Obock - The Worst Bisect Ever?

Why bother cutting the stamps in the first place!

Weird. Both are left halves. I wonder where the right halves were used?

Looks like postal stationary that was cut up and stuck on another piece.

I don't have this, but the note in Gibbons states that the 25c was bisected vertically between the 2 and the 5 to create a 2c and 5c value. Here, the 2s have been combined to make a 4c.

That's a fun piece. It might be completely philatelic, or not, but I like it.

For anyone not thoroughly familiar with these stamps, they had a depiction of perforations printed on them. The stamps themselves were imperforate. Here is an example of a complete stamp I'd posted in the past:

And all stamps shown have the superextrahumongojumbo margins as to be expected for the issue. Were the clerks there so bad with scissors that they needed such big margins?

TO SAVE POSTAGE COST ===The person had two stamps ,one had the cancel on the right side the other had a left side cancel. Cut them in half and then you could use the clean half's as a unused postage stamp . I seen that done on a few covers ,that's why Germany in the 1920's and 30's canceled both the right side and left side of their high value stamps .

Well what the heck! I did not realise that they came from a 25c stamp! Good find Geoff.

Here is the whole stamp:

I'm assuming that the actual bisection was done by a postal clerk before sale to the public, right? I mean, why would someone who paid 25 cents for one stamp, then cut it in half to create a 5 cent and a 2 cent version? Odd.

Done by the post office and distributed to the clerks. This would have to accounted for by any bureaucratic bunch like a post office. Clerks stocks were/are inventoried/counted regularly. Otherwise, "Let's see, we gave you 100 25c stamps, 25fr total. Then you say you cut them in half and sold 100 halves for 2c, 50 halves for 5c, total 4fr50c sold, and have 50 worthless halves left? Good job! You have a future in politics!"

There are (overpaid) philatelic covers around with several stamps each that include a bisect or two, which basically defeat the idea of having provisionals. At least they show the period of use for the bisects.