Labels / Stamps On Back? Belgium? Identification, Or Any Ideas. Please .

Near sender address nr. 40, Fort 5 Street in Elsdonk / Edegem.

Is your friends' initials "AI"?

I have my doubts about savings stamps with a face value of 19 (centimes). Those face values would, almost certainly, be in multiples of 5 or lower than 5.
These would have been stuck in a savings stamp booklet. The date is very doubtful on a savings stamp. An end-of-validity date for savings stamps is daylight robbery. A start date is simply nonsensical - of course, it is Belgium - as you would not issue them before such a date. Also the ornate use of such stamps seems extremely wasteful, especially for 1946.

Just FYI, I have no idea about the comments about AI - my friend, whom I trust implicitly, has this cover in his possession. Can somebody explain? Thanks,

The quote from your friend shows traces of Artificial Intelligence cut and paste work.

Ask yourself why, in a country that used a decimal system, they would issue savings stamps of 19 centimes.
Also, ask yourself why savings stamps should have a full date.
Finally, ask yourself why someone would waste 94 centimes of savings stamps - just after WWII, when everything, including money, was scarce, to seal an envelope and at the same time use the possibility of free franking.

It does not appear to be a very likely explanation.

As for fiscal stamps: there is no sign of an issuer - strange if it is a local tax -, nor of a purpose.

Finally, the whole answer is quite generic. Savings stamps and fiscal stamps are completely different things. It does not appear to be a very informed answer.

The answer I posted yesterday and subsequently removed was correct and aligns with NSK's valid concerns. I will try and find the information again without using AI and post it. It may take a while.

Ration stamps were in use in Belgium until the end of 1948. Some Belgian dated ration stamps post 1945 shown in this web site:
https://www.maisondusouvenir.be/rav...belgique.php

Interesting page, perf12. Thanks for posting.

I can't find anything that looks exactly like those stamps. But there's some interesting documentation about Belgian rationing available from the United Nations:
https://archives.ungeneva.org/ratio...ium/download

As you can see if you scroll down, in a document from March 1946 Product 19 is powdered egg and Product 25 is oranges. But the relationship between the numbers and the products seem to have changed frequently. And it isn't proved that these are ration stamps.

Is anyone else seeing a large, stylized capital "E" with smaller "B" and "S" to the left of the number tablet?

Regarding Adventures in AI, I pulled out the "25" stamp and queried three different AIs.

The most "certain" answer was an Italian revenue from 1946, Bollo Serviezo, with a few lines about it and its uses. It also claimed this was a "transition-era" revenue, because Italy was changing from a monarchy to a republic at this time.

The second most definitive answer was a Brazilian revenue stamp,



The third answer was much more circumspect, "likely Czechoslovakian, post-war stamp valid for use on 11 May, 1946."

"Wait, they can't all be right." I'd bet $50 that none of them are close.

Be nice to our new AI overlords. They never forget a face.