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There's been a little discussion of Jaipur here lately, so I thought I show some of the Uglier issues: the 1911 Jail Press printings. (If you look at a recent Gibbons Part 1, you'll find the printer of these stamps described as the 'Jaipur State Press'. This is also true: in 1911, the Jaipur State Press was in the Jaipur Jail.) The stamps represent the chariot of Surya, the Sun God. The same design was used for the first and second types of Jaipur, and again on the ¼ Anna value of the 1931 set for the Inauguration of the Maharaja.

Back when I was a lad in short pants, not long after the Tabberabberan Orogeny (inserted for Iomoon's sake), these stamps were a real drug on the market. Dealers would pay you to take them away - they came free in Corn Flakes packets, and so on. These days, they're still quite available, but they tend to spark tiny bidding wars on eBay when they're offered. A Simplified set according to Gibbons would be worth £3.10 mint and £8.50 used (CTO, that is; postally used are another matter altogether).

Being typeset and printed, by the inmates presumably, they abound in errors of one sort or another: in the wording and double prints. For the most part, even the errors are still very affordable - a couple catalogue at £0.75, and most at less than £5.

There were three Settings of the stamps. They're most easily identified from the shading around the front legs of the horses.

Now to the stamps themselves. There are two recognized shades of the ¼ Anna. First, the 'green':



SG 16 - Setting A, without errors

And here is a more typical sheet with errors



SG 16a, b, c

This is a typical example of a double print (SG 16a), also with the ¼ inverted in the top right corner at position 2 and no stop after STATE at position 5. This sheet is from Setting C.

And here is the cheaper, 'greenish yellow' version:



SG 17a, b, c

This is another double print, and again with the ¼ inverted and missing stop.

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Next, the ½ Anna value. Again, Gibbons recognizes two shades:

The ultramarine



SG 18a, b, c

This is Setting C, printed double again, no stop after STATE at position 5, and a large J in JAIPUR at position 2.

There is also the so-called '1½ Anna' error, SG 18e:



And here is a single only of SG 19, the grey-blue:

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Lastly, we come to the two high values.

The 1 Anna:



SG 20

This had no spelling errors or recognized shades, and even the double prints are quite uncommon:



SG 20a

And the 2 Anna, for which Gibbons again recognizes two shades:



SG 20 at left and SG 21 at right

Observant readers will have noticed I've shown only a couple of used, and they look thoroughly CTO - and they are. Postally used copies of this set are definitely worth a premium.

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Hi Tony

The one and two anna's look a lot nicer than the other uglies you have shown. A picture that I can make out and even English on the stamp!

Are "Anna's" and "Pie's" the same as Shillings and Pence? (maybe this question should have been posted in the beginners forum?)

Cheers,

Ewen

Covers do exist, but they're very far from common.

Here is a cover with a sheet of SG 16:



and here is a registered cover, franked to 3½ Annas with SG 18 and 20, used with the earlier, Perkins Bacon-printed 2 Anna, SG 12:


(Back) and


(Front)

And to round off this little survey, here are some fakes of these stamps.

The first is a genuine stamp, with a fake cancellation (a common problem these days, with any Indian region stamps that are worth more used than mint). The others seem to have been made on a colour photocopier. The types are all genuine, but the colours are off and the printing is not letterpress.



I hope you've enjoyed this, and that maybe I've aroused someone's interest in Jaipur. These stamps aside, Jaipur never produced a really ugly stamp, and it did have many very pleasing designs - many available at very reasonable prices, too.

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Hi Ewen

The old Indian coinage was even more maddening than £sd. There were 12 Pies to an Anna, and 16 Annas to a Rupee. At around this time, an Anna was worth roughly a penny Sterling, so you can see that the 'high' values weren't exactly all that high.

Jaipur once issued a 5 Rupee stamp. It catalogues at £55 mint - and £400 used; and I've never seen or heard of a genuine postally used copy. They overprinted most of them later, revaluing them down to 1 Rupee.

Tony

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Some interesting eBay realizations for this material lately:

This sheet



SG 17 etc

just sold for $US6.01. The ½ Anna ultramarine sheet



sold for $US7. All pretty much as you'd expect. But the 1 Anna sheet:



went for $US34.50. All after some reasonably spirited bidding; the vendor was in the UK, and quite OK.

