Query No. 13

Sarawak Revenue Stamps

As you will be able to see from the attached scanned image I have two Sarawak Revenue Stamps. They have been identified as the following:

My philatelic knowledge is somewhat rudimentary to say the least, however, I thought that they may be of some interest to you.

Could you please tell me whether these stamps are Brooketon Cancellations, and if so, what does this actually mean?
Vic Darlington

Revenue Stamps

Answers

  1. These are revenue overprints with pen cancels. They are NOT Brooketon.
    Howard Lee
  2. Your two stamps are part of a set produced by Sarawak in 1889 for Revenue purposes. Basically they were the 1888-1897 POSTAGE/REVENUE issue typographed by de La Rue, but additionally overprinted with a large 'R' in black, in the same fashion as the two values you illustrate. The following values were overprinted R as per your examples: 2c., 3c., 5c., 10c., 25c., 50c., $1. In addition three new values were produced which were also overprinted with the same large 'R', these were $2, $5, and $10. Apart from printer's examples these three stamps are unknown without the overprint.
    Regarding the second part of your question - this has nothing whatsoever to do with Brooketon or its cancellations.
    Brian Cave
  3. To my knowledge the horizontal bars are the 'cancelling' device used in the revenue offices in Sarawak to denote payment of the revenue involved. Whether these particular bars were used at Brooketon, I have no knowledge.
    Steve Schumann
  4. These stamps were in issue for a short period of time just before the De La Rue revenue set of 1899 became available. At this time most revenue stamps were cancelled by pen. This took the form of either initials or a date. In the case of a date it was usually to be seen with penned lines crossing the entire stamp above and below the date. However the stamps shown do not appear to have penned lines as they are too thick and even. This would imply they are from a 'chop'. The two common ones of this period are the Court chops of the Supreme Court of Kuching and the Paku Court. In the former case the 3 middle lines, spaced about the same distance as those shown on the 10c stamp, have above and below them 3 close lines. As these are not shown it is not the Supreme Court. The illustrations are far closer to the 3 lines of the Paku Court chop. Paku Court was one of the few outside of Kuching to have a Court largely handling land and mining (antimony and gold) rights. Having looked at my own copies the lines are longer in the copies shown than in my own examples. This would suggest that it was a Court chop but not Paku. I do not have a Bau Court chop of this period but I know from later copies it was very similar to that of Paku. I would hazard a guess that these stamps came from land/mining (gold) documents passed by the Bau Court.
    Bernard Lardner
  5. These are not Brooketon cancellation marks. They should hve been circular date stamps, but these were not introduced until after the 'R' overprints were invalidated, especially as these stamps were the earlier of the two types of revenue overprints.
    The 25c mark is definitely the Supreme Court cancelling mark.
    I am less certain about the mark on the 10c stamp. I believe that it might be Sibu, but it is not Paku, as Bernard has suggested, although it is very similar.
    Neville Watterson


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