Serbian Orthodox Church Revenue Stamps - Help Needed

I recently acquired the following stamps from an online auction which I have not been able to identify.

The stamps bear a Serbian Cyrillic inscription which translates to "Tax of the Serbian Orthodox Church", and they depict the Church's coat of arms or church/monastery buildings.

They seem to date back to the first half of the 20th century. The last two stamps in the photo bear the date 1941, with an additional boxed handstamp dated 1945.

Can any members provide more information about these items? I would be interested to know how exactly these were used, whether they're regarded as revenues or as cinderellas, their dates of issue etc. Were they used in Serbia only, or throughout Yugoslavia? Are they listed in any catalogues?

Thanks in advance!

While I don't know anything about these stamps, I can make some educated guesses about them. They are written only in Cyrillic letters while postage stamps of Yugoslavia used both Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. That suggests that they were intended to be used only in those areas using Cyrillic script (Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and possibly Serb areas of Bosnia). Other cue is that Serbs were (are) Orthodox while Croats and likely Slovens were (are) Catholic. It is unlikely that Catholic Church (or related institutions) would use stamps designed for Orthodoxs Church (or related institutions). However, all of above is just speculation / common sense, not knowledge on these stamps.

Hi Halfpenny Yellow,

Some of these stamps are listed in John Barefoot's catalogue Yugoslavia Revenues issued in 2003.

Without going into two much detail, this lists three relevant sets:

1933 - Eight values which seem to match the basic designs here although only one design is shown and one later version of a different design.

1941 - Eight values with the same designs in different colours but with the border of crosses (but not the arms and 1945 overprint).

1945 - Ten values basically the same as in 1941, but this time with the arms and 1945 overprint, including two additional colours of the 2D and one "50 on 2D" surcharge.

Barefoot also doesn't list any of the other surcharges shown here or any stamps with face values over 100 dinars.

There is also a set in Hungarian currency with different designs and issues listed for the Islamic Religious Community and the Roman Catholic Church.

The Yugoslavia Revenues catalogue is a first edition so I'm sure many more stamps and varieties could be added if a new version were ever published.

I find this a very useful catalogue and it still seems to be available from the publisher. It only costs £15 which I think is very good value.

Here's a link to John Barefoot's page and a picture of the front cover:

https://www.jbarefoot.co.uk/philate...revenues.htm

Thanks for the replies Kuikka and Nigel! :D

It makes sense that these were likely used in both Serbia and other Orthodox-majority areas of Yugoslavia. For now I'll put them under Yugoslavia - unless any evidence comes up that they were used exclusively in Serbia.

I had never heard about religious revenues before coming across these - I guess they would be a good side topic for someone interested in philatelic research. It's interesting to hear that there are also similar Catholic and Muslim issues - I wonder if there are any similar items from other countries/religious denominations as well.

The information from Barefoot is excellent - thank you! While I was searching further about these I came across this listing on ephila-stamps.com which seems to be of the original 1933 set plus the Catholic issues below it.

Looking through active and completed listings on Delcampe I came across several documents bearing these stamps - it seems that at times they were used in conjunction with normal Yugoslav revenues. The stamps seem to be quite common so they must have been used rather extensively at the time.

SFK Auction 52 ,Lot 2052 shows these stamps on documents.
http://www.auction-sfk.com/index.ph...&tolot=2056#
http://www.auction-sfk.com/