So now we know where we stand. I'd be very curious to see what a 2 Anna sheet would fetch

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

And by a nice coincidence, this arrived today:



SG 19

Such a pretty little cover, and such a pity about the pinholes

It's backstamped for delivery Jaipur April Fool's Day 1912. I wonder ...

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

I have been fascinated by this issue ever since I acquired a large lot of the sheetlets about twenty-five years ago. I set out to sort them by setting using the work of J.R.M. Albrecht who was the first to describe the issue in great detail in English. Over time I collected the other major studies by Voisin, Godhino, Renaut, Dawson &c. While most of these studies accepted the existence of Albrecht's "Setting A", nobody other than Albrecht himself claimed to have seen it and it was not in the collection which I had acquired - a collection formed in the 1920s and otherwise containing every setting and variety described by Albrecht. In reviewing the literature, it became clear that either Major Evans or his typesetter (Stanley Gibbons Monthly Journal 31 October 1912) had transposed two letters in his account of Voisin's original chronolgy (L'Echo de la timrologie 473 [1912]) thereby creating a phantom setting that collectors had been looking for over sixty years. (I wrote about this in India Post 88 [1986].)

There is lots of literature on the issue in which most attention has been paid to the centre pieces which have been described in great (and, sometimes, conflicting) detail. However, I think that there is still much to do. For example, it would be quite a challenge to find enough clearly dated used examples from which to give a more precise dating to the various printings; as far as I know, a more careful study of paper types and sizes has still to be done; and a new study of the frames which have been largely ignored (except, I think, by A.C. Mullen) needs to be done. These also show modifications beyond those of the well-known errors of value (inverted, incorrect &c.) and the shifts in typeface and printer's rule during printing will probably yield to further subdivision of the five basic settings. Paolo Bellagamba (India Post 119 [1994]) began research on the issue but died before he could bring his study to completion.

Those three projects alone should be enough to keep devotees of this issue going for a very long while.

I look forward to hearing the reactions of some of those devotees who might be willing to try.

Hippolytus, I've only recently begun to take an interest in these. For years I ignored them because there seemed to be huge numbers of mint sheets around, but not much sign that they were actually used. It was only when I saw my first commercial cover that my interest was aroused.

I have one more ½ Anna cover coming from the recent Mittal auction, but beyond that, I don't have any more covers. If you can suggest what you'd like to see, of covers or sheets or whatever, I'd be happy to post scans.

How many sub-settings have you identified so far? Given the volume of material, I assume there must be plenty of scope for them, among the two lower values at least.

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Tony, When I read your question about the number of sub-settings I have identified, I thought the answer would be easy. Then I looked at what I had mounted years ago and what remains sorted in envelopes yet to be mounted and thought that I ought to be very cautious before making any difinitive statement as it is not just a matter of counting the sub-settings already mounted. I have begun to review the literature and my notes and realise that my memory needs a great deal of refreshing as I have not looked at this issue for a long while. Alas, I think it will be some time before you get a satisfactory answer. Sorry!
I have re-read the Paolo Bellagamba article in India Post 119 which I mentioned a couple of days ago with my own notes in hand. Even taking into account his unhelpful lettering of the clichés from A-L (there being no J or K in the Italian alphabet) I discover that he has arrangements of clichés that I do not believe anyone has recorded in the six major studies of the issue published over the past ninty-seven years! But since his article is well illustrated, it should not take too much work to figure what he has done. The last thing we need is more phantom settings.
Once I have organised a friend into making a couple of scans for me, I will post something I hope to be of interest.

I'm having one of my periodic spurts of work, so I have no time to follow up on things either, but I look forward to anything you can put up in due course. As these stamps are quite accessible - at least as far as price is concerned - they deserve to be brought to a wider audience!

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Tony: This is, as you can see, my first attempt to post an image - something I found that I already had on my computer. I read the instructions on the "how to post images" page, duly signed up with Photobucket, and will now have a go at seeing if I am clever enough to accomplish what is said to be a very simple task.

[img][<a href="http://s617.photobucket.com/albums/tt254/hippolytus_photo/?action=view&current=3IV2009.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt254/hippolytus_photo/3IV2009.jpg" border="0" alt="Jail Press 1"></a>/img]

A pair of the one anna rose-red (positions 1 and 3) in combination with a single half anna of the Perkins Bacon issue. The cover was posted at Niwai on 11 Oc 1913 and has an arrival mark of the next day but with the town name missing. It's nothing fantastic but more of a posting experiment. Let's see what now happens.

