Secret language of postage stamps

You must have already encountered the fact that a postage stamp has been affixed to a letter or postcard in a special way. However, this apparent negligence may not be accidental. Letters or postcards in addition to their readable content could hide messages that were hidden to ordinary people. Depending on where and in what position the postage stamp was affixed, you could also notify the addressee of what was not written in the text. This phenomenon was widespread mainly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For example, if a postage stamp was affixed lying to the right side of the address, the additional “secret” message might have meant: Forget me, please!

Fig. 1: Postcard from Imperial Russia “The language of postage stamps”.

It probably won’t be easy to distinguish when the sender is trying to communicate something that others should not know, and when it’s just his negligence. In any case, it is an interesting and funny piece of postal history.

Photograph used in this article – private collection of the author of this article.