What Is The Blue Line On Top Of The Stamp? Thx

You did not magnify it very much, but it looks like a felt tip pen mark.

Peter

The blue mark looks to be from a blue pencil/crayon. Registered covers were typically marked with a large blue cross covering the envelope, and sometimes the stamp or stamps were in the path of the marking device.

Thanks a lot for your answers, but please can you explain what does it exactly mean? is there a reason why they do the blue cross, isn't the post mark good enough? Where can I read more about it?

thank you,

I don't know if it was an official Universal Postal Union rule at any time, but I have seen the blue cross on many registered covers from around the world. It would certainly make registered mail distinctive and recognizable by mail carriers.

Perhaps another SCF participant knows the definitive answer.

Supposedly once upon a time the British Post Office used to tie bundles of registered mail together with blue twine. I seem to remember reading this somewhere - might have been on this forum!

Peter

Hi Robi,

Here's a link to a Wikipedia article which gives some of the history of registered mail:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_mail

"The registration of letters as known today was introduced in 1841 in Great Britain. The letter had to be enclosed within a large sheet of green paper. The green sheet was addressed to the Post Office where the recipient lived. The green sheet was then used as a receipt and was returned to the office of origin after delivery. On 1 July 1858 the green sheet was replaced by a green silk ribbon and shortly afterwards by a green linen tape. In 1870 the tape was replaced by green string. On the introduction of postal stationery registration envelopes in 1878 the string was replaced by printed blue crossed lines. The blue crossed lines have survived on registered letters to the present day."

There is a example shown at the top right of the article with a blue cross but it's not very clear. Usually the crosses were much larger and went across the envelopes top to bottom and left to right.

If you do a Google search for images with "registered envelope" you'll see many examples from different countries including both blue crayon crosses and printed blue (or red) crosses on prepaid registered envelopes.

In the UK for many years there was a regulation that if you put a blue cross on a envelope and posted it without paying for registration then it would be registered by the post office and the recipient would have to pay the fee.

You see variations on this from various countries, e.g. a red cross, or a single line in blue or (on some German express post letters) a diagonal cross in red.

The current UPU Letter Post Manual only has one reference to a "blue cross" but it at least reflects the practice:

"137.4 DOs which mark registered items in their internal service with a blue cross are recommended not to put this marking on items of this type originating abroad, as this procedure gives rise to complaints from senders of philatelic items."

I see the same comment in a 1964 UPU document.

I don't know if there was were earlier regulations or guidance on this.

By the way I think the postmark is much more interesting than the blue line!

It's from the city of Bozen/Bolzano which is now in Italy.

Thank you all for your replies and specially for you Nigelc