Articles: Australia
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Australia Non_denominated Postal Stationery
LISTING OF AUSTRALIAN NON-DENOMINATED AND FLAT RATE POSTAL STATIONERY
In its first issue, the Postal Stationery Collector (PSC), the Journal of the Postal Stationery Society of Australia, included the first instalment of a listing of Australian non-denominated stationery. Once the original listing was completed, almost every issue has included an update to the listing.
This monograph brings together the listings from the various issues of the PSC up until November 2010.
In 1986, Australia Post began experimenting with a range of unconventional postal stationery, many of which bore no indication of value, being inscribed ‘Postage Paid’. The first was the ‘Super Satchel’ which prepaid the delivery of contents of any weight to any destination in Australia by airmail for a flat charge of $1.50. This was followed in 1987 by the $2.50 ‘Flat Rate’ envelope which unlike its predecessor was inscribed with its value of
$2.50. This envelope was launched with considerable fanfare with glossy advertising brochures and advertisements in the public press but no mention at all in the Philatelic Bulletin.
Following these issues, Australia Post experimented with a wide range of prepaid products including prepaid boxes, padded envelopes, parcel labels, express post envelopes and satchels and courier satchels, many of which have now become a standard part of Australia Post’s product range.
While the first experiments in issuing postal stationery (the New South Wales embossed lettersheets of 1838 and the Mulready envelopes of 1840) were nota great success, entering an Australia Post Shop in the 1990s postal stationery one could be forgiven for thinking that postal stationery had finally achieved the success which Rowland Hill first predicted and that we had indeed entered the ‘golden age of postal stationery’.
Listing of AUSTRALIAN NON-DENOMINATED AND FLAT RATE POSTAL STATIONERY 2016
