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Telegraph Seals
Steve Hiscocks (2007)
IntroductionAll collectors of telegraph stamps will, from time to time, have come across labels bearing the names and sometimes the arms or logos of telegraph companies but bearing no value. They are obviously not stamps or franks and are something of a mystery both to the beginner and to many dealers who should know better. These are seals. When my book Telegraph and Telephone Stamps of the World, was ready to go to press in 1982 I found that I had a spare blank page at the end. The waste of space offended me so I filled it up with about 20 different such labels that had come my way together with a note saying, erroneously, that these were mostly used to seal envelopes in which telegrams were delivered to their recipients. A few, in Japan, Italy and Turkey for example, were indeed used in this way but the vast majority were actually used to seal folded telegrams which were then delivered without an envelope. Thus seals are not normally found for countries, such as the UK, France, the USA and Canada which did use envelopes. For a few other countries like Romania it seems that seals were not used for those periods when they did use envelopes or when special decorative telegrams were being delivered but were used at other times when envelopes were not in use. There was also an intermediate stage in which telegraph forms were supplied with gummed flaps so that they could be sealed without an envelope or an adhesive seal. These were used in many countries like France and Italy and in some cases (e.g. New Zealand in 1920) obviated the use of seals.Care must also be taken over what is actually meant by the word 'seal'. Some dealers and auctioneers, especially in the Balkans, use the term referring to designs applied with a rubber stamp by telegraphic offices. These were much used in the Turkish Empire and are collected, so confusion can arise. There were also the so-called etiquettes produced in large variety in Germany, often bearing the names of towns or cities. These usually were used for interdepartmental postage within Germany or simply for identification but not as seals on either folded telegrams or on envelopes containing them. They therefore fall outside the scope of this book. Also outside the scope of this book are the plain white labels, usually stamp selvage, occasionally used as telegram seals. I have seen examples from Latvia, Greece, the Belgian Congo and several other countries but obviously they cannot be catalogued. I have also seen postage stamps used as seals between Mozambique and Portugal in 1959. The Argentine had a number of different telegraph companies, some regional like Buenos Aires and some associated with railway companies (ferrocarril), some of which used their own seals. Railway telegraph seals are found for several countries reflecting the historical fact that the first telegraph lines were often installed along railway lines partly for use by the railway companies themselves and partly to avoid multiple way-leave negotiations. The only countries for which I am aware listings of telegraph seals have been prepared or published are the Argentine, Japan, Colombia and Turkey. The compiling of a comprehensive list covering the whole world is therefore rather difficult which is why I hope that collectors will help me in this task. These seals had no monetary value so there was no reason why telegraph companies should keep records of what types were printed or used and few, if any, of them did so. So we can only look at what is out there and list it. Eventually most of them will be included but it will be an iterative process. This book is thus really a first draft with much room for improvement and I am appealing to collectors all over the world to inform me of any further seals they may have or are aware of, preferably with scans, and also to give me any information they may have on the dates of use of any seals for which dates are not given below. This will enable me to list the seals in something like date order in any future edition. Condition is a serious problem in this field. When you received a telegram sealed with a paper label your first act was to tear the seal apart to access the message. Indeed some seals carried the instruction to do so. Most used seals therefore suffered serious damage varying from a nice clean tear to horrible mutilation with the seal torn into several ragged bits, some of which might be totally missing. The seals of some countries such as Japan, Ecuador and Italy are quite often found unused with full gum and this is obviously the most desirable condition in which to collect. For some other countries such as Germany and the Argentine many seals were fairly rugged and are sometimes found used-whole, either loose or still partly attached to their telegram. Otherwise one finds torn seals still on their telegrams. Telegram collectors generally open their telegrams out for presentation but the telegraph seal collector normally re-folds the telegram, in which he is not particularly interested, to its delivered state so that the parts of the seals fit together to show the original design. He might even float the parts of the seal off and reconstruct it with a couple of stamp hinges stuck on the reverse. In the sole case, so far as I know, of Bolivia the seals as supplied were apparently too big for convenient use, or perhaps there was a shortage of them, and they were commonly torn in half before use so that often only one half seal was used on each telegram. So whole Bolivian seals are especially desirable. I have so far made no attempt to price telegraph seals. Indeed, I have not very often been able to buy seals as such. Normally I have bought them along with a few telegraph stamps (often from dealers who think they are unlisted telegraph stamps), in telegraph stamp collections or on telegrams which have been sold for their telegram rather than their seal interest, although the market is changing in that respect and individual seals are being offered for sale much more frequently than before. My collection of telegraph seals has not therefore been very expensive and I have perhaps averaged around US$10 in buying seals with some as low as US$3 and one as much as US$125. Publication of an illustrated listing may, of course, change that. I would be very interested to hear readers' ideas on values. In the listing below I have simply listed those I have found or been told about so far. I do not necessarily have them in my possession because it is quite possible to copy illustrations of telegrams and their seals offered for sale on, for example, eBay and edit them which is very useful when the telegrams are of considerable historical interest and therefore expensive. This accounts for the curious angles at which some seals are shown in this book. Illustrations are not all to the same scale since that would be well beyond my computer skills even when I knew the actual dimensions so I have indicated the width of the design from left to right in mm - NOT the width of the whole label because individual seals were often cut or torn from a sheet or strip so that the margins are often highly variable between different copies of the same seal. In general I have not listed different shades of the same basic colour since these can be very variable and are of doubtful significance. I do however indicate that they exist when I know that to be the case. Where I have been able to find seals used on dated telegrams I have indicated the year or range of years of use seen. This will not in general be the first or last date of use of course but is an indication of the general period. In many cases I have no idea of when seals were used so I have at this stage made little attempt to set them in chronological order except where the wording gives some clue - Siam became Thailand in 1939 and Turkey switched from Arabic to Latin script in 1929 for example. To sum up, this is a first attempt at a listing of telegraph seals used to seal folded telegrams, or the envelopes in which telegrams were contained for delivery. These had no value so, as far as is known, no records were kept concerning them. We must therefore list those which we observe to exist and determine dates of use from the dates of telegrams on which they are found. In a couple of cases I have been lucky enough to find experts who have made serious studies of the seals of countries of interest to them but in most cases I have not and there will be many mistakes and omissions. This edition is therefore very much a first draft. My intention is to sell this edition at slightly over cost price, which will be kept down by publishing most of the illustrations in black and white, with an appeal to all collectors to let me know about any further information they have, of any mistakes and of anyone they know who might be able to help. This will, I hope, result in a much more comprehensive listing for publication in full colour in the not too distant future. Steve Hiscocks July, 2007 |
| Updates. The above was written by Steve Hiscocks. I have converted it to electronic form to allow online-translation. I have only a few points to add. 1. I would advise against removing a seal from a telegram or envelope because then information of dates, location and usage is lost. 2. I will try to scale images to 300dpi where I know the size or perforation. 3. The numbering provided by Hiscocks was very tentative and simplistic. I am renumbering and will use my 'RH' (Revised Hiscocks) numbering system as I have for the telegraph stamps that I have re-numbered. I would not want Steve Hiscocks to take the blame for any mistakes that I might make. 4. This is about seals of the world and I believe it should be available to the world. I had enabled translation using a free translation service.from Microsoft, but they decided to terminate that. However where pricinghas been added, the currency will be selectable. |
