Portal:Philately/Stamp of the month archive/14



Epaulettes are the colloquial name of the first series of postage stamp issued by Belgium that depicted King Leopold I and his prominent epaulettes from which the name derives. They were first usable on 1 July 1849 when two values, with the same design were issued: a brown 10 centimes and a blue 20 centimes. Their introduction proved extremely successful and led to a large expansion of the postage system. The Epaulettes were soon superseded by new types.

The brown 10 centimes denomination, could be used to send a letter up to a distance of 30 km; the blue 20 centimes could be used on all other ordinary national mail. The stamps depicted Leopold I wearing military uniform, with highly visible epaulettes, and were printed using the Intaglio method. They were inscribed " POSTES " ("post") at the top, along with the stamp's value in numbers. At the bottom was the stamps face value in French language text. No Dutch language version was produced.