It's not French. It's an Austrian newspaper stamp, 1908 Sc# P18. The denomination is in Heller. My ancient catalogue (2008) lists it at $2.75 mint and 25c used.
I'm assuming that the newspaper stamps were for inland use only and as they weren't used for international postage didn't need any country identifier.
The Scott listing does call him Mercury but I believe I have seen him in other catalogues called Hermes.
I have one of those microscopes, only mine was intended for children but works very well and only cost me a fiver on Ebay. That's GB£s, so about 8 or 9 US$ at the time. I even had my wife make a little cover for it so it doesn't get dusty. Happy days.
They are called newspaper stamps because they were only used for payment for delivery of newspapers by the postal authorities. Newspapers have had special treatment in terms of delivery cost in many countries as a public service.
I like your computer connectable microscope device!
For what it's worth, Denmark also issued newspaper stamps from 1907 until 1916, when they decided not to continue with them. In 1918 they overprinted the remaining stock of newspaper stamps to create 27 ore postage stamps. Some of these overprints are quite expensive now, probably resulting in some forgeries.
Ore! I've seen stamps made from fish skin, but none from lumps of rock or precious metals!
It's a lot easier than that, Johnny - it's the currency unit. An ore is a Danish penny or cent. They used Rigsbank skillings (96 to the Rigsdaler) until 1875, when they reformed the currency and created the ore and the krone - 100 ore to the krone. Sweden did the same in 1875. Norway waited till 1877 to make the change. And Iceland changed in 1876 - their penny is called an eyrir, plural is aurar.
I got all this from my SG Scandinavia 2008 edition. But I don't know why they had 96 skillings to the rigsdaler. And as UK had 240 pennies to the pound until decimal currency came in in the 60s, I can't make remarks.
Well, Strider, 96 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 16, 24 and 48, a far more logical number for currency than, for example, the 100 the UK currently uses (2, 5, 10, 20, 50 and that's it).
To be picky, the small Danish (and Norwegian) currency unit is written Øre, in Swedish it's Öre (same sound). The first sound is an "umlaut" somewhere between O and E that's common in the Scandinavian languages and in German. Funnily enough, even though it is not worth much, the name of the unit is derived from the Latin aureus, which was a pretty valuable Roman gold coin ...
And yes, Hermes and Mercury are for practical purposes the same - the former is the Greek messenger god, the latter his Roman equivalent. Also the god of the thieves ... ;-)
Martin
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