U.S.T.C. and T.-C.: Travancore-Cochin’s Postal-Fiscal Puzzle

U.S.T.C. does not by itself mean postage

The new state’s initials were also applied to revenue stamps. A one-anna orange Cochin stamp inscribed Revenue only remains a fiscal even with U.S.T.C. or T.-C. on it: the overprint changes the authority, not the purpose of a receipt stamp.^[3]

The one-anna Anchal and Revenue design is harder. The Cochin guide of 1945 separated the sale of one-anna revenue stamps from its list of postage values and allowed an agent’s discount on revenue sales, stronger evidence of intended use than a broad catalogue heading of postal-fiscals.^[3]

The corrective footnote

Two T.-C. values, six pies on one anna and nine pies on one anna, were first classed in the study as mainly postal. But a footnote in the same instalment says newly found documents showed that the government treated all the postal-fiscal groups discussed, these two included, as revenue stamps. The table and the footnote must be read together; the table alone keeps an interpretation the authors abandoned, and the postal headings on p. 170 are not evidence against the correction. When they wrote, the authors had not yet seen U.S.T.C. six-pies or nine-pies combinations.^[3]

A postally cancelled example would still be worth studying, but it would need to show an authorised postage issue rather than fiscal material accepted by mistake. Neither a postal-looking cancellation nor the words SIX PIES or NINE PIES settles that, so these groups are kept apart from the ordinary stamps, as comparison material.^[3]

Auction listings may follow other catalogue conventions; read them with the authors’ correction. The pictures show survival and wording, not postal authority.^[3][8]

Sources

• [3] Frank M. Cowen and J. Devasya, “Travancore-Cochin: Its Postage Stamps and Postal History”, The Collectors Club Philatelist, vol. 33, no. 3 (1954), pp. 167–170, especially p. 169, footnote 22.
• [8] Christoph Gärtner, 17th auction, 7 March 2011, Travancore-Cochin lots 1642–1652, pp. 104 and 106.