1953 A Colourful Karsh Cover

I am a fan of all kinds of covers - commercial and philatelic. The cover shown below is a first day cover of the first set of Canadian Queen Elizabeth stamps, the Karsh definitives, mailed to France on May 1, 1953. The cover is an explosion of colour.

The airmail letter rate to France was 15 cents for each quarter ounce. The Canadian post office taxed the letter "90 centimes", which tells us that this was a letter whose weight was greater than one quarter ounce and equal to or less than one half ounce. The correct rate was 30 cents. The French postage due was  135f.


The Karsh Definitives

The Karsh definitives (so-called because the design was based on a photograph by Karsh) were not viewed with much favour by the general  public and were replaced in 1954 by the Wilding issue.

Canadian Taxation

T 90 centimes handstamp

Analysis of Canadian taxation

Correct rate 1/2 oz. air mail letter to Europe......................................................30c

Amount prepaid...............................................................................................15

Amount shortpaid............................................................................................15

The tax was double the deficiency

Tax................................................................................................................30c

Conversion to gold centimes 

The UPU monetary unit was a gold standard. The UPU monetary unit was the gold franc of 100 centimes of a weight of 10/31 of a gramme and of a fineness of 0.900. The gold franc was a notional currency. No country actually minted the UPU franc. Nations converted their currencies to gold centimes to calculate postage due in centimes.

1 cent Canadian (c) = 3 gold centimes

30c =  30c X 3 gold centimes/c = 90 gold centimes

French Postage Due

The French post office  affixed postage due stamps totaling 135 f.

The conversion factor applied by the French post office to arrive at 135f would have been 30f = 20 gold centimes 

90 gold centimes = 90 gold centimes X  30f/20 gold centimes =  135f