Same Stamp, Same Value, Different Color

US Special Delivery 1888 (Scott E2) and 1893 (Scott E3)

US Air Post 1958 (blue, Scott 51 & 52) and 1960 (carmine, Scott 60 & 61)

US Air Post Special Delivery, 1934 and 1936 (Scott CE1 and CE2)

US Postage Due, 1879 (brown, Scott J4) and 1891 (bright claret, Scott J25)

Here are a couple of Christmas stamps from Sweden.

Beautiful stamps from Slania, Lithio...

These are from Ungarn

Charkhari State (of the dreaded Post Office glue pot) played around with the colours of its stamps in the 1930s and 1940s. It used four different colours for the ½ Anna. Here are three - missing the scarce black:



with the ½ brown on cover:



and three for the 1 Anna:



and the 1 Anna brown(ish) on cover:



one copy having been removed with powerful steam machinery.

The different colours may have been intended to extract money from the collector; Charkhari certainly had form in that area. Still, it would have cost a total of somewhere in the neighbourhood of $US0.05 to buy one of each of the ½ and 1 Anna colours, so hardly outrageous.

Incidentally, Charkhari seems to have had a bit of a thing for brown stamps. In 1909, it produced a brown ¼ Anna bottom value and a brown 1 Rupee top value of the set it released that year. (I recall someone once remarking that the first task of a new wife was to go through her new husband's wardrobe, and eliminate all his brown clothes.)

Two more from my neighbor to the north -- the 4c, dark carmine, 1949 (Scott 287) and the 4c, orange vermilion, 1951 (Scott 306).

Jammu and Kashmir, in the Classic era, never could make its mind about the colours of its stamps. The ½ Anna stamp, for instance, was issued in black



red



green



(and believe it or not, that appalling print quality makes it more likely to be genuine), and blue

Is this another one in the set Tony?

From my collection and Austria

Peterethio, you might need rather more than ordinary glue to get that one to stay on a letter. And then cancelling it ... a common or garden hammer, perhaps?

This is a cap of a Pilsener Beer Bottle!

That would be an improvement on our dot matrix type cancellations that the post office currently uses.