Austria Newspaper Stamp Puzzle

I just bought an old album page of Austria. On it were some newspaper stamps including this one from 1920:



Unlike all the others in this set, and all the others in my own collection, this is perforated. My Gibbons catalogue doesn't list perforated issues at all, and whoever owned the stamp previously had jotted on the album page, "perforated to order" - so I'm wondering what that means, and how come this stamp has perfs.

Examining the teeth, it's definitely been torn from the neighbouring stamps, so the sheet was all perforated at some stage, presumably not by the issuing post offices. I wonder how and why?

Most likely, the stamps were privately perforated. I don't have a catalog handy, but Scott probably has a note mentioning privately perforated varieties. As to why they were perforated: ease of separation. The user didn't have to waste time scissoring the stamps apart.

Hope this answers your questions.

Robert

What do you mean by privately perforated? Presumably a perforating machine would be needed - who has one? Was there maybe a firm offering this as a service for a small fee?

Yes, you can buy perforating machines -- whether it is to make linear perforations or perfins. A philatelic friend of mine bought an antique one last year. Some of the larger office supply stores still carry scoring machines. You can even make your own "perforator" with a sewing machine and fine metal tubes.

And yes, actually I've heard of at least one company that still does offer stamp perforation services.

This is all in the US, but I wouldn't be surprised if this applied to Europe as well.

LOL - I was working on Austria a couple weeks ago and came across one of those as well. And in the labum it came out of, it was just sitting next to the imperf version

I never knew perfing machines were that common! Looking again at the stamp, the perfs top and bottom are not in line with each other, and the same is true of the two sides. So I guess that's the answer - they were run through the machine, which perfed one row at a time.

Regarding the perforations: According to articles and Austria Stamp sites reviewed today (I am working thru many albums of Austria stamps), individuals who purchased sheets of stamps who knew someone with a perforating machine during that period got them perforated to save time cutting them apart. Also, information indicates that the perforated stamps vs. imperf of the same have a little higher value. What that is I don't know and Scott's doesn't say!

Nice to find you here, Father. I think it's always nice to see a vicar who collects stamps.

Perforating machines were commonly found in older print shops. In this case, the newspaper may have had one themselves.