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The typical postmark error collectors encounter are inverted dates similar to the cover illustrated that I recently purchased on eBay. Going back through history many of the handstamps and machines used to cancel mail have relied on manual changes to be made to the date each morning and - in some cases - it was easily possible to insert the day numbers, month name or even year the wrong way up causing an error. Common sense says these errors would usually have been noticed reasonably quickly and corrected but it's entirely possible that hundreds or maybe thousands of mail items would have had these error markings applied in a busy post office before any problem was noticed.

1861 Cover showing Pearson Hill Parallel Motion machine postmark
with inverted month error in date.

So applying a little logic the more common examples of postmark errors are likely to come from larger post offices in the big towns or cities where the volume of mail could make mistakes more likely to happen and then go unnoticed for longer. These are naturally also the source of the most common postmarks so valuations are already lower for covers bearing them but, even in these circumstances, I cannot see how more than a very small fraction of the overall mail cancelled with a particular postmark would have resulted in any kind of inverted date error. On the other hand, postmark errors from smaller offices handling much smaller volumes of mail are obviously going to be much scarcer just as the normal postmarks are.

Many postmark errors created would have been thrown away unnoticed over the years as few people think to check their mail deliveries to that extent. So I think it is fair to say postmark errors are items of a sufficient rarity to deserve value being placed on them by collectors.

Determining realistic valuations for collectable items is not simply a way of pandering or appealing to people who see collections as a means to getting rich! Many collectors need valuation benchmarks in order to help trade items for building collections and realistic valuations are also crucial to the insurance companies as anyone who has perhaps suffered a house fire or burglary and experienced difficulty claiming for collectables will confirm.

I first became interested in postmarks during the mid eighties. As an experiement I purchased large volumes of British kiloware and accumulations of stamps on paper (including large quantities of expensive older material) and set about checking for postmark errors. I cannot and do not claim any scientific basis to this survey as I couldn't be sure how often the stamps had been checked before. However doing this tedious sorting for myself did help me draw some personal conclusions that enable me to judge my own personal valuations. In fact that tedious work and the findings I made was ultimately what led me to pursue the idea of collecting postmark errors.

In percentage terms the stamps from the reign of the Kings George V and George VI produced the most postmark errors - almost all inverted date errors. The Queen Victoria and Edward VII era came next producing around half the frequency of postmark errors and the modern material sorted actually contained far fewer errors in percentage terms. However the percentage of errors found compared to the postmarks checked was tiny and measured in fractions of a percentage point. At the very most I only ever found one error in more than 1,500 postmarks checked for the King George V era and considerably less for the others.

So how do I believe postmark errors should be valued? It seems logical to me that normal British postmarks are now pretty well documented, catalogued and valued. A common duplex postmark from a big city is usually given a modest valuation to recognise the handling cost involved with trading it, whereas a small village mark will be valued several times greater reflecting the relative rarity. It therefore seems likely that the dispersal of error postmarks is likely to follow similar distribution patterns and allowing a simple multiple to be used for determining guideline valuations.

Now I am not in any way suggesting that inverted date errors in postmarks are worth 1,500 times the normal postmark! Not even close. In truth, the best guide to current valuations for almost anything are the results of actual sales as many factors besides rarity will impact on prices paid not least of which is demand.

So while there may be many postal historians and postmark collectors in the marketplace it has to be recognised that only a small number of these will be interested in acquiring postmark errors seriously. My personal experience in both online and public auctions has been that competition for errors does reliably drive prices many times higher than would otherwise be justified for the normal postmark. I've yet to apply any serious pricing analysis to my records but I've personally been involved in postmark error auctions over the years that have resulted in covers achieving over 100 times more than would otherwise be expected and as little as 2 or 3 times more. The most common level to me appears to be around 6 to 8 times the price the normal cover would obtain without a postmark error and therefore I almost always limit my maximum bids to 10 times what I believe a cover or postmark is worth without any error and, for a common postmark, this may fall as low as 5 times the normal valuation.

Using these multiples has worked well for me although I don't claim it is any kind of 'expert solution' to postmark error valuations. I'm purely using my belief that a postmark displaying a human error such as an inverted date is almost certainly at least a thousand times scarcer than the correct postmark over it's period of use. Couple this knowledge with the exisitng postmark catalogues and valuations and these multiples of between 5 to 10 times normal give me a "sense of values" that I can feel comfortable with and spend money accordingly.

By way of example the cover illustrated above shows an 1861 cover posted in London that was cancelled by a Pearson Hill Parallel Motion machine. It's in good order for its age, as is the stamp, and a fair price I would place on the cover personally for the stamp, cover condition and normal postmark combination would be around £2 to £3 although the stamp and postmark catalogues indicate higher. Because of the inverted month in the postmark I placed a bid of £12 on eBay knowing I would also have to pay an extra £1 for postage. I was pleasantly surprised to find I only had two bidders in competition with me and won the cover for £4.22 plus the £1 postage charge. So the cover only cost me less than half of my valuation. I'm obviously happy with that but many will claim the auction result means the value of the cover is actually only a fiver or so and, of course, I would disagree because I would still pay £12 plus postage for the cover today! 

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