How Long Does Epiditymitis Last?

the good old days when half a stamp to 15 cents was worth ten!

Like what it was better to be smart at the time in the Indian Ocean!






Agent Post on board this ship had to be pretty well pissed off one morning in November 1905 finding desperately empty box drawer where he had the habit of putting away 10 stamps cents. Not one, all sold yesterday!
"Damn!" He certainly has exclaimed.

Especially as clients passengers would be likely to appear at his window in order to free the lovely postcards for their families or friends.
tourist cards often, bought as a souvenir of a trip to Madagascar, for example, and very eagerly awaited by their recipients in France.


However, this is not the 15 cent stamps that are missing!
And that does not serve much more!
Then a clever idea came to him.
Perhaps he had heard of a similar precedent occurred at a colleagues, and to which the Post Office had coped brilliantly?

Or was it philatelist in addition to being clever?

Here he dutifully takes his pair of scissors and starts cutting a few stamps to 15 cents which is not likely to use, and turn them into stamps to 10 cents!


It will even pass the cards one by one in the good old typewriter and slap himself in purple ink the words you see in this example:

"Postage lack of special stamps to 10 percent. "

This to avoid that one can indicate an attempted fraud on the part of the sender.
Beautiful dedication!
We must believe that he should not be too busy either. ..


fact remains that these letters were sent regularly. Mission accomplished!
The proof can still be found:



But in your opinion, what each stamp bisected allowed that employee to get rich on the backs of its customers?

If he sold his two halves stamp 10 cents each, it could easily bring him 20 cents every time, so 5 cents of profit for his pocket.
This would have been a hard-earned money, do not you think?


In addition, it was not obliged to say: who would come to control it at the other end of the world? Do not push
either!

can even think he may well have invented the whole story of scarcity of stamps for an ulterior purpose of personal enrichment, if it was bad mind!

Or else it was so obsessive that he destroyed the other half of each stamp?
But then, in this case, is that the Post would have been out of his pocket!
Unlikely! you say: we will not start selling the stamps at a discount to all!

Nobody knows the final word on the matter, but it is certain that these letters were appreciated by collectors of the time, and still are today.
They are however not common.


The possible benefit for the employee, as well as the potential loss for the administration, have not been very important anyway.

Nothing to do a story unless it is a collector ...