Hong Kong Help Please

I believe these are numbers 54 and 59.... I understand the 59 could be very valuable if it was used for revenue purposes… Any significance to the word "land" being on the cancellation ? Any idea on the values of these two stamps?

Fred,
$10 stamp duty (green) Revenue Stamp
1885
portrait type of 1867
some papers are very blued.
Wmk Crown CC P14.

Barefoot Catalogue (2000) #27 CV £15
Cancellation unknown possibly Land Transfer, or Land Office.
Opinion:
No increase of value for the cancel.

The first stamp is Scott #62, not #54, with overprinted Chinese characters at left. Not sure if that's even a postal cancel on it or just a dirt smudge, which devalues it.

You have it backwards for the $10 stamp which must be mint or postally used to be valuable. It is also then not really #59 but the revenue stamp noted by rod222.

Thanks!

I didn't know stamp duty fiscals could be used as postage. Wouldn't that be improper usage?

Pure fiscals seem to be tolerated by Hong Kong and are known from other colonies. Many of the high values of dual postage & revenue issues could never be used for anything but mostly fiscal fees with a smaller amount for postage. The Queen Victoria 1 pound stamps with nice SOTN Channel Islands cds cancels fall into that category. Yet they are priced like postally used stamps. They look like postally used only stamps, I suppose.

There are usages with postal cancels only but also usages with both types of cancels, the latter apparently counted as revenue usages. So perhaps if all fees were paid, a postal cancel alone would be good enough or was just passed through by an overworked clerk. Or perhaps the postally used ones are accidentals that missed an additional revenue cancel.

By the way, Hong Kong, like other Asian colonies, allowed pen writing across stamps by the sender to prevent a messenger or employee from stealing stamps off a letter or parcel. So what looks like a fiscal pen cancel with a postal one is purely postal. I think this writing was done with fiscals, too. Of course, since it's uglier, the used stamps are devalued compared to ones with just a postal cancel.

I am aware of one case where a fiscal Hong Kong stamp was pressed into duty during WW II. In this case, I believe the stamp was approved for use as postage to overcome a shortage of 5c stamps coupled with long shipment times to the Colony.

I have obtained a 1938 Hong Kong Fiscal 5c cover dated 12th January 1938.The 2 looks very iffy to me.Can anyone offer advice if it is indeed a forgery?

regards Rob

A close up of the stamp and cancel would benefit.
I only have 1 stamp in my collection of the "Victoria -Hong Kong" with black bars (1936) The slugs appear to be located well right of centre, and the "G" of "HONG" is decidedly flat at the bottom.

First impression of yours looks dodgy, but only an opinion.
Looks contrived to me.

The cancel looks handwritten somehow.

On a second view of the first OP stamp (50c), seem to me like it could be a reperf. For a tear or other damage? The right margin is already close, with the left margin cutting well into the design. Vertically, the bottom margin is fairly close but there is a concomitant wide space at the top. Seems incongruous, as if the stamp could never be printed within both side margins.

Forged cancellation, forged cover.

There were a large numbers of fake covers produced, particularly FDI (dated 11 January 1938). Although the catalogue price for unused is today much higher than used, this was not always the case.

One reason there are so many faked covers is because the green fugitive ink used to print this issue is particularly sensitive to moisture! Soaked examples look very poor.

And the problem seen with mint copies of this stamp is that many were steamed from revenue documents but sold to this day as mint or mint never hinged. I think I have seen only one copy with fully original, undisturbed gum.