Are These Asian Revenues?

Hi all

I have had these for a while now, but I really don't know what they are. They are obviously Asian, I think maybe Chinese, and I have a feeling they could be revenues. I am no expert in Asian stamps.



If anyone has info, please post!

The top row, and the first two on the second row, are simply inscribed Jiangsu (Kiangsu) Province, and the face value, so probably provincial revenue stamps. The third is a revenue overprinted for use in part of Jiangsu.

The bottom row are inscribed for Peiping, now Beijing. (Calling the city Peiping places the stamps firmly somewhere in the 1920s to 1940s, when Beijing had been dethroned as the national capital. Peiping (or Beiping in Pinyin romanization) means 'Northern Peace'; 'Peking/Beijing' means 'Northern Capital'.)

If you could turn the stamps right way up, it would be easier to read the inscription along the bottom of the Peiping stamps, to work out what they are.

OK, do these scans help at all? They are larger and I messed with them so you can read them better (color is now wrong):

Nells250, thanks for putting them up the right way. I can see now: all three types are tobacco tax stamps.

No way! Tobacco? Cooooool! I've always liked US tobacco revenues, so it is fitting that I should end up with some foreign ones! :-)

But I have to ask: how does an Aussie read Chinese?

Translating is my day job, Nells, along with Japanese and Indonesian and Malaysian. However, as my avatar suggests, I don't actually collect their stamps