French Colony Proof Stamp 3 Franc Or Centime?

New to this site and relatively new to stamp collecting. Found this stamp in a lot I recently purchased. Looked in Scott and found out imperf equals Proof. Denomination not listed in Scott's. No 3 Centime or Franc exists. What do I have? Can anyone shed some light on this? Appreciate any assistance.



*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***

Hi gettinold.
I have plenty of those. It's Francs and it goes from 1-2 to 30-50. There are actually "old francs" so the value would be similar to US cents from the same period.

When it becomes new francs, you'll see "Fr" appearing next to the number. / or a leading 0 such as 0.40 .

Sophie65, sorry but you are wrong, those are centimes 100 centimes = 1 Franc
in 1960 they adopt the new Franc and 100 old Francs become 1 new Franc. 0,40 is 40 centimes ( please note they use the coma not a dot ) Centime = 1/100. The cents come from it; cent in French is hundred

From a calculated guess, the Franc was about 25 cents US at that time, this stamps will have been the equivalent of a ½ cent


DO not confuse Fr with RF and that means Republique Française

Those are not proof but stationary , the margin are way to big for an imperforate.. The color of paper fit with a stationary, I will check later.


here just as reference the stamps for that period ( not the stationary the OP present ) , showing c for centimes and fr for franc






Here how look a 1 franc stamp of that period, they use capital F






Fr was use for old Franc on this 1930 stamp

The problem with its not being a proof is that it doesn't fit the values produced for the Dubois series. I couldn't see anything about this in Yvert.

GeoffHa, since it's a stationary, you have to look in the Higgins & Gage to find it, I will post in few hours as my Higgins are at home ( I'm at work )


What make me think it's a stationary is the colour of the paper, a proof for a stamp will have been on a white paper no ?

I was right here the Higgins, since it's a mint one, no great value. Someone may have make an effort to cut so square to make believe it was a proof or an essay.

Remember that Higgins & Gage was printed between 1964 and 1986 so values MAY be widely out of date. Not in all cases of course, but it is something to keep in mind when quoting from this catalog.

Hummm , I was more quoting Higgins as a positive ID of the stamp, I don't have much interest on price, I use them only to roughly gauge my buying. BUt even at 10x the catalogue, so $ 5 , still a low value stamp.


Gosh, I was to reply it's in British Pound, I'm too use to work with Barefoot those day.... I forget for a moment that Higgins was US not UK

Excellent - thank you. These are attractive - I'll have to look out for them.

I'm sure that Jenny's much too sophisticated to think in anything other than £s.

£s are passé.

Thank you all for your interest in my post. I find my local library is limited in reference materials. Scott is all they carry. (I'm lucky they even carry that publication.) I understand from your posts that this item was once a Wrapper. Someone apparently cut out the stamp perhaps to reduce the size into something more manageable for their collection. Though the stamp has little to no value it's historical value is what keeps me interested in this new found hobby. Thanks again all.