Well, back to the drawing board or, better still, call a graduate student!

Do keep trying! I'd love to see it: commercial use of these stamps seems, in my limited experience, to be quite scarce.

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Very nice indeed! That's the first pair of the 1 Anna I've seen on cover.

By the way, do you know the history of the postage rates for Jaipur at this time? The registration rate seems to have fluctuated between 2½ and 3 Annas - or perhaps I simply haven't sorted out my registered covers properly

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Having succeded once, I will try my luck again. I think that this is a rather nice cover which I acquired some years ago: a half anna envelope of the State Press issue with a sheet of the half anna (setting A) on the back. Regstered from Sambhar (2 Oc 12) to Jaipur (next day).



It was only today that I noticed that the registration rates seem to have changes (I can't imagine those using the Jaipur posts willing overpaying letters). See, as I warned earlier, there is a great deal to be done on Jaipur. To the best of my recollection, nothing has been written on this.

Clearly I have not entirely mastered the system. I will try attaching the back once again.

I've noticed the same phenomenon amongst other Surya covers from around the time. Like you, I can't believe in overpayment for letters, but I'm not sure why else the rate seems to fluctuate between 2½ and 3 Annas. Was the additional 6 pies for acknowledgement of receipt, perhaps?

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

A slight diversion. The late John Heppell's site on States forgeries (http://www.princelystates.com/CurrentIs ... -01a.shtml) shows a forged sheet of the quarter anna along with a genuine copy for comparison.

Why anyone would go to the lengths needed to produce a forgery of an issue of which the original can hardly be counted "rare" is another matter. My question concerns the forgeries of the "Jail" Press issue. Probably because the lots of this issue I have acquired over the years came from collections formed before WW II, there include no forgeries and I have never actually encountered one. Do we know anything about when the forgeries first appeared and if they are now as commonplace as the originals once were? Is there someone who now specialises in States forgeries?

Your forged sheet bears a strong family resemblance, in the paper in particular, to a stream of modern fakes that has been appearing on the market in recent years. They all seem to be copies from catalogue illustrations, and often in what purport to be sheets. Sometimes the sheets bear a good resemblance to the originals, but at other times they're farcical, like some sheets of Poonch, with the stamps placed wide apart and perfectly symmetrical. I have examples of the Jammu plate of four, in half a dozen colours, from this stable.

I don't know of anyone who has been collecting them, though. And I can't explain why relatively low value items like these Jaipur 1911 issues are faked. The Jammu sheets are understandable: if they were genuine, you could very nearly afford to retire on the proceeds I can only think the others were originally intended to flesh out packets of assorted Indian States, or perhaps to spice up collections. However, they're generally so obvious as to be laughable.

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

This particular example really is risible as you will notice that all the stamps are identical. That really would take fun out of this issue for some of us! Thanks for your observations.

Headaches with registration rates: on 16 De 12 it cost two annas to register this letter from Niwai to Jaipur.

I presume that the hexagonal seal struck in black simply denotes that the letter was registered and not that two annas had been collected as in the pre-stamp era.

One final posting for today. Here we have a cover registered in Jaipur on 5 Jan 13 for which the sender paid a total of four annas.
Front:

and back

I have examples of the seals used to cancel the first type stamps of Jaipur as well. Perhaps there was some confusion about their proper role in the stamp era, or a reluctance to give them up. This is certainly a late use, though.

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Very nice cover indeed! I still find the 1 Anna the most attractive of the set.

The wrinkling of the cover suggests to me that it might well have been unusually heavy: that might account for the charge reaching 4 Annas. There isn't any other obvious explanation that I can see.

But I wonder why the post office used four 1 Annas instead of, say, two 2 Annas, or even an old Perkins, Bacon 4 Anna (they must have had a few still sitting around). This isn't confined to Jaipur of course; I see it happening in the earlier years in Barwani, too, for instance. Perhaps greater sophistication and familiarity with the system as time went on made the PO clerks happier to use the higher denominations.

