Katie,

The chips should have never been shipped in an envelope like the one you show. Have you ever seen a stamp cancelling machine? All the envelopes are in a big stack. As they move towards the machine, each envelope is grabbed by a rubber roller and jerked sideways at tremendous speed. The chips inside the envelope are heavy, and when the roller grabs the envelope, it actually pulls the envelope off the chips, similar to the old magic act of pulling the table cloth out from under a table full of dishes.

I always take chips inside the post office and have the clerk put the meter postage on them, that way they never go through a cancelling machine.

Greg