Paris And NY Spy Glass What Is The "T"

I believe the Centimes 20 s is the postage due but what is the T NY?

T for Taxe - Postage Due

If I remember correctly, rate to France was US 5 cents. Underpaid was considered not paid and a penalty equal to the proper postage was added, making it 10 cents due or 20 centimes French and to be paid by the unfortunate recipient of the letter. The T with the NY indicates that the postage due was assessed in New York by the foreign mail office. The 20 centimes was also added in New York.

Thanks tonymacg and jobi01. I always like these busy covers

Nice cover, stampcrow!

Classic, visiting this forum, and the input from the members, has really given me more appreciation for covers.

"Underpaid was considered not paid and a penalty equal to the proper postage was added, making it 10 cents due or 20 centimes French"

That is not accurate concerning this cover. There was 3 cents paid leaving an underpayment of 2 cents. This underpayment was doubled giving a total due of 4 cents. The four cents was converted to INTERNATIONAL centimes which was, in the case of USA, one US cent equals five International Centimes making up the T 20 centimes in the "opera glass" marking. The French authorities had to convert the International centimes to French currency... which happened to be 1 = 1

Great info, thanks scotzm.

You're both correct.

jobi might be thinking of the earlier (Pre-UPU) US-French treaty where partial payments were not accepted and underpaid mail was treated as totally unpaid. The UPU rates did, as Scot said, accept partial payments.

"That is not accurate concerning this cover"... was my opener, billw2. As the USA/France treaty you mention ended in 1869 and the cover is dated 1919, the treaty terms and conditions no longer applied. Anyway, the postage due calculations and markings make interesting research material.

Incidently... the letter is re-addressed to University of Grenoble where Lieutenant Walter was detailed to attend.

edit: it reads Universite' de Grenoble to be accurate

Here is another example of the NY "T" postage due although this one baffles me. It appears that this was mailed from San Francisco, went to NY and was marked postage due by the foreign mail group. But there are no postage due stamps and the card appears to have made it to England? Any thoughts?
Thanks
don

In many cases when GB postage due was only pennies, the postman would pay it himself rather than go through the proper procedure as it was a hassle sometimes to collect such small amounts. Other times the postman would put a form in the letterbox stating an item was due postage and could be collected at the local PO and, on payment, the item could then have due stamps attached and cancelled or simply just handed over with nothing attached. Sometimes the postage due marks were just ignored and the item delivered anyway.