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Tony: You may well be right about the weight although the cover itself is not very large. I think that my scanner sometimes likes to make envelopes look more creased than they are when seen in hand!
I wonder if the use of many stamps rather than a single, higher value is a cultural question. One not infrequently sees (apparently non-philatelic) covers from various parts of Asia with a myriad of stamps on the back. Not infrequently they serve the purpose of seals and cover the places where the flaps join but sometimes they serve no purpose other than paying the postage just because the back is the only spot on the envelope not used for the address, airmail stickers and (sometimes) a stamp or two.
Yesterday was a public holiday here so I spent more time on stamps than I have in ages. I unearthed a number of "treasures" I had forgotten about. With your affection for the one anna value, I thought you would enjoy this card. It's interesting both for the values used and for its late date - 18 May 27.

Very nice, and the 2 Anna is an added (I confess, even greater, to me) attraction.

I can make out 'Jaipur' in the registration cachet, but I can't quite make out the post town in the CDSs. It would be odd if the head office still held stocks of the 1911 issue all those years later - but, I suppose they might have been brought out to meet a temporary shortage.

The 1927 date might then be significant. The new printings on Overland Bank paper would have been starting at roughly that time. Perhaps this use of the old 1 Anna was prompted by a temporary shortage of the newer 1 Annas. It's a very long shot indeed, but have you checked the perforations of the 2 Anna? Some of them look suspiciously clean-cut to me, like the perf 12s of (according to Gibbons) 1928.

Incidentally, I can sympathize with you over the way scans seem to draw out every wrinkle and imperfection. I've noticed it too on my material. If ever I come to sell my collections, I'll certainly be using low resolution images!

I now see why I could never find the 1911 issues on cover. You have them all

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Ah, were it but true. When I first started buying these covers a quarter of a century ago, they were relatively plentiful and moderately priced. Now they seem to come onto the market rarely and, then, at inflated prices. I guess that we just need to cultivate that difficult virture - patience.
When material does appear, it is not always without its problems as you well know. I am far from convinced that these two "covers" have not been falsified. After I bought them, there suddenly appeared in certain auction catalogues a remarkably large number of covers postmarked "75 - Kalakho" (often transliterated as Kola Koth or Kolakathi). The postmark is usually overinked and often badly struck. Quite often it does not tie the stamp to the cover or, when it does, the stamps appear to have been affixed and cancelled at a much later date. I would be delighted if someone could assure me that I am wrong and that someone in Kalakho cleared out filing boxes filled with correspondence from the early years of the last century, that the local postal clerks were generous with the ink and had been instructed to cancel only the stamps!

Hippolytus: Very nice covers. Thanks for posting the info about John Heppell's site on States Forgeries, it's really most useful and i would have never found it on my own!

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Jim M.

This one has just arrived from the April Mittal auction:



It's SG 18a - the ½ Anna double print. This is scarcely a scarce stamp mint - Gibbons puts it at £2 - but I always had a nasty suspicion that, if they weren't contrived for the collector market, then most of the double prints found their way to collectors. It's nice to find evidence that they actually did do postal service, even if the date of the cover (1925) seems rather late.

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

And another uncomfortably late usage - 1926 this time



An SG 18 used together with an SG 30, itself not a particularly easy stamp to find on cover

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

This cover has been posted on the "Banging the drums..." thread already, but posted here by request (so we have all images of the Jail press stamps together)

1/2 anna, both double print, and one stamp with "No stop after State" flaw

More pictures of Jail Press stamps here :
http://www.stampbay.com/ifs/jaipur/pages/067.htm

goes on untill http://www.stampbay.com/ifs/jaipur/pages/083

It's in German I know, but it shows the different plates used for these stamps e.g. and some nice covers

(From http://www.stampbay.com/collections.htm )

Thanks for posting that cover here, jwk. The more we place such lovely things in front of other collectors, the better they'll appreciate the (real) charms of the Indian States

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

So this stamp would be roughly a 5/- stamp then?

Rather more, Erik. 5 rupees was 80 times the base letter rate of 1 anna, so in Australian terms, would have been the equivalent of 13/4, or two-thirds of a £. The registration rate was 3 Annas, so a base rate registered letter would have cost 4 annas, or one-twentieth of 5 rupees.

Then you have to take into account the fact that airmail usage wasn't possible, because the stamps were only valid within Jaipur.

You can see how vitally necessary a 5 Rupee stamp was! The two highest franked covers I own are a 1 rupee (paid for by four 4 Anna stamps) and 10 Annas (paid for with an 8 and a 2 Annas).

