped envelopes to facilitate mail-sorting, but the DAV found this too expensive a solution.

When 'USA NONPROFIT ORG.' Sea Coast stamps were announced as being printed on type II prephosphored paper, some collectors assumed that the USPS at last was relenting in its policy, and printing tagged stamps for the DAV.

But it was all a mistake.

Don Smeraldi, a media spokesman for the Postal Service, said the stamps had been tagged because the Postal Service erred in placing the order with the Banknote Corp. of America. He said that any reprints of the Sea Coast coil will not be tagged.

That means it is possible that some of these coil stamps will be untagged as well as tagged.

The reason type II prephosphored paper was ordered is because phosphored paper sometimes does not work in the facer-cancelers that use shortwave ultraviolet light to detect the tagging that tells the equipment where the stamp is, in order to facilitate cancellation.

The tagging on ordinary phosphored paper can be masked by dense inking on the stamp. The type II phosphors are more intense, to allow the tagging to be detected even through such inks.

As Wayne Youngblood noted in his Nov. 18 'For the Record' column (page 6), this is not the first time such coils have been tagged in error.

Some years ago, Youngblood discovered an erroneously tagged version of the precanceled 18¢ Washington Monument coil of 1985.

Collectors also discovered a phosphor paper variety of the non-denominated (10¢) bulk rate Eagle and Shield coil stamp.