Indicia (philately)

A Bangladeshi meter stamp which includes the indicium portion at right
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.

  1. ^ a b "Miller, Rick; The language of cover collecting in Linns.com Refresher Course section".[permanent dead link‍]
  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.