Thursday, December 18, 2008

Airmail and Postal Labels Studies




















I am into one of the considerably rare field of philately studies, that is study in airmail and it's related postal labels used in mailing services. I been collecting these postal labels for long, which includes airmail, express, insurance, priority or urgent, registered, surface mail or seamail and custom declaration labels. 

I have fairly rich collections, especially the airmail labels. Since this is another specialize field, I decided to create another blog just for this area of study and I welcome all collectors to view, comments, exchange ideas, labels and make it interactive to help others to grow this hobby.

An airmail etiquette, often shortened to just etiquette (label), is an adhesive label used to indicate that a letter is to be sent by airmail. It is commonly have a wording "Par Avion" in French or "By Air Mail" printed in blue color. 

For Express label, it is commonly printed in red color and for seamail label, it is hard to collect today, as most of the mail sent through seamail will not have a special design label (only some countries have printed this label). All these labels come with different sizes to cater for various sizes of the mailing article, i.e. from letter to parcel. The labels also come in different form in sheet and roll and are available in gummed and self adhesive for ease of use.

Although this tiny labels carry no monetary value like stamps but it is worth collecting and each have unique design, different languages and some with meaningful images and pictorial such as birds, aeroplane, fish and postal service logo.

The photo above shown 3 airmail labels from Africa countries. The top one is from Uganda, printed with the country's national airline logo. The rest of the 2 labels printed the logo of the East Africa Airline (EAA). It was used in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania mailing.  

If you would like to explore further, you are welcome to my "Airmail Labels Collection" blog at:


Happy collecting!


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