Belgium Not Quite Precancel 10%

Hi, I accquired a number of belgium overprints. Some of them are the usual precancels from 1920 to 1940s , but some of them are in 1939s and are overprinted -10%
The overprint varies in size, stlyle, but is always 10%

Does anyone know what these are, I can see plus 10% for semipostals, but minus 10% ?? What the heck?

Dvaranin,

1st welcome to this group.
what you have with the -10% is Belguim decreasing/devaluing the face value of the stamps by 10% due to a decrease in postal rates.

According to this old thread, there are over 12,000 different stamps with 550 different overprints!

http://goscf.com/t/9873

Ryan

Welcome to the forum Dvaranin

Actually, any of the "10%" surcharges you have will have been issued in 1946. This was done to relieve some economic pressure on Belgian citizens recovering after the war.

This was done to alleviate costs of posting mail for customers just after the war. They will be even face value stamp such as 5 Francs reduced to 4.50, 2.50 Francs reduced to 2.25 Francs and so on.
There are a few thousand type of these. Some, instead of having "-10%" will have "4.50" on a 5.00 Franc stamp - in other words, it has already been reduced the 10%.

To be honest, this is a study all on it's own with a lot of Belgian collectors. I also specialize in these. There are also some postal cards with the same type of surcharge.

If you really want to get interested in these, I would suggest you try to find a copy of a book called "Catalogue National - Specialise "-10%" by Frank van Acker. It is long out of print, but, still worth searching for.

Chimo

Bujutsu

Like danko said,in the other thread, wow this is too much for my little brain.
12292 different varieties. I like collecting perfins but I have not made a study of it, because there are s many varieties. Furthermore I am restricting myself to classicals so 1946 are excluded.
Thanks to you in helping me with this.

Since this booked was printed in 1975, I have never seen it for sale anywhere in the United States.

I have seen it listed by places like "Philatelic Bibliopole" and others but they are always sold out.

There is a more recent catalogue published in Dutch by Karel Vander Mijnsbrugge. It includes 6 transparencies that can be used to identify the -10% print. Can be obtained on Delcampe from https://www.delcampe.net/en_GB/coll...rmijnsbrugge