Stamp collecting for beginners — 08. Perfins

Sooner or later you will find a stamp with a pattern of small holes punched through it — a set of initials, a monogram, sometimes a little symbol. It is not damage. It is a perfin, short for “perforated initials”, and it was done on purpose.

Perfins are one of the most overlooked corners of the hobby. They turn up in almost every mixed collection, cost little, and each one carries a small piece of business or government history.

Why firms punched stamps

A sheet of stamps is, in effect, money. In the days when a large office kept its own supply of stamps for its post, staff could — and did — take a few home, use them privately or sell them. The stamps were hard to trace, so the losses were hard to prove.

The answer was to mark the company’s stamps so they could not easily be used or sold by anyone else. Punching initials through them with a small machine did exactly that, without making them any less valid for postage. Great Britain allowed the practice from 1868, and it spread to most countries with a large commercial post, including British India.

Governments used the same idea for official mail. Australia, for example, punched “OS” — Official Service — through stamps used by government departments.

Reading a perfin

A perfin is read through the front of the stamp, but it isn’t always the right way round. The punching machines handled several stamps at once, and sheets went in at any angle, so the same pattern can appear upright, sideways, upside down or reversed. Collectors record the position as well as the letters.

The letters themselves are usually the initials of the business: a bank, a shipping or insurance company, a railway, a trading house. Identifying who used a pattern is the detective work at the heart of perfin collecting. Specialist perfin societies publish catalogues of known patterns and the firms that used them, often with the years in which each was in use.

Look at the stamp against a dark background to see the pattern clearly. A magnifier helps with the small, crowded designs.

Perfins in India

Perfins are found on stamps of British India, used by commercial firms, banks and government offices, and occasionally on stamps of independent India as well. They are much less studied than Indian stamps in general, so identifying the users of Indian patterns is still an open field — the kind of area where a careful collector can add something new to what is known.

A practical tip: when you sort a mixed lot of Indian definitives, set aside anything with holes in it rather than throwing it out as damaged. Keep any perfins you find on their envelope if they are still on one — a cover showing the firm’s name next to its perfin pattern is the best possible evidence of who used it.

Collecting and storing them

Perfins can be collected in several ways: by country, by user (all the patterns of one firm), by type of business, or simply as an attractive side collection alongside an ordinary one. Most are inexpensive, because general collectors often regard them as spoiled stamps.

They need the same care as any other stamp, with one addition. The holes weaken the paper, so handle perfins with tongs by the edges, never by the punched area, and keep them in mounts or a stock book rather than hinged, where a careless lift can tear along the pattern.

Where to go from here

That is the end of the beginner series. You can now choose what to collect, handle and store it properly, read a catalogue entry, judge condition, buy safely, and tell the main kinds of stamps apart.

From here, the guides go deeper into the decisions that cost money — what to pay, how to spot forgeries, how to sell — and the glossary explains every term you will come across. Most of all, keep your one-sentence goal in sight, mark what you own in the catalogue, and get in touch with other collectors through the community. The hobby is better shared.