Round Stamps

What are these called? They look like they where once connected to the envelope which they where used from. Are they a good collection?

Those embossed (pressed through or in) stamps are known as postal endicia or indicia, cut squares (cut square) from postal stationery or envelopes.

Found in the catalogues at the end of the books (in Scott anyway) they are nmbered by Uxxx type of numbers for different envelopes, newspaper wrappers perhaps or post cards.

There is a thread on SCF here about Mutilated Stationery (stamps cut from the envelopes, a joke kind of).
https://goscf.com/t/19277&SearchTerms=mutilated

Now-a-days the endicia are just sometimes printed on the envelopes.

I do not have the numbers for yours available to me though.

Thank You Puzzler.

To add just a bit to Puzzler's good information, postal stationery as it is called has been produced by most every country for a very long time and it is still being produced. Below is an example of a piece of current US postal stationery. It is made by postal departments by either just printing the design on the envelope or postcard or newspaper wrapper, or as in the examples you show it was also commonly made by embossing a raised design that is colored with printing ink. Some people collect cut squares but most collectors these days prefer the entire envelope or card or wrapper.

Like all other forms of stamp collecting, the collecting of postal stationery can be simple or complex depending on how far you want to go with it. Specialists will pursue not only the embossed or printed varieties, but also the papers, the watermark types and the knife cuts used to form the flaps. Most collectors are content to get an example of the design, maybe in one or two colored papers, and leave it at that. But there are different methods for doing that.

Some of your examples have been cut-to-shape right around the edge of the design. That is frowned upon by adult collectors, but children seem to prefer it. Mature collectors differentiate the kinds of treatment of the part to be collected. Most of your examples which have been given a squared off border of a single layer are called "cut squares." But if the cutting takes off the corner of the envelope and leaves both layers of paper, it is called a "full corner." Some collections are built from these. If the whole envelope is saved, it is referred to as a postal stationery "entire." If stamps have been added to that, stamp collectors will call the combo a "cover" but technically it is a "pse" (postal stationery entire) used with this or that stamp. The postal stationery specialist is not content to merely collect the entire as we normally see it, but will "explode" (unfold) the envelope to show special features of its paper or manufacturing process.

And on and on it goes. Philatelists are bugs about classification, organization, and arrangement. It is a common driver throughout the hobby, hence the rich store of terminology for all the various things one can do with the material. And as long as I'm on it, let me correct one piece of misinformation from above. Post cards are not a part of postal stationery. The cards with indicia of value are properly called "postal cards." They are distinguished from "post cards" in that the latter are privately produced without postage (franking power) on them. Postal cards are only produced by governments (through their contractors) and usually have some amount of postage included in their design. That may seem like hair splitting until you attend a stamp show and go from dealer to dealer asking for the wrong thing. The distinction is a standard part of the lexicon of philatelic jargon.

Have fun exploring the possibilities of postal stationery.

Thank you for the clarification essayk. I did hesitate when typing that but continued on.

Then again, years and ages ago, the opposite was true, with collectors with nice albums preferring cut-to-shape 'cut squares' of embossed stamps.

Old album pages from years ago on ebay.