Purpose Of Overprints - Deflation?

There are many stamps of lower face value been over stamped to be sold at higher value. I have just noticed two in my collection that were over stamped with lower than face values. Any similar situations?




5 cents to three cents, 8 cents to 7 cents

*** Edited by Staff to clarify topic title. Titles are important! ***

The terminology is "Overprinted", and yes there are numerous examples. More often than overprinted with a higher value as a matter of fact


Peter

Here is the french most famous example

Stamps would logically be overprinted with a lower value to discourage forgery.

Thanks for the three friends who reply and explained. I thought inflation would be the trend and cost of postage will always going higher. It seems I was wrong. By the way, I have the following to show why I thought so:

1 cnet -> 25 cents -> 50 yuan; 1 cent -> 5 yuan -> 1000 yuan

Each overprint to revalue a postal item (whether up or down) must be evaluated on its own merits and should not be broadly painted as inflationary or deflationary.

Many postal stationery items are revalued to use up obsolete stock when the rate changes. Here is a U.S. example following the 1919 rate change (and 3 cent government-stamped envelopes of this period show a similar 2 cent revaluing overprint.)


Similarly to use up obsolete stock, in the early 1950s, the 1 cent Jefferson card (and others) were up-rated to 2 cents.

Stamps have the same variety of individual explanations, especially in remote countries supplied by the motherland. For instance, they run out of 2 cent stamps. What do they do? They have plenty of 5 cent stamps, so they revalue them as a matter of supply/demand to solve a local problem. Completely unrelated to inflation/deflation.

Or a currency change, etc. etc.

Vayolene, What was the reason for the French value-change?

The Chinese stamp in the OP was resurcharged due to a currency change from Japanese occupation money to Chinese National Currency (C.N.C.). The original surcharged stamp was also valid for the Shanghai and Nanking area only.

In Denmark in 1926 and 1927, four definitive stamps and seven official stamps, some from the contemporary series, some from as much as 13 years earlier were surcharged with the value of 7 ore. Some of these involved an increase in face value, and some a decrease, in one case from 27 ore to 7 ore. My guess is that the first class rate was raised to that price and the post office didn't have enough 7 ore stamps on hand to handle the demand and so had to surcharge a few older, less used values

The French 6 franc rose carmine Marianne of Gandon was produced in 1947 for domestic letters. There were still 32 million in stock in 1949 when postal rates changed and 5 francs was to be the rate for 20-50 grams domestic mail and there was no longer a straight 6 franc rate. Rather than pulp or store 32 million of the 6 franc stamps, they surcharged them with the reduced rate.

I think that one reason to downrate postage stamps is that as the overprints are usually fairly easy to forge, from the point of view of the postal service, the downrating the stamps removes the motive of forgers. In uprating someone usually wants to make money with their own overprint.

The photo of stamps on the first thread in this topic is not correct, but I cannot edit it. The correct ones are hear:

0.05 -> 0.03, 0.08 -> 0.07.

Fiji has been running thru an oversupply of obsolete definitives and recently has been overprinting 44c stamps with values as low as c thru 5c. They don't need 44c values and do need the ones they are producing and do not have others of those values on hand. Similar situation for Trinidad & Tobago.