The Hong Kong 'China' Overprints British Offices In China 1917 - 1930

The page for each Treaty Port shows the markings used along with the earliest and latest known usages of those markings and a current census of covers from each of the agencies. Transparencies, scans, updates, and corrections to these are always welcome. This information has come from many sources, most of whom are listed on the acknowledgements page. Data on frequency and rarity come from research conducted by Frank and David Drake, published in the Hong Kong Philatelic Journal1.

Because this website is primarily focused on the ‘China’ overprints, this census covers the markings that were used during the period from 1917-1930 only.
Where known, the source of the listed dates are marked as follows:

S - Schoenfeld
W - Webb

Index Letters and Date Format

The primary function of the index letter in a circular date stamp is generally to identify the person who made the mark in case an error should be discovered at a later date. At most British Post Offices, index letter ‘A’ was the postmaster’s private seal and the other letters were used by other clerks. At some agencies, the time slug was also used and is usually associated with a special duty where the time of posting mattered.

Some index letters have side bars, for instance -F-, which were added to stop the Index letter from sliding side to side.

With respect to the date formats at some offices being found in both forms, month before day (MM/DD) and day before month (DD/MM), M. Pullan of London reported, "At a small office with only one counter chop, the postmaster is faced with a dilemma if his clerk goes home sick and he has to issue a different C.D.S. to a replacement clerk. He cannot issue the original chop for security reasons as it has already been used on that date. I am informed that it was common practice to alter the position of the index letter or reverse the numbers and letters of the month, i.e. JA 23 instead of 23 JA to enable the same chop to be used by more than one person on the same day"1

Other Usages

In addition to usages at the agencies, there were a number of other interesting uses of (and attempts to use) the overprinted stamps. Such uses are documented and shown under "Other Markings".

A couple of forged covers exist, for instance, this forged registration handstamp on a cover from Shanghai to Geneva dated 29 June 1922.

Also, a number of illegal or incorrect uses, particularly attempts to use the overprinted stamps in Hong Kong, have surfaced.

The use dated 10 March 1923 is particularly interesting as it came from the Perrin collection and was annotated as follows: "…large quantities of the China issue were left unused and were returned to London for destruction in 1924. There is some doubt whether they were officially acceptable in Hong Kong itself during 1923. This mixed card was passed by the British Post Office at Sheung Wan on 10th March 1923, The total face value of 9 cents is in excess of the normal six cent rate for postcards to England"

Certain values of the stamps are rarely found on covers and most are philatelic. The following is a preliminary census of some of these high values:

Finally, there are a couple of instances where overprinted stamps were used to forward mail and the following two covers are rather remarkable examples.