What Are The Three Punctures In This Malta Stamp?

Three punctures can be seen across the stamp, two on the stamp, and one on the extra bit. The most obvious is just about the "AG" in POSTAGE, the second is 6 perforations in from the left at the top of the stamp, and the third is just at the very top of that extra strip. The stamp is otherwise mint. What are these?

If those would have been telegraph stamps, such punctures are a sign they have been used.

On postage and revenue stamps, it might also indicate they were invalidated so they could not be used. The puncture at the edge of the selvedge appears to align with that at the bottom of the stamp. It might be these have been invalidated. Maybe, they were destined for an archive or as specimens, or they may have been destined for the incinerator.

Of course, someone, also, may have been fooling around with the stamp and a perforator.

The top puncture is slightly to the left of the bottom puncture, and the middle puncture is closer to the top puncture than to the bottom puncture. Also, the bottom puncture is slightly larger than the middle puncture. So it looks to me as if the punctures were made separately, not necessarily even all at the same time.

I've seen holes used to invalidate stamps, but they were larger holes, and I don't see any reason for making a hole over the perforations or in the inter-pane selvedge.

My theory is that the stamp has slipped between two or more sheets of paper in which somebody has been punching holes for an unknown reason.

@pjr "the bottom puncture is slightly larger than the middle puncture"

Just a trick of the very slight angle this photo was taken at, in person, they are much more clearly the same size.

I didn't notice the foreshortening effect. This also means that the top and bottom punctures are closer to being in line than I thought, but still not perfectly so, as far as I can tell.