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Just received (courtesy of eBay) the last two sheets of this issue I was missing:

The 2 Annas greyish-green, SG 21



and the deep green shade, SG 21a



Could I count the partial doubling of the top frame of stamp 2 of the SG 21 sheet as the listed double print (SG 21b) so I could cross that one off my list, too?

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Looking for some good literature on Jaipur Stamps. Any suggestion???

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Phila India
http://groups.google.com/group/phila-india

No-one seems to have posted the postage rates of Jaipur. They are :

POST CARDS

Postal rates for jaipur
Post cards - 1904 1/4 a. 1.12.42 1/2 a. 1.1.47 1/4 a
Letters - 1904 1/2a. 1.12.42 3/4a under 2 tolas, 1/2a each additional 2 tolas.
Registration 1904 2a. 1.10.44 2 1/2 a.
Acknowledgement 1a.
Insurance 1.12.42. Rs.199 3a. Rs200 5a. Rs300 7a. each additional Rs100 2a.

1 tola = 180 grains (legal weight of 1 rupee) = .4114 oz = 11.66g.

Excellent summary, Clyfen! Thanks very much - and also for reviving this old thread.

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Very nice thread.

I have one chariot stamp with overprint 3 Annas:

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http://princelystatecoins.wordpress.com
http://oldindiacoins.wordpress.com

Hey gang,

What do you make of this item (from what I've read somewhere earlier, I take it that the image is upside down)? In any case, it's being called a "Pre-philatelic" item from Jaipur. From all I've learned on this site, I can see it's Jaipur, but Is this part of those 400+ year-old documents Tonymacq was writing about somewhere of which there are many on the market; not worth a lot but you get to hold a piece of history? What would something like this be worth?

Thanks.

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"Making money is a hobby that will complement any other hobbies you have, beautifully." - Scott Alexander
I collect Souvenir Sheets postally used on cover, WW used stamps up to 1957 except everything of Brasil and Argentina.

Yes, Timbres, Murphy's Law has operated, and your scan is upside down, I'm afraid

From the images, it certainly appears to be one of these old reports. If you reversed the images, it might be easier to extract a date from them.

As to value, scandalously little for such an antique: a couple of dollars, perhaps.

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Tried to edit....turned it around in PhotoShop and resaved but the crazy thing won't repaste it the right side up no matter how many times I've tried!!!!

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"Making money is a hobby that will complement any other hobbies you have, beautifully." - Scott Alexander
I collect Souvenir Sheets postally used on cover, WW used stamps up to 1957 except everything of Brasil and Argentina.

These are pre- Jaipur documents. Jaipur City was established in 1822. Prior to that the city was perched up the hill in Amer (amber) Fort.The King had officers of three types (each with his own black seal) all over his kingdom in various Thiikanas. The Police and Land Revenue officers would send a daily report (combined) to the king indicating the amounts creditted or debitted to the treasury on that day. Your first document (from Samvat 1779 or 1722AD) is a Roznamcha of this type.The amount mentioned below the black seals is 9 Rupees. The trade supervision (or commercial tax) officers would also send a Roznamcha (daily report) giving the rates of various commodities. Your second document is of this type. If you look at the top right of both documents, the word Roznamcha is clearly seen. In the second document (from Samvat 1782 or 1725AD) the last two lines give the prices of Pepper, oil, Sesame (two prices for two types), Cotton (two prices for two types)etc in what is presumably Annas per Maund.


One Maund = 37 kg approx
One Tola=11.66 grams,
80 Tolas = 930 gms approx =1 Seer,
40 Seer= 37 kg approx= 1 Maund

These documents, though very very old (300 years) and of tremendous historical value are available in abundance (just imagine 200 Thikanas x 75 years x 365 days) and were remarkably well preserved before they were dumped on the market. Tony has given a correct indication of the market price. But that would, in no way, indicate the historical value.

Hope this helps.

Thanks and regards.

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http://princelystatecoins.wordpress.com
http://oldindiacoins.wordpress.com

That's very interesting Birder. Thanks!

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"Making money is a hobby that will complement any other hobbies you have, beautifully." - Scott Alexander
I collect Souvenir Sheets postally used on cover, WW used stamps up to 1957 except everything of Brasil and Argentina.