Marianne Stamps of France & Colonies

but all good stories should start at the beginning .. and as you all know, in the stamp world, the beginning is often kinda hard to find. So what WAS the very first Marianne stamp? If you peruse this site, you'll see that Marianne first made her appearance on French definitive stamps in the 1940's with two different sets of stamps. If you read through the site, you'll see that it's a bit confusing ... here are the images of the two different stamps, one designed by Edmond Dulac and the other by Louis Fernez.

                            Dulac                                                        Fernez

so I went on a hunt for that Q27 ... the parcel post stamp that was known as the 'Daussy Key Type'. My old Scott's general catalog does not list parcel post stamps ... none on eBay, or the other auction sites that I frequent ... I found one on stamps2go but there was no picture ... bought it anyway. Finally in frustration I went and purchased the 2019 Scott's Volume 2B: France.
Here it is ...

here's an image from one of those pages ... and now I have a whole new set of stamps to look for and collect!

clif Did you buy the print catalogue or the Eversion,  have you seen any Ecatalogue I had a look at Amos, the cost is not to bad Japan is only $18 and no shipping cost SG has not printed a Japan catalogue for so long also a few more country's 

How often is the Ecatalolue updated?

Scott's apparently does not list all of the Revenues in their country catalogues ... only the parcel posts (Q's)

I just purchased several pages of what appear to be the key type Mariannes ... and have no idea how to sort and evaluate them ... does Gibbons list these or another English language catalogue? Anybody know?

was pointed to this blog from a thread on another forum ... the author writes in French and so I don't know if it's google translate that makes the writing so humorous, or the author just possesses a certain dry wit ... either way it's an interesting story

www.timbres-fiscaux.fr/archives/2018/08/15/36579125.html

a couple of images from the entry featuring a Marianne Tax stamp

when we left off in the Marianne discussion, I was well on my way down the trail of investigating the French tax stamps ... turns out that, like most revenue stamps, there isn't a whole lot of easily accessible information or references for this branch of philately. In fact I couldn't find any biographical information on Georges Daussy at all.

But I did find one reference as to France's tax stamps ... A. Forbin's 1915 catalog is online, and from that I was able to identify a few of the stamps that I have acquired.

Remember, I have interest in these stamps because they depict an engraved Marianne and so belong in my Marianne collection.

So anyway here are a couple to start with ... these are 1892/1900 depending on the numeral date ... if it's a 18___ then it was issued in 1892 and if it's a 1____ then it was issued in 1900. Forbin calls them type A or B in catalog.

*I would love to be able to tell you that I figured that out on my own ... but it'd be a lie. I learned from a post on another forum  

so that coin-shaped Marianne vignette looks quite similar in both engraver's renditions ... until you look at them side by side and you can see the differences. Daussy's lines generally are concave up, while Tasset's are down ...

one wonders ... US Revenue stamp cancellations are a hugely attractive area for many collectors. Is the same true for European revenues? I have not come across very much info about them really ...