yes, these are precancels. My old Official Catalogue of Belgium has a listing of these. The 5Fr is PO818, the 11Fr is beyond the reach of my catalogue (it is from 1991).
Liz, use your search and type in PSS,OR precancel stamp society.A remarkable site.Browse down to types of cancels,world wide,and it has pictures and explanations for types of precancels used by almost all countries,old and newer types. Iwas surprised at the many different precancels I passed up,thinking them to be only standard cancels.BTW,the pc s are for another member,I only collect the ones that are coils.All others go to Avi. TOM
LOL Tom - These ones are for me and are going into my Belgium collection, unless I find some spare ones. Thanks for the info on the PSS. I'll check it out.
Thanks Jan-Simon for the information. We have such a great group of helpful people on Stamporama
Belgium is one of the most prolific users of precancels along with France. In most other countries they have gone out of fashion as a result of meter cancels, and I am not sure why this should be different in these countries unless small businesses in rural ares use them where a visit to the post office to top up the meter machine is a hassle. Earlier Belgian precancels are dated so you can collect several different copies of the same stamp - also there are a limited number of surcharges which are only available as precancels so they are listed as seperate stamps in Gibbons whereas "ordinary" precancels are not. I have never understood why precancels have never been considered as seperate to ordinary stamps as it is quite a distinct usage and why in mainstream catalogues they tend to be considered inferior. I think Belgium is a much underated country to collect, as well as the precancels there are the Railway stamps, a legible standard of postmarking,a moderate issueing policy and a reasonable standard of stamp design, and there are not a huge number of expensive stamps. I recently bought in a "junk" shop 5 pages of Belgian stamps for £1.00 ( about $1.50 ) including 2 pages of railway stamps with wonderfully clear postmarks, some of which I think might be small (and now closed) railway stations. I have not started to do any research on these yet,but I think this might open up quite an interesting area of collecting - and at prices like this it won't cost an arm and a leg - and I guess a large representative collection might be useful to sell on to a collector wanting to make a specialised study. I think this might be one of the areas where the whole is worth more than the sum of its parts. I can feel a visit to the website of the SNCB (Belgian State Railways ) and some convoluted linguistics necessary!!! Regards Malcolm
My specialist Belgium catalogue lists 820 different precancels until 1990, and that is without counting the varieties (text turned clockwise instead of counterclockwise). Railway stamps, another great collecting area, you can go for the different stamps, but also the stations and the postally used ones. You are right, many collectors seem to dislike them, so you can get them without many problems.
It's most probably "Officiele Belgische Postzegelcatalogus" (OBC) - that one is in Dutch, There is also (I believe) the same cataog available in French (COB). Or it could be "Willy Balasse", but this latter is long out of print.