India Postage

I inherited several items from my grandad and a pile of stamps was one of them. They are stored in 4 envelops and I opened one of them. They all appear to be from India. Some say 3 pies some say half anna or one anna etc...

Any insight to a value and history? I am looking to sale if they are worth anything but I want to collect information about them first. Thanks for the information in advance!!

http://s863.photobucket.com/albums/...yaqk/Stamps/

G'day Trinity,
run of the mill King Edward7 India
If at my local auction I would expect
to pay $1-$5, the stamps are common,
but may have interesting postmarks.

Sorry, no world cruise, but they belonged to Grandad!
perhaps consider beginning a collection with what
he started. :)
Lots of India collectors here.

To me they are fun stamps (pretty much any stamp is fun). They are relatively common stamps.

What is an interesting postmark? By taking a wild guess I found a few while sorting through them that have the entire date on them. I guess that may be more valuable?

This is where it gets a bit odd, Trinity.

"value" is a difficult mistress.

If you have an established market in a particular
discipline, then the monetry value rises.
If not, and the interest is localised in odd spots,
then the "value" lies in the enjoyment and satisfaction of the
individual.

Example, I know of no market for Indian postmarks
hence value remains with stamp value.AFAIK

Postmarks of Western Australia has a very strong
subscription, and 5c stamps can fetch up to $40
for a rare or "dead" post office.
There is a catalogue to support the scarcity scale.

There is actually quite a market for certain interesting Indian postmarks. Indian stamps from this era were used in a great many places outside India: Aden, Iraq, Iran, the Persian Gulf, Gwadur (an enclave of Oman in what is now Pakistan), Nepal and Tibet, to name a few. Even some usages inside India can be worth a couple of dollars to the right collector, if on envelope. I was happy to pay several dollars for this:





because it was sent from, and was addressed to, two places in India (Bhor and Dhar) I happen to be interested in.

Unfortunately, your stamps all appear to be the postcard or basic letter rate stamps of the period. They were printed in truly vast quantities, and without strong postmark interest, they're basically unsaleable, I'm afraid.

But as Rod suggests, why not put a bit of work into studying them, identifying the locations they were used from, and forming them into a nice little collection?

I knew it, I knew it,
when I wrote my post, I thought
"should I advise the exceptions?" then I thought maybe
too deep and involved.
I knew someone would bring it up.

Philately runs off at huge tangents (thank goodness)

long live india. if you want to sell them using rod's estimate of a $ then pack it all up I have got a bank to fill :)

If anyone wants some then just let me know :) Cause I have zero interest in stamps.

If I'm allowed to say this to a new member, I'd certainly be interested in poking through them, and am willing to cover your postage. I'm in the US, if that matters at all. The towns I couldn't use I would put back into circulation here.

Collin

smauggie, what happened to your post? It was a valid point.

I agree that the 50-post rule for trading and selling is very useful, which is why I feel "funny" about this. Since I wouldn't be paying, or trading, I'm not certain where that falls in the spirit of the rule. I see it as offering an alternative to the waste basket, but I'm not certain about where that falls.

Depending on the outcome,
can I have dibs on the stamps after you Collin?

I hadn't seen your post when I wrote that. Was just trying to clarify the rules for trinity.

I have many different versions on these stamps and I have several of these. Why is this one on ebay for $99.00? I have like 50 of these. I would rather not give them away yet untill I can make sure these are worthless.

http://cgi.ebay.com/1-Anna-Postage-...em5addd0a180

The pictured auction item is listed in the Stanley Gibbons catalogue as India SG#150. No color variations or watermark varieties are listed in my edition. The item is assigned the catalogue minimum value of 10 pence, which is set to reflect the trouble the dealer has to go through in labeling it and keeping it around until someone wants it. The catalogue lists the color as carmine. I'm not sure the seller is suggesting that this is a variation when describing it as red; more likely, the seller didn't have a catalogue available to look it up.

If there is anything, at all, to support the asking price in that auction, it is nonobvious. In most cases, a pen cancellation is extremely undesirable. There are a few places in the world, at a few times in past history, where a pen cancellation is considered desirable. I don't think this is one of them, though I'd love to hear otherwise. I think this is a case of a dream listing in an era of free listings.

In practice, an envelope of fifty of them would sit in a five-dollar bin at my dealer until he got tired of looking at them and moved them into the dollar bin. A few weeks or months later, they'd eventually be gone.

Most public libraries in the US will have a set of the Scott catalogues. It would probably be worth a few hours of your time to take some stamps down to the library and try looking a few of them up. Never know...you might get hooked. (I used the Gibbons catalogue for this example as Gibbons is more reliable than Scott for identifying varieties of British Commonwealth stamps.)

trinity,

the seller is being a jerk.

and dear Cjd,

i thought I was the first one to put my hand up if trinity was looking to sell the indian stamps. did I miss something?