 Pen cancellations were used in the United States into the 1880s, and in a sense continue to this day, when a postal clerk notices a stamp has escaped cancellation and marks it with a ball point pen or marker.In the early period of the issuance of postage stamps in the United States a number of patents were issued for cancelling devices or machines that increased (or were purported to increase) the difficulty of washing off and reusing postage stamps.These methods generally involved the scraping or cutting-away of part of the stamp, or perhaps punching a hole through its middle.