Travancore India

Tony!
Thanks for the sirmoor story.. infact I have never seen a used cover or postcard from sirmoor..
Attached here witht he postcard of Dhar.. have never seen the used cover/card of Dhar too..
The coronation issue stamp of travancore, The one we have posted the proof . have never seen it used on cover , even though the other two stamps in the set at very common on covers.

I have this card from Dhar



which I'm pretty sure has been genuinely used, but without the cancellation, I can't prove it

I also have this cut-(or rather torn-)square from a Dhar envelope



cancelled at Kanawan, a village in the north of the State. It drives me crazy every time I look at it. If the envelope had been left intact, it would have been worth hundreds of dollars or pounds. This is the unused envelope



I have a couple of covers from Dhar, but unfortunately none of the Coat of Arms type. They seem to be even rarer than covers with the typeset stamps

Thanks Tony for sharing these images.. its a real pleasure to see lots of elephants...especially these scare old state materials.
Another cover from Cochin, sent from kings palace.

Very nice! And nice to see the Maharaja charging himself 1 Anna for sending himself a letter ...

It seems that the mail is sent from the "SARVADHIKARIAKAR'S" office (administrative office) of one palace to King living in another palace.

Few more postcards from Travancore!

Tony please do have a look on this stamp, it is from the scan of a photocopy of an elephant exhibit, it says Bundi used to over print its stamps with elephants, if you collect Bundi, please do have a look whether they have elephants.. since it is a xerox copy I cant find the elephants on them and I have not found any one from my part of India collecting any Indian states other than Cochin and Travancore..

The typed comment isn't quite correct. Some sheets of Bundi did have a small oval embossed elephant mark. However this did not apply to all sheets from all printings. It might very well have appeared once on every four sheets from certain printings. Here is an example I have:



and the detail of the embossing:



As I understand it, the mark was impressed by the papermaker, or the paper seller. It was not made by the Bundi printers. The printers might very well have printed four sheets of stamps per single sheet of paper. That would explain how the mark appears on every fourth sheet - from some supplies of paper.

From memory, the same mark can be found on some sheets of Jammu & Kashmir stamps. I don't think I have an example, but I'll have a look.

Thanks Tony for the info, now I know what it is and keep and eye for it.. did you received my email which I had sent yesterday..

Didn't receive your email, however I think you should now be able to use the board email to reach me anyway.

Another Indian state stuff sold on ebay. This was sold on title
"Indian States - stamp of an Indian State with an elephant presumed fantasy bogus"
but still it got sold for USD 10 + 3 (postage), is this a recognised forgery of any state. or can it be a recent forge.

Completely bogus, I'm afraid. There's no name of the State that issued it, and no State ever issued a 5 Anna stamp. The nearest to a 5 Anna were the 2½ Anna stamps issued by Bundi and Orchha, and they're considerable rarities used.

(I'll reply to your email in a day or so. I'm busy on an urgent job at the moment.)

One doubt, here comes two proof's of same stamp of travancore, we can see a difference in colour and a bit on clarity. were they printed on two different type of papers or is it due to aging. the one on right was stored in Indian climate and one on left was stored in Europe.

I believe many of the earlier 20th Century issues of Travancore are found on toned and white paper. However, that may just be due to some having been stored in India and some in the UK.

Here is my pait of proofs



definitely on the toned paper

Thankyou Tony.