On Mar 26, 4:45 am, malcolm wrote:
Re. "Muzarafabad" as an overprint.

Could this be some sort of a fiscal cancel do you think? As it crosses
the stamp at both ends it could have been used to "tie" the stamp to
the document being receipted ( or whatever ) in the same way as
signatures had to cross the stamp to tie UK revenue usages to the
cheque or receipt or whatever.

Did Pakistan use these stamps as revenue as well as postage stamps -
particularly the ones overprinted "service" ?

This seems to be a more plausible scenario than the stamp being used
in Bangladesh.

The problem is that sub-continent stamps ( apart from your beloved
feudatory states ! ) seem to attract little interest - and I am sure
that there are many fascinating byways to collecting this area that
have not even had the surface scratched yet.

One thing I should mention is that the colour has "bled" somewhat so I
guess it has been subject to some pretty heavy soaking. I picked this
up in some "off paper kiloware" so there is no clue there. I had
considered a Parcel cancel - but it is no way a "post office" cancel.

Curiouser and curiouser said the white rabbit?

Thanks all for your input !

Malcolm

I doubt that they would have been used as Revenues, because the
British left India well supplied with Revenues of all sorts. If it is
a Muzaffarabad stamp, I'd guess it is some other sort of office stamp
which has inadvertently been applied to the stamps. A further
possibility might be that the regular Muzaffarabad CDS went missing in
all the excitement, and that this was used as a stop-gap. I think I
recall hearing of a Pakistan Study Group, or something similar. They
would probably be able to help.

Antipodean Tony