Telegraph stamps are stamps intended solely for the prepayment of telegraph fees. [1] The customer completed a telegraph form before handing it with payment to the clerk who applied a telegraph stamp and cancelled it to show that payment had been made. If the stamp was an imprinted stamp, it formed part of the message form. [2]
In most countries, the cost of sending a telegram was paid using normal postage stamps. These can often be identified by their distinctive telegraphic cancels or punched holes. In some countries and at some times, special telegraph stamps were produced or postage or revenue stamps overprinted to pay the fee (e.g. Nicaragua, Ecuador). Private companies also issued telegraph stamps in countries where the telegraph network was in private ownership.
The first telegraph stamps issued might be those of the English and Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company, released in 1853. The first government-issued telegraph stamps were issued in India in January 1860. [3]
Occasionally postage stamps ran out and telegraph stamps were used for letter postage as an emergency measure, for example in Spain in 1879.
Telegraph stamps are regarded by many philatelists as collectable. They are listed in most country specific catalogues though not usually in general stamp catalogs. The French Yvert & Tellier and the latest Stanley Gibbons catalog of British Commonwealth stamps do list these stamps. Telegraph and Telephone Stamps of the World by S.E.R. Hiscocks (1982) and Telegraph Stamps of the World by John Barefoot (2013) are the only catalogues which list worldwide telegraph stamps. American telegraph stamps are also listed and described in detail in United States Telegraph Stamps and Franks by George Jay Kramer. The first American telegraph stamps were issued by the New York City and Suburban Printing Telegraph Co., probably in 1859.
The Royal Philatelic Collection of Queen Elizabeth II has many telegraph stamps as George V was an enthusiastic collector. It includes examples of British and Commonwealth stamps as well as private companies such as Bonelli's Electric Telegraph Co. Ltd., the Electric Telegraph Company and the British and Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company. [4]
One sideline to the story of telegraph stamps is the Stock Exchange forgery of 1872–73, which was discovered in 1898 by Charles Nissen when examining used stamps from telegraph forms. [5] The stamps were found to be forged due to the absence of a watermark and because they had impossible corner lettering. It is believed that a clerk in the Stock Exchange Post Office, London had been using forged one shilling green stamps on the forms instead of genuine stamps and keeping the fees. [6] The culprit was never identified, but examples of the forgery are now sold for many times the price of the genuine stamps.
The telegraph was superseded by the fax, email, and mobile telephone text messages. The last telegraph stamps are thought to have been issued in 1993 by Honduras. [7]
Philately is the study of postage stamps and postal history. It also refers to the collection and appreciation of stamps and other philatelic products. Philately involves more than just stamp collecting or the study of postage; it is possible to be a philatelist without owning any stamps. For instance, the stamps being studied may be very rare or reside only in museums.
A stamp catalog is a catalog of postage stamp types with descriptions and prices.
Yvert et Tellier is a postage stamp dealer and a philatelic publishing company founded in 1895 in the northern French city of Amiens, where the head office is still located. The logo is a circle divided into a snowflake and a smiling sun. It is a pun on the name of the company: hiver, été liés sounds a lot like the French pronunciation of Yvert et Tellier.
A revenue stamp, tax stamp, duty stamp or fiscal stamp is a (usually) adhesive label used to designate collected taxes or fees on documents, tobacco, alcoholic drinks, drugs and medicines, playing cards, hunting licenses, firearm registration, and many other things. Typically, businesses purchase the stamps from the government, and attach them to taxed items as part of putting the items on sale, or in the case of documents, as part of filling out the form.
The postage stamps of Ireland are issued by the postal operator of the independent Irish state. Ireland was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland when the world's first postage stamps were issued in 1840. These stamps, and all subsequent British issues, were used in Ireland until the new Irish Government assumed power in 1922. Beginning on 17 February 1922, existing British stamps were overprinted with Irish text to provide some definitives until separate Irish issues became available. Following the overprints, a regular series of definitive stamps was produced by the new Department of Posts and Telegraphs, using domestic designs. These definitives were issued on 6 December 1922; the first was a 2d stamp, depicting a map of Ireland. Since then new images, and additional values as needed, have produced nine definitive series of different designs.
Batumi is a city on the Black Sea coast and capital of Adjara, an autonomous republic in southwest Georgia. The city was under Russian rule at the beginning of World War I, but local unrest led to Turkey entering the city in April 1918, followed by the British in December, who stayed until July 1920.
The Rare 2d Coil was an experimental vertical coil stamp, denominated 2d, issued by the Irish Post Office in 1935 and is one of the scarcest, and most valuable, Irish stamps. It is often referred to by stamp collectors simply as "Scott 68b" or "SG 74b", being the Scott and Stanley Gibbons stamp catalogue numbers respectively.
The Chalon Head is the name of a number of postage stamp series whose illustration was inspired by a portrait of Queen Victoria by Alfred Edward Chalon (1780–1860).
The postage stamps of Vietnam were issued by a variety of states and administrations. Stamps were first introduced by the French colonial administration. Stamps specifically for Vietnam were first issued in 1945. During the decades of conflict and partitioning, stamps were issued by mutually hostile governments. The reunification of Vietnam in 1976 brought about a unified postal service.
Charles Nissen was a British philatelist, and stamp dealer who discovered the famous stock exchange forgery and wrote, with Bertram McGowan, the definitive book on the plating of the Penny Black.
Panama was formerly a department of Colombia and used overprints of Colombian stamps from 1878 until it gained independence in 1903. However, from 1903 to 1905 sets of stamps with overprints were still used and it was only in 1906 that the first printed stamps by the Panamanian postal administration were produced with República de Panamá.
This is a survey of the postage stamps and postal history of Ghana, known as the Gold Coast before independence.
Dr. Steve E.R. Hiscocks was an expert on telephone and telegraph stamps who in 1982 wrote the first catalogue on the subject since Walter Morley's work of 1900. He also wrote the first ever catalogue of telephone cards (1988) and the first catalogue of telegraph seals (2007).
This is a survey of the postage stamps and postal history of New Brunswick.
This is a survey of the postage stamps and postal history of Griqualand West, a former British colony that is now part of South Africa.
The Universal Private Telegraph Company, Limited was formed in 1861 to exploit Professor Charles Wheatstone’s 1858 Universal Telegraph. The company was meant to "carry out a system by which banks, merchants, public bodies and other parties may have the means of establishing a telegraph for their own private purposes from their houses to their offices, manufactories or other places".
Bonelli's Electric Telegraph Co. Ltd. was formed in August 1860 by Henry Cook, an American, of 69 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, and Eastbourne, with an initial capital of £25,000. The company was formed to exploit the telegraph system of Gaetano Bonelli of Italy, but the firm had limited success, and it failed in 1864.
This is a survey of the postage stamps and postal history of Eswatini, formerly Swaziland.
British Somaliland, a British protectorate in present-day Somaliland, issued adhesive revenue or fiscal stamps between 1900 and 1904. All Somaliland fiscals were revenue stamps of India overprinted BRITISH SOMALILAND.
John Barefoot is a British philatelist, stamp dealer, and publisher, best known for his catalogues of revenue stamps which are known collectively as the "Barefoot catalogue".
