|
Express Stamps and Registered Mail
Express stamps served for the payment of special delivery mail. On arrival at the post office of destination, express mail is immediately delivered by a special messenger and arrives sooner than mail carried by the postman on his normal rounds. This extra service costs more than the usual postage. In most countries, the express surcharge is paid by normal postage stamps, but some countries have issued special stamps for this purpose. The first express tamps were issued in 1885 by the United States of America. Some express stamps include the functions of other types of stamps, too. In 1874, Belgium used telegraph stamps as express stamps, Austria used express stamps for all printed matter in 1916, military post stamps were used by Bosnia and Hercegovina in 1916 as express stamps and Italy used fieldpost stamps for express stamps in 1916.
In the past, express letters were inscribed ‘cito’ – meaning fast or urgent – or ‘citissimo’ meaning extremely urgent. In some countries, a little feather was stuck into the seal on the back of the cover marking such letters as express. Such feather letters were used in Sweden in the last century and earlier. Post offices, nowadays, use special labels – often with the French word ‘Expres’ or in England, ‘Special Delivery’. The reason that French expressions are frequently used in postal services and on postal documents is because French has been adopted as the Universal postal language. Express labels are practically always issued by the post office and are an integral part of an express letter.
In most countries, the extra charge for registered mail is paid with postage stamps of all kinds. In addition, a special registration label with a number is stuck on the letter, or the letter is stamped with a registration hand stamp and the number written into it. Some countries, especially in Latin America, have printed special stamps for registered mail. They are very similar to registration labels. A large ‘R’ is printed on them and the number of the mail item is entered by hand. The first stamps of this type were issued by Colombia in 1865.
Registration labels are also issued by post offices. On their own, they have no franking value at all. Predecessors of the registration labels were the postage receipt stamps of the Berlin post of 1827. When a shortage of postage stamps occurred, registration labels with an overprint were used for normal mail. Examples include when New Guinea was taken over by the British in 1914 and also when supplies of overprinted German colonial stamps were exhausted, registration labels were again overprinted.
The German Democratic Republic introduced, in 1967, self-service machines selling registration labels with the value of ‘50Pf’ printed on them. The machine issued them in pairs with the same number, one to be used on the registered letter, the other to be kept by the sender as a certificate of posting.
Express mail and registered letters are still features in the contemporary postal services of the twenty-first century. The significance of the need for urgency with specific items is an important part of the postal services in all nations. Despite the advances of technology in so many ways, both express and registered mail maintain their popularity.
|
