So Who's Afraid Of The Indian States?

curious to know if anyone has any info on paper used for this Type A9, Scott 30, Soruth? The bottom one here seems to be on a darker, heavier paper and hence seems to be a little different in coloring. The top one matches the hand full of others I have, hence the lower one here seems to be an outlier.

This is SG 49.Comb perf. 14.There is a toned paper type also.
About the thickness of the pa^per I don't know.

Sorry, just noticed you mention SG.... Where do you see the toned paper type? So it looks to me that the darker one is referenced in SG and the lighter one in Scott. Tks and apologies.

SG does not indicate paper types for this stamp.
Various printing shades known.
e bay example below:

I've found these. Any idea? Any value? They're ouside "my comfort zone"!

The three stamps are from Nepal. First two are 1 anna stamps of the third period and the green stamp is a four annas, again from the third period. Nominal value. The first and third stamps have postal cancels the middle stamp is less clearly so.

You might find this catalog of Nepal of interest:
https://www.rfrajola.com/NepalCat/NepalCat.htm

Thank you very much for the information and the very interesting link.

Dhami state court fee stamps.(1939-1948)
Belonged to the Punjab Hills States.It was a very small state of 28sq. miles.

Hey,

New collector to this area. This is a great thread! Looking for opinions whether the stamp below is an original (Bamra 1/4a Black on Yellow) or a reprint. Thanks for any info on how to tell reprints, copies, and imitations.

It is a reprint.
The genuine letter is different.(underlined red).

This is Bamanda (that is the correct name of the state) 1891 ¼A 2nd reprint of 1888 1st issue on thin yellow paper from position R2/1(5) in the sheet of 20.

This is how the original Bamanda 1888 ¼A SG 1 stamp looks like.



Bamanda SG 1 is a very rare stamp and any ¼A 1st issue should at first automatically be considered reprint.

OK, thanks for that.

Is that letter considered the 4th letter? In this case it is 4th from either side but what I am asking is I see SG sometimes says nth letter. but not which end you count from.

Also the first letter on the right looks different as does the 2nd from the left end. Are those also valid ways to distinguish a reprint? Likewise is the difference in vertical position of the last two letters on the right also indicative of a reprint?

I assume these letters spell out something including a value. It looks to me like the value is entirely contained in the letter at the right end. Is this an accurate assessment?

SG's so-called 4th character (counted from the left) is the Oriya letter La (enclosed in green in the image) of Masul which literally means tariff/fee.





The rightmost character in the 3rd line simply denotes the value, indicated by the Oriya merchant's notation.



Other minor differences like that of the vowel diacritic after Oriya letter Ma and vertical positions of the last two letters on the right, can only help in plating but those are not indicative of reprints.

SG has this irritating snooty habit of describing letters in Indian scripts as nth character, detached loops, joined loops, accents, curved lines, lines over, dots under etc. etc. all those BS.

The best way to describe is to type the letters. Anyone nonconversant with Indian scripts then can easily compare the differences.

Joy,

Thanks very much. As someone who is totally ignorant of Indian scripts, that was interesting and enlightening. About how many fundamentally different Indian scripts were used in the stamp issuing Indian Princely states? This one appears to be known as Oriya. I figure if I am going to collect these I should learn as much as I can.

Best,
Jack