Page 2 - Pakistan: Beyond the Catalogue

ROYAL PHILATELIC SOCIETY LONDON. 9 March 2017
th
PAKISTAN BEYOND THE CATALOGUE. FRAME GUIDE

The presentation at 5pm today will attempt to give an overview of the handstamping of
postage stamps in Pakistan at the time of Partition (1947/48), the introduction of decimal
currency (1961) and the break-up of the country (1971). A 32 page booklet is also available
which gives an historical background and covers the same ground in more detail.

I have chosen, however, so far as the display is concerned, to show only the handstamps
produced and applied locally at the time of decimalization. Thse issues are little known, even to
specialist Pakistan collectors, and, for reasons unknown to me, are hardly collected. I hope that
my display will help to bring their existence and their appeal to collectors to a wider range of
philatelists. I make the following general observations.

• Sheets within the frames are arranged in traditional manner. The material is sufficiently
esoteric without the added discipline of Yorkshire Method being imposed.
• What is on display represents about 40% of my collection of this issue. This in turn is a
relatively small proportion of the items I have examined in selecting what to display.
• Often there is little choice so far as condition is concerned. Particularly with covers
economy labels are common , and care was not taken when envelopes were opened.
• There has always been a liking for Temporary, Experimental and Camp Post Offices by
the India and Pakistan authorities. This does not assist in locating the origin of items.
• Material often exists in very small quantities, particularly from East Pakistan.
• Covers are significantly over-represented in the display. Almost without exception,
commercial mail is at best very scarce. I have been extremely fortunate in obtaining the
covers exhibited. This type of material is simply generally not available on the market.
• I began to collect Pakistan in the mid-1960s when no-one seemed to be interested. So
far as the local decimal currency overprints are concerned, I have purchased two large,
and one very large, collections since then, and was very fortunate in acquiring, in the
early 1990s, a hoard of more than a hundred commercial covers addressed to Karachi.
Through their writing up the original owners of the material have helped me in
identifying individual items and have passed on vital information which would otherwise
have been lost. They have also confirmed suspicions I have had for a very long time that
there is often much wishful thinking involved in reading postmarks and making
potentially un-identifiable items fit in with the existing, accepted, narrative.
• “Stamps of Pakistan (Decimal Currency Surcharges)” by U.A. Isani 1981 Karachi, is the
definitive work on the subject with a tremendous amount of original research and giving
credit to original pioneer collectors such as Ron Doubleday.
• The first twelve frames show postal items from West Pakistan, the remaining 24 sheets
being of East Pakistani origin. This probably slightly over-represents the latter.