Japan. These Hinges Caught My Eye ?

Hello all,
I was about to lay some on damp cloth last night to de-hinge when I spotted colour under one of the hinges, colour being an enermy :) I carefully unfolded it to find these, went though the other 20 plus stamps from Japan in the mix & found the others. I won't be removing these now, I think their cool Thought I'd share them with you all.
Is this a normal practise back then to put your name(I'm guessing) on hinges ?

Cheers....Jad

German meaning sample without value. Middle stamp looks suspicious.

Thanks redwoodrandy, what a great idea, I'd like a few sheets of those myself, I should have picked up on the German side of it too but it went right over my head until your post
Good news to me as I have a small collection of forgeries, now I'll have to find a site to research all those that I found in that batch just incase they all are. I appreciate your time & information, a great help

All the best...Jad

"Muster ohne Wert" translates as "Sample without price".

I think these are customs etiquettes that were pressed into service as hinges.

By etiquettes, I mean little labels, like we used to use for "airmail". "Sample without price [or value]" would have been used by manufacturers and salespersons on merchandise samples.

I agree with Philatarium.

Thanks, Bookbinder Bob!

One additional thought I've had since I first posted is that, in some countries, at some times, there was a preferential rate class for merchandise samples (like media mail today). So, perhaps, rather than for customs purposes, it was used even on domestic mail in a German-speaking country in order to qualify for the merchandise-sample rate class.

As for the genuineness of the stamps itself, all are kosher; although the middle 1sen 5rin (1 1/2 sen) blue is a cutout from Kiku (chrysanthemum) post card, Japanese Stamp Specialized Catalogue No. PC18 (or PC19), issued at 1899.



- unechan

Philatarium, you are absolutely correct. The Michel Deutschland-Spezialkatalog shows a 'commercial samples' rate for German domestic mail in its rates schedule for April 1, 1900 to July 31, 1916. For commercial samples up to and including 250 grams, the rate was 10 pfennigs. An ordinary domestic letter weighing between 20 and 250 grams was 20 pfennigs.

That's awesome! I'm glad you had the reference to check on this!

Hello all,
That's amazing input, this took a really interesting & very unexpected path for such a seemingly small find.
I'm really stunned at the level of knowledge that keeps showing itself here in the forum. My hats off to you all.
Thanks too for the card scan, very nice item ;)
Best I can do to thank you all is post a scan or two of those I'm sorting now as eye candy.
I see I have a lot of work ahead, as I've spent 8 months now just getting my stamps out of dampness damaged albums,(Flood),.. into countries only so far. So you'll be getting sick of me soon :)
Thanks so much everyone !

Respectfully.....Jad.