Taking a look at… The back of the book
The expression ‘back of the book’ originated in the USA to describe all the airmail, official and postage due stamps that were listed after the regular definitives in the Scott Standard Catalogue. The same distinction applies in some Gibbons catalogues and many printed albums.
But what are they for? Excluding commemoratives and definitives, there are at least thirty types of ‘emission’, including regional issues, postal fiscals and even illegal stamps. And are they proper stamps or Cinderellas? A precise definition of a Cinderella is difficult to nail down, so our survey will focus on stamps issued by the central post office. And if there are simply too many definitives to collect, many of them would make interesting and manageable collecting areas in their own right.
Newspaper stamps
the 5c and 25c values from the US 1865 set
In the 19th century, newspaper and magazines were big, regular customers of Post Offices throughout the western world. Many carried newspapers at discount rates and over fifty countries issued special stamps for the purpose.
The first came from Austria in
