I'm no expert on Turkish stamps, but the overprint which looks like "irri" is the year 1331 (in other words, 1913). It's the old Persian calendar - don't know why they were overprinted that way though.
These overprints were applied in 1915 to make used of old stocks of stamps because new supplies couldn't be obtained from the printers in the UK owing to the war.
Both overprints give the date as 1331 which is 1915 in our calendar.
The second stamp was originally issued as a charity stamp for war orphans but was then used as a regular postage stamp.
Which calendar would that be? From the info I have, using the Hijri calendar, 1331 is 1913, incidentally, before the war started. Persia overprinted stamps in the same way in 1915 as 1333 (unmistakably so, since the last three digits are the same).
Thank you everyone for the input. I did a little reading at lunch about the "war orphans" stamp overprint. So they basically re-issued and overprinted what they had left from the war? Are there a limited amount of these overprints? How common? Very interesting history here.
Thanks. I've a lot to learn! I assumed it would be the same as was in use in Persia. They overprinted their 1909 defins every year from 1915 to 1918 - but apparently using the Hijri calendar, which is two years ahead of the Rumi. Anyway, your explanation is clearly perfectly correct.
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Posted 11/24/2014 11:35 am
