Can't find stamp in Stanley Gibbon's catalogue

Well octavius, they are GB as you guessed . These have been cut off some postal stationery , if on card then from a printed post card, if on thin brownish paper then it was a wrapper to put round a newspaper for posting .

In the 1880s the halfpenny postcard rate was introduced , and also covered sending a newspaper .

SG does not list or price postal stationery items. The only general catalogue listing world wide is Higgins & Gage but very dated now,

Oh wow. I thought it was thin! Thanks for the explanation Daniel.

Hi Daniel

Another side to collecting stamps is that of learning.

I noted the New Zealand connection to the Air Letter you show above. It is for a passenger on board the 'Rangitoto'.
So a small amount of searching yielded this :


Rangitoto -   1949-1976
New Zealand Company ship built by Vickers-Armstrong of Newcastle in 1949, at 21,800 gross tons. She was the sister ship of the "Rangitane".
In 1969, she became the "Oriental Carnaval", and was broken up in 1976.






So a piece of postal history. This hobby is great :-)



Dave