Page 2 - Demo

..Precanceled postage stamps%u2014generally called precancels%u2014were simply stamps that were canceled before being affixed to 3rd or 4th class mail. Their use required a special mailing permit, and one of the primary uses of precanceled stamps was to send junk mail.Junk mail is more politely known as direct mail, bulk mail, or marketing mail, and for many people it has always been a nuisance. In 1944, the Saturday Evening Postwrote, %u201cNo form of advertising makes more people madder than direct mail.%u201d In 1972, 25% of all the mail we received was considered junk mail. In the 21st century, with the increase of email, the Post Office is not delivering as much regular first-class mail, but we continue to find junk mail in our mailboxes. In 2019, 63% of all the mail in the United States was considered junk mail.Why? Because junk mail makes people money. Advertisers have carefully worked out formulas and procedures that allow them to profit financially even if only a tiny percentage of people respond to their marketing mail. A 4% response rate is considered very good, so even though most of us toss the unsolicited catalogs, requests for donations, flyers, coupons, and credit-card applications into the trash without looking at their contents, enough people do look to insure that somebody makes money. And it works for the Post Office too, which took in $13.9 billion from people sending marketing mail in 2020. In fact, the Post Office used direct mail themselves in the 1930s to promote savings bonds. Money can also be made in selling mailing lists of potential customers. Such lists can be specially targeted to particular interests, hobbies, professions, age groups, and income levels. For example, at a modest cost per 1,000 names, you might obtain a list of %u201cBuyers of Fountain Pens%u201d or %u201cDonors to Liberal Causes.%u201d If you were interested in selling hearing aids to the elderly, it could make sense to do a test mailing with 3,000 names. Then, if you sold enough of hearing aids, you could mail out 100,000 or 500,000 flyers. That%u2019s a lot of junk mail.Some people collect vintage junk mail. But they don%u2019t call it junk, they refer to it as historical ephemera. And it does have historical significance, by helping us gain a better understanding of the history of advertising. Plus, a significant amount of marketing mail is not considered junk. In fact, some of it has been very much appreciated and looked forward to. For example, in 1872, Aaron Montgomery Ward%u2019s first %u201ccatalog%u201d consisted of a single page, but that expanded into a 150-pages in 1876. The Ward%u2019s catalog was so valued%u2014and regularly ordered from%u2014that it helped the company reach a million dollars in sales by 1888, which is when Richard Sears released his very first mailer, to advertise watches and jewelry. No matter what others may call it, the Post office considers direct mail, bulk mail, and marketing mail all to be 3rd-class mail. And besides the Sears%u2019 and Ward%u2019s catalogs, it also includes newsletters from our churches, schools and stamp clubs, as well as public-television programming guides, all of which we look forward to receiving. So, there is considerably more to junk mail than junk.Besides collecting junk mail itself, people also collect the precanceled postage stamps used to send junk mail, which are the subject of this album.Aaron Montgomery Ward, the %u201cFather of Modern Mail Order.%u201d