Indicia (philately)

An indicium from an 1894 Cuban postal card depicting Alfonso XIII at age 5

A handstamp indicium from German East Africa indicating prepayment of postage. A scarcity of postage stamps in WWI caused postal authorities to handstamp "Frankiert mit 7½ H" (plus a seal from the director of posts) on envelopes brought in by the public.

In philately, indicia are markings on a mail piece (as opposed to an adhesive stamp)^[1] showing that postage has been prepaid by the sender. Indicia is the plural of the Latin word indicium, meaning distinguishing marks,^[2] signs or identifying marks.^[3] The term imprinted stamp is used more or less interchangeably,^[1] but some indicia are not imprinted stamps. One example is the handstamp, which can be seen in a photo on this page.

^ ^a ^b "Miller, Rick; The language of cover collecting in Linns.com Refresher Course section".
^ Room, Adrian., ed. The Cassell Dictionary of Word Histories. London: Cassell & Co., 1999, p.306.
^ "Wunderly, Kathleen; Foreign words spice up stamp collecting in Linns.com Refresher Course section". Archived from the original on 2015-05-04. Retrieved 2010-12-03.

[Miller-1] "Miller, Rick; The language of cover collecting in Linns.com Refresher Course section".

[2] Room, Adrian., ed. The Cassell Dictionary of Word Histories. London: Cassell & Co., 1999, p.306.

[3] "Wunderly, Kathleen; Foreign words spice up stamp collecting in Linns.com Refresher Course section". Archived from the original on 2015-05-04. Retrieved 2010-12-03.

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Indicia (philately)

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