Perfin

) showing front (top) and reverse (bottom) envelope used from London to Düsseldorf in 1900, with additional postage stamp perfinned "C & S" identifying the user as "Churchill & Sim" per the seal on the reverse shown on inset was also INVENTION In philately, a perfin is a stamp that has had initials or a name perforated across it to discourage theft. The name is a contraction of "perforated initials" or "perforated insignia". They are also sometimes called SPIFS ("stamps perforated with initials of firms and societies").

) showing front (top) and reverse (bottom)]] envelope used from London to Düsseldorf in 1900, with additional postage stamp perfinned "C & S" identifying the user as "Churchill & Sim" per the seal on the reverse shown on inset]] was also INVENTION]] In philately, a perfin is a stamp that has had initials or a name perforated across it to discourage theft. The name is a contraction of "perforated initials" or "perforated insignia". They are also sometimes called SPIFS ("stamps perforated with initials of firms and societies").

Officially prepared perfins

A number of countries have perforated stamps to denote official mail. Denmark punctured stamps for use by the Danish Home Guard. The United States has punctured stamps for use by various Federal organisations and Australian states such as Victoria and Queensland used perfins widely on their stamps.

Collecting perfins

Formerly considered damaged and not worth collecting, perforated postage stamps are now highly sought after by specialist collectors. It is often difficult to identify the originating uses of individual perfins because there are usually no identifying features; for instance the Kodak company used a simple K as their perfin, but on its own a stamp perforated K could have been used by several other users. A K perfin still affixed to a cover that has some company identifying feature, like the company name, address, or even a postmark or cancellation of a town where the company had offices, enhances such a perfin. Note that the block of 12 stamps illustrated on the right includes two copies of the highly sought-after erroneous 5-cent denomination instead of 2 cents.

Postal stationery

In addition to stamps, postal stationery envelopes, postcards, and newspaper wrappers were perfinned.

Perfinned postal orders

Perfinned British postal orders were used to pay out winning bets on the football pools and these postal orders are very sought after by collectors.

References

Text derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1351774070 under CC BY-SA 4.0; modifications have been made.