India Help With ID

A couple from India are giving me a hard time. Any help is appreciated. References to Sc#'s are doubly appreciated!

The top-right stamp looks similar to India-Faridkot, but minor differences are throwing me off... I suspect the bottom-right is a revenue? Any info on the RJE? .... And I suspect the laft-hand is off an envelope?

The orange one is from Indian postal stationery and will not be found in the regular catalogues. The four Anna blue stamp is a revenue one and, again, not in regular catalogues. The small brown stamp is from the Native State of Faridkot but not sure if it is a regular postage issue, or revenue?? Postage issues are supposed to be an ultramarine colour according to the Scott's Catalogue.

Hope this helps?

Chimo

Bujutsu

Yes, Bujutsu, every little bit helps! Thank you very much!

Scott isn't the best catalogue for India or the Indian States. Collectors of "Uglies" use the Gibbons catalouge, which had more imformation on the issues of the Indian princely states than does Scott. FYI

The top right stamp was from Faridkot State - however this stamp appeared some time after Faridkot had ceased producing its own stamps, and had started to use Indian stamps overprinted for the State.

A whole series of imitations of the early stamps was produced, including your 1 Folus value. This is what the legitimate postage stamps of Faridkot looked like:



(note that the legitimate stamps were handstamped one at a time onto the sheet)

And this is how Faridkot stamps looked, by the time your imitation was produced:



Very boring!

Your last (4 Annas) stamp is not really a Revenue, it's a Telegraph stamp. Gibbons now list these for India: yours is an SG T6 catalogued at £1 for the used half (Telegraph stamps were always cut in half, with the top half going to the sender). There is also an inverted watermark (Crown over INDIA) error recorded at £80 for the used half.

This is what a whole Telegraph looked like:

tonymacg, thanks for all the info on these.

This might be a dumb question but... judging by the presence of a postmark on that Faridkot stamp, I'm guessing they were still accepted as postage?

No, I'm afraid the postmark on the Faridkot is also bogus: it doesn't mean anything. The Faridkot authorities were most obliging: you could have your imitations mint or used, just as you liked.

Genuine Faridkot covers from before 1885 are scarce to put it mildly, but here is a mangled but genuine cover, with the correct postmark for the period:



And here is a genuine piece from about the time of your imitation:



I should have added that the imitations are so common, and Faridkot specialists so few, that the imitations are effectively worthless.

tonymacg, Those are some nice examples you have there.

Do you know when the one on the left was made? I'm assuming it was cut from a cover?

Thanks again.

Jesse

I can't read the postmark on that Queen Victoria but I did some hunting online and found one on a cover dated 1892.

According to two very ancient sources (Higgins & Gage catalogue and the Robson Lowe Encyclopaedia) that cover was issued in 1891, and was replaced by a permanent 2 Annas 6 Pies cover in 1892. Unfortunately, there's no market for Indian cut-squares.

Just to add to the comments on Faridkot: It was by no means the only Indian State to make money selling imitations after the State Post Office closed down. Bussahir State was still selling imitations of its stamps, like this



in 1943, even though the Bussahir State Post Office closed in 1901.

That wasn't the end of it either. Orchha State quite legitimately issued these stamps in 1935:



For whatever reason - either the State forgot to pay the printer, or the printer decided to take its payment by other means - this issue soon got right out of hand, and you could buy it mint for peanuts. Finally, in desperation, the Orchha authorities stamped a special seal on the backs of the stamps



to show they'd been purchased legitimately and at face value over the post office counter. (The seal on the back of these 10 Rupee stamps shows that some blithering idiot paid the full 40 Rupees for them. 40 Rupees would have been a bit more than a month's wages for an Orchha State postman at the time ...)

Interesting stuff, tonymacg. Thanks for sharing it!