Belgium 1946 Provisional Surcharges

I was cataloging my Belgium hoard recently and read in the Scott catalog about the 1946 provisional surcharge. Due to a lack of denominations at new reduced postal rates, the government surcharged Leopold III definitives by applying a "-10%" overprint (by typography). Local post offices were authorized to surcharge their stocks of definitives in a similar manner. Hundreds of types of this surcharge exist, both typographed and hand-stamped.



The top row has 2 of the three government surcharged stamps. The bottom row shows the few local hand-stamped surcharges I dug out of my duplicates. In my little sample I noticed the following styles of surcharge:
Unboxed "-10%" (two types)
Boxed "-10%"
Unboxed "Moins 10%"
Boxed "MOINS 10%"
And there are more out there.

I will have to keep an eye out for these varieties.

Regards, Robert

This is one of my specialties trainwreck.

A couple of other definitive series were also surcharged as well as postal cards etc with the same designs as the stamps.

What I would suggest, if you are really interested in these, is to search the online book sales or the auctions for a book titled "Catalogue Nationale / Specialise -10%" by Franck Van Acker.

It is long out of print, but, still appears every now and then in auctions etc. It is still the most current references to the best of my knowledge.

Chimo

Bujutsu

Bujutsu, thanks for the catalog tip. No hits on BookFinder.com at the present time, but I'll keep a look out.

MOINS -10% on fragment (Map of Holland)

Should add that the 10% reduction was authorized only on certain stamps but some of the branch offices didn't comply and overprinted stamps that they had in stock . So these unauthorized stamps need to be on cover or with clear cancels to be accepted as real .