In continuance of my explaration with Swiss stamps, I’ll be showcasing Swiss stamps with T-cancel. The T-cancel was primaraly used to collect postage due on covers, cards and other postal items. However, like always there is an interesting philatelic story with twists.

In 1954 Swiss Post offices began using regular postage stamps for the purpose of collecting postage due. These stamps were cancelled with two types of rubber stamps, showing the letter “T” for “Taxe”. Cancel types are “a solid T within a circle” and an “outline T”. Both types are still in use today .

T-cancelled stamps from Switzerland - showing both cancel types.

Another usage for T-cancels was to pay for post-paid return mail items; such as return mail response cards, etc. The post office would accumulate and total the charges at periodic intervals; payment would made by cancelling stamps (with T-cancel or normal cancel).

T-cancels are authorized for use on regular definitive and publicity stamps only. The use of semi-postal (surgharged) stamps for this purpose is known, but a postal directive prohibiting this practice was issued shortly after the first usage.

Most of the T-cancels on the stamp markets are real, but there is severe suspicion that at least some of them (with superb high quality cancels) are made-by-order for collector markets.T-cancelled stamps are not usually expensive, as the price usually mirros the underlying stamp in mint condition.

This article is filed under BOBs (not) Your uncle - bizarre back of book items. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.