Registration Labels - Why Not?

Wouldn't it be more work to create random numbers instead of consecutive numbers? That wouldn't make sense. Oh, wait, we're talking about governments...never mind.

Sorry,
lost in translation. :(
The sheets, rolls were numbered consecutively when printed,
but the resultant products were not audited
so sheets rolls etc were delivered /printed randomly with PO centres of use.
eg: You may get six sheets of registration labels printed 2350-3650 etc.

Oh, I get you now.

Rodney raised the matter of Sialkot - a town dear to the heart of collectors of the Indian States. Here it is, in an earlier spelling





as Sealkote, cancelling a British Indian ½ Anna postal stationery envelope, used from Jammu and with a Jammu 1867 ½ Anna red watercolour on the reverse, to Amritsar.

Sialkot was on the border of Jammu & Kashmir, and served as an exchange office for most of the mail coming down from, and going up, there. Jammu & Kashmir also maintained an extraterritorial State Post Office in Sialkot, which received and cancelled mail destined for Jammu & Kashmir.

Quelimane - Mozambique

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quelimane

By one of those rather freakish coincidences, I just received this cover from ebay. Not registered, but it did pass through Sialkot/Sealcote





and for Jammu & Kashmir aficionados, it has a particularly clear strike of the Jammu Iron Mine seal cancellation. And, still off-topic, it has a nice set of theft-prevention pen strokes around the Indian ½ Anna stamp (though not the Jammu stamp. Surely it was just as much worth stealing!)

Off topic or not, that is a pretty neat cover.

Was the cover leaving Jammu? Is there little risk of your Jammu stamp going missing between your business and the local post office, but a bigger risk once it is in the system that the India stamp would be liberated? Or, would the India stamp be more readily redeemable for currency? Guessing, obviously.

Lovely clear Sealkote CDS
something they cannot manage in 2011 Great Britain.

Cjd, I really don't know why the sender was only concerned to prevent the theft of the Indian stamp. The Jammu & Kashmir rupee was worth a discount to the British Indian rupee. At one time, it was worth half the Indian rupee. I don't know if that is the explanation: the sender was prepared to lose ¼ Anna on the Jammu stamp, but not the ½ Anna on the Indian stamp. For that matter, I don't know where the Indian stamp was added. It might very well have been later, given its position on the front of the cover (which is tiny, by the way. I was able to scan it setting my scanner to 'Business Card' size!)

And Rod, I agree. These postmarks are an object lesson for the 2011 Australian and British and Indian post offices.

Edit: Even the black seal cancelling the Jammu stamp is a remarkably good effort - for this type of cancellation. The seal reads in Persian 'Seal of the Iron Mines, Jammu 1915'; 1915 Samvat is equivalent to 1858 CE. The seal was also used to create the controversial 1877 ½ Anna provisional in red.

Edit: I see I forgot to answer Cjd's question about where the cover was going. It was sent to Hoshiarpur, in British India, so it travelled from somewhere in Jammu, on to the exchange office between Jammu & Kashmir and British India at Sialkot/Sealcote, and then finally to Hoshiarpur.

This one dates from 1937. There were British Post offices in Morocco at that time.



One from Maceio, Brazil going to Dortmund, Germany. Seven postage stamps squeezed in a small space!

Organised chaos,
but I like it Scot. :) Nice cover.
Stamps just doing their job,
this is how it's meant to be.

To make up for that Kashmiri red herring, a hooded Jind registration label, from the capital, Sangrur



and with hooded cancellations on the stamps, too

Thought that would get your juices flowing

Nabha did it too: