Postage & Revenue

Postage & Revenue is an inscription found on many, many stamps of Great Britain and its empire. This indicates that the stamp can be used postally or fiscally/as a revenue. Postal use is shown by a usually black cancel, a CDS or killer. Revenue use is typically shown by a blue, purple or vlue-violet cancel or a pen mark.

Both postal and fiscal charges for the same parcel can be paid using the same stamps, likely accounting for postally used very high values that would not be needed only for postal charges. On the other hand, high values marked "Postage" only like the Great Britain Seahorses have been used as revenue stamps often enough.

Note that in British Asia including India, pen marks or company handstamps were permitted on stamps on mail to be taken by messenger to the post office. That was done to prevent theft of the stamps, similar to the way perfins and precancels were used much later. So, such private markings added do mean the stamp was used postally. These are collected by some but often disliked by the general collector population.





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