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Australasian New Hebrides Co

This is a shipping company that was registered at Sydney, New South Wales in 1887. From 1892 its boats carried mail privately between the islands in the New Hebrides and also to Sydney in Australia.

In 1897 1d and 2d stamps were issued to prepay the local fee for the service. Mail which was going further than Sydney was required to bear a New South Wales postage stamp also.

The stamps were lithographed by John Sands & Company in Sydney and a view of Port Vila. The stamps remained in use until the end of 1899.

In 1913 large stacks of these stamps, unused, came onto the market.


A field post set up in World War 1 for the use of Austro-Hungarian troops in the temporarily occupied territories belonging to Russia, Serbia, Italy and Montenegro. Many refrences refer to this as the Austo-Hungarian Military Post but the specialists in this area refer to it as a field post.

At the same time stamps with the inscription K u K FELDPOST were also issued. These however were for a diffrent purpose and were intended for use by military forces operating within the bounderies of the Austo-Hungarian empire, in the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, (which had been under military goverment since 1908).

These stamps were issued between 1912 and 1915.

Released in April 1915, the field post for a time used stamps of the Bosina and Herzegovina military post with a two line overprint reading 'K.U.K. / FELDPOST'. This was applied diagonally and was for use in the occupied territories. This issue was provisional and consisted of 21 values ranging from 1 heller to 10 krones. On 1 July 1915 a permanent series was released which had the inscription as part of the printing at the top of the stamp. (KUK stands for Kaiserlich und Koniglich meaning Imperial and Royal). This series had a total of 27 values within the same range as the provisional issue.


Known as ALF, this is a GPO invention first used in 1957.

It rearranges letters so that the stamps are all in the same possition, seperates the first from the second class and cancells them.

These are perforations that are caused by the grippers in automatic stamp vending machines. They are caused when the grippers fall onto part of the stamp design rather than gripping on the perforations between them.

These pseudo perforations are additional to the normal perforations on te stamp, and parts of two stamps are delivered.

These are sometimes termed as penny in the slot perforations.

This is a Portuguese overprint meaning airmail. It was applied to the 1934 definitive stamps of Macao for airmail use from July to September 1936. Also included in the overprint were one or more Greek letters which were chosen at random. The intention of this was to make them more difficult to forge.

A Spanish province in northern Castile. During the Spanish civil war they issued stamps with a distinctive overprint.

The Commission ofPublic Works and Communications (of Franco's Nationalist Technicial Council of State) authorised the overprinting of five values of Spanish definitives to commemorate the outbreak of the civil war. The overprint read 'AVILA / POR / ESPANA / 18 JLIO 1936' in four lines. The overprint was in Roman lettering, applied in black, to the 1, 2, 20, 50 and 60 correo values. These stamps were issued on the 24 July 1937.

Another overprint reading 'VITA / ESPANA / AVILA 1936' is also known but this is probably not official.

French, meaning 'Aircraft'. This is found inscribed on the stamps of many countries to denote airmail usage. 'PAR AVION', (by aircraft), isthe internationally adopted inscription used on airmail labels.

An inscription meaning Royal Airmail which is found on Ethiopia's 1931 airmail series.

This is Danish for Newspaper stamp.

In October 1907 Denmark released a series of stamps for the pre payment of postage on newspapers and magazines. The stamps were issued in 1, 5, 7, 10, 20, 38 and 68 ore values along with three higher values, 1, 5 and 10 kroner. The stamps were produced by typography on crown watermarked paper. Between 1914 and 1915 the set was re-issued on paper with the watermark in the design of crosses.

This is the currency unit used in the Portuguese colonies of Macao and Timor from 1894.

100 avos = 1 pataca.

The currency is still used in Macao, but Timor has used the Portuguese metropolitan system, (100 centavos = 1 escudo), since 1960.

A city and department of central Peru which in 1881, (during the war with Chile. 1879 -1883), made a temporary issue of one stamp with an overprint. The issue was a 10c stamp of Arequipa which was overprinted with an oval inscribed 'CORREOS DE AYACUCHO', (meaning posts of Ayacucho). This issue was in use during February 1881.

Spanish for the district of Barcelona, this is inscribed on a local obligatory charity label used during the Spanish civil war.

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