Early Birthday Present - Jammu & Kashmir

If you don't want to just go to page two (which would be fine with me), I'd request a page with some bicolors...Jaipur or Soruth or ?

917 and counting...you're well on your way, 'addict!

Collin

Dean, I hope you're not trying to classify your Indian States by Scott. The very first thing you need to do is to get hold of a Gibbons India catalogue, or a Part 1 (or Commonwealth 1840-1970 - they keep on changing its name). There are a lot more interesting things lurking around among the Uglies than Scott gives credit for. Take Cochin, which you've shown here. Around the beginning of WWII, Cochin switched from having its stamps printed by Perkins, Bacon in London, to a local firm (The Amalgamated Printers in Madras - now Chennai). At the same time they changed over their watermarked paper and their postage rates, and called in all their old stocks and started surcharging them. This made for a very complex series of issues, some of which are very scarce.

The last stamp on your page, for example, exists printed in recess (by Perkins, Bacon) or litho (by The Amalgamated Printers), with two different sizes of the word ANCHAL (which simply means 'postage', by the way) and in the case of the litho stamps, in two different perforations, 11 or 13x13½. Then there's a rare inverted watermark variety on the recess printed version ...

Do keep on posting images - particularly of anything that you're having trouble identifying. We might be able to help you - and you never know your luck. There are some great rarities among the Indian States, if you know what you're looking for. This one, for example



Barwani SG 10 is worth a dollar, on a good day, but this one



Barwani SG 15

I'll happily give you $3000 for.

Ok. here are some pix. of stamps from Jaipur and Soruth, ... I think


Sorry about the photography, I am a stamp collector, not a photographer. These are taken with a Kodak and desk lamp. Dean

More..

more? little kings.

Some interesting stuff. The Jaipur stamps in the middle of the first page like these



are good fun. They were printed in sheets of 6, as you can see, in the Jaipur Jail. It seems that the inmates were a bit unimpressed with the work, because they made a number of spelling etc mistakes in the ¼ anna and ½ anna values, as well as regularly double printing the sheets. These stamps used to be very common, even in sheets, but they're becoming a little harder to find now. Used were always harder to find than mint, and used on cover are quite hard to find:



The second last stamp on the bottom row, from Jasdan, is worth a rather closer look. Most Jasdan stamps are quite scarce, and some are downright rare, especially used, as yours seems to be. (Fakes do exist.) But the cheapest used Jasdan in Gibbons is rated at £180.

That's great stuff, Dean. You can go a lot of different directions with what you have there...or keep going in the same direction.

If you've got more to share, I'm sure you'll have an audience...

Collin

The Bhopal on your second page also get quite interesting. The surcharges in row 5 included (again) quite a range of spelling errors



(SG O321b - 'THEEE for 'THREE')

and



(SG O319b - 'THRFE' for 'THREE')

inverted letters



(SG O327b - first N of ANNA inverted)

and even inverted surcharges



(SG O327a)

but the first two rows of the THREE PIES surcharge expressed the new value as ¼ Anna, which was the same thing (there were 12 pies to 1 Anna), so you can find pairs showing both surcharges:



(SG O318b)

In the Bhopal triangulars, you can find various errors also. Some of them are pretty obvious



SG 331a - imperf between

but some of them aren't so obvious:



SG 331b - 'SERVICE' overprint missing

(All these stamps were only available for Bhopal government mail, and were usually overprinted Service to indicate that.)

You can also find the missing SERVICE on other Bhopal stamps of the era:



SG O313ca

as well as this missing letter



which isn't listed in Gibbons. Not a huge great rarity, but a nice little thing to have if you can pick it up cheaply.

The Palaces set also has a number of errors - double prints of parts of the design, shifted prints, missing overprints ... and you name it. I also have this one



SG O340

which looks to me like an inverted 'A' instead of a 'V' in SERVICE, but the experts tell me it isn't so

The fourth stamp in the bottom row of your third page is from Duttia. Don't make the common mistake of thinking it's used. It isn't: all Duttia stamps were supposed to be stamped with a control seal (usually in blue) before they were sold. This is what a used Duttia stamp should look like:

Quick, Dean...more!

Tony's on a roll!

Only because I've temporarily (I hope) run out of work, and the alternative is taking the jackhammer to the soap scum around the bottom of the bath ...

finally we are attracting the right crowd :)

by the way tony. anchal doesnt mean postage in hindi it means part ;)

Of course, it does mean 'post' - I was trying to avoid the lengthier explanation (that these stamps had been intended, and previously used, for both postage and revenue, and that now that separate revenue stamps had been issued, the overprinted stamps were intended purely for postage).

no dear tony anchal means part or stretch we have states named uttr anchal and places vindy anchal. we also have himachal as a state ;) trust me I am a native speaker.

for post the hindi word is dak or the english corruption dawk :)