Hongkong ID Please

Hi
Got this in a commonwealth lot. Veterans please help out in the ID...



Also wondering about the stampings in Black and also Blue

Thomas

SG0028 (1880) T001 02c qv [0m1]carmine.jpg

Typical fiscal opt, there exist thousands
for this trading port.
could be something like HSB hong kong shanghai bank co
or any one of thousands, generally exist in purple
strikes.
Could be a commercial overprint, I have one "MB"

Yours looks like "B & Co"

I cannot see any black opt.
May have been on a parcel and the hammer has moved.

As to ID, you have a range of possibilities.

If it's watermark Crown CC, SG 28 (dull rose) or 28a (rose); there's also an inverted watermark listed: £32, £30 and £400 respectively. If it's watermark crown CA and perf 14, SG 32a (rose-pink) at £32; there's also a perf 12 £7500, watermark inverted £170 and watermark reversed £500.

I'm inclined to agree with Rod about the purple letters: looks like a fiscal use to me, although it could be part of a forwarding agent's cachet I suppose. The 'B. C.' do rather suggest 'HSBC', don't they?

Thanks for clarification Tony,
my catalogues are packed in Wridgeways.
I am working off my database.
HSBC seem ok, but the capitals are widely separated, No?

The capitals are certainly very widely spaced. I suppose it could happen on some large (say foolscap) document. (Though, come to think of it, a document that large would likely carry a higher franking than 2 cents. It would more likely be some sort of deed, requiring high values to pay stamp duty; 2 cents looks more like duty on a receipt or something of that sort.)

Thanks rod and tony for the feedback.

I have cropped the image where the blue letters are ....



Looks like "B. & Co." to me.....

Thomas

I think you're right, Thomas. Still leaves open the question of whether this is a fiscal use, or just a forwarding agent's cachet.

Can we have fiscal use, with a CDS strike

Not hard to imagine how it might have happened: a government charge paid at a post office, say.

I do recall that New Zealand used CDSs which look dangerously like postal cancellations on its postal-fiscals, in fairly recent times (well, in my lifetime ...)