Canton Geneva

Saturday, September 30, 1843.

Canton Geneva Scott #2L1

Imperforate, no watermark, lithography.
Printed by M. Schmid in Geneva.

The people of Geneve were reluctant to use these new stamps, so from March 1, 1844 they were sold for 8 centimes even though the face value is 10 centimes. A half stamp, face value 5 centimes, was sold for 4 centimes. The half stamp was only valid within a locality, the whole stamp was valid for mail between localities in the whole canton.

In 1844 only about one of every 15 letters were franked with these new stamps. Even with the reduction in price, the stamps were only used on about one of every five pieces of mail in 1845.

The stamps were printed on green paper in sheets of 50 double-stamps. The total quantity delivered from the printer was 1,200 sheets, yielding 60,000 double-stamps or 120,000 singles. I have chosen to believe these numbers, though Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries have 600 sheets and many other sources, who seem to have copied each other, have only 60.

Only 6 double-stamps are known today where the left stamp is the right half, and therefore the right stamp is to the left. Double-stamps in the "correct" order are much more common, though still very rare.

The stamps were most often cancelled with a red "Rosette" cancel, but a black grid was also used.

Covers, especially with double-stamps, are exceedingly rare.

A few sites are well worth a visit:

• An excellent website is Timbre Suisse de Collection. It is in French, but has links to enable automatic translation into something resembling English.
• Bill Claghorn's site on forgeries
• A Swiss dealer Gottfried Honegger has some eye-candy - and stamps for sale!
• Some postal history is available at Wikipedia.

This page was last modified on Monday, 03-Nov-2003 13:57:46 PST