Embossed Revenue Handstamps – early and late dates

In Courier No 71 of June 2021, Smith, Elsmore and Allan published an article on the Tasmanian embossed Platypus dies. This article included a table of early and late dates for the platypus dies and also included early and late dates for the first 1d handstamps and the higher value non-platypus dies from the early 1920s.

The table is attached below and may be opened or downloaded as a PDF.

the authors would be most interested in any new information in relation to these tables.

All comments can be sent to Peter Allan, hesperus@netspace.net.au

Early and Late dates for Tasmanian Embossed handstamps

NOTE: the original article was published prematurely and has been slightly revised.

The revised version can be downloaded here.   Platypus revised 14.11.21

Changes include:
p12 – use of Platypus dies on receipts is unusual though has been recorded.
p12 – the 9d is known from Presentation sets
p15 -use of year slugs has now been recorded to 1888, not 1887. One use of an ’89’ slug is also recorded but may be a locally made replacement
P 15 – the addition of Fig 17 – a rare example of both a Platypus and a £1 rampant lion revenue on the same document.
Importantly, the following Acknowledgement has been added:
“The authors wish to sincerely thank the philatelists who so willingly made available information for their collections of Tasmanian revenues. The contributions from Patrick Reid and Ian Spencer in the United Kingdom and from Bill Lloyd-Smith and Neville Willis in Australia were especially useful in assembling the information used in this account. All of the illustrations are from the collections of the authors and the contributors mentioned above“.