A piece of postal stationery is a stationery item, such as a stamped envelope, letter sheet, postal card, lettercard, aerogram or wrapper, with an imprinted stamp or inscription indicating that a specific rate of postage or related service has been prepaid.
In general, postal stationery is handled similarly to postage stamps; sold from post offices either at the face value of the printed postage or, more likely, with a surcharge to cover the additional cost of the stationery.
Aerogramme
An aerogram, aerogramme, aérogramme, air letter or airletter is a thin lightweight piece of foldable and gummed paper for writing a letter for transit via airmail, in which the letter and envelope are one and the same. Most postal administrations forbid enclosures in these light letters, which are usually sent abroad at a preferential rate. Printed warnings existed to say that an enclosure would cause the mail to go at the higher letter rate.
The use of the term aerogramme was officially endorsed at the 1952 Universal Postal Union Postal Union Congress in Brussels. Thereafter, the term air letter quickly faded from use.
Most
aerograms have an imprinted stamp indicating the prepayment of postage. As
such, this meets the definition of being postal stationery. However, some
countries such as New Zealand, Zimbabwe and Ireland, sell unstamped aerograms.
Unstamped aerograms are referred to as formular
aerograms and can be issued by either postal authorities or by private
companies. Senders are required to write their name and address on the reverse.
The indicia, from 1970's national definitive set, depicted Zeuxidia amethystus, the common Saturn, a species of butterfly in the family Nymphalidae. This butterfly is relatively large and striking. Its forewings have a broad iridescent-blue band with a similar blue patch on the hindwing. However it is not abundant in Thailand, Malaya, Sumatra and Borneo, and only can be observed in dense forests.
The indicia depicted the Malayan tiger, from the 1979’s
national definitive series. Malayan
tiger is a tiger from a specific population of the Panthera tigris tigris subspecies that is native to Malaya.
The indicia was from the 1979’s national definitive series. The Sunda flying lemur (previously Cynocephalus variegatus, currently Galeopterus variegatus) or Sunda colugo, also known as the Malayan flying lemur or Malayan colugo, is a species of colugo.
