Pakistan
Short Paid Aerogramme

Air letter (Wiegand no. 1, mechanical overprint on India no. 1) sent from KARACHI (cds 31 OCT. 1948) to Amhurst, U.S.

In 1948, the air letter rate to the U.S. was 8 AS, so the aerogramme was short paid 2 AS.

The Pakistani currency was 1 R = 16 A = 64 pice = 192 pies and converted, like the Indian Rupee, into the UPU gold centimes at a rate of 3 A 6 pies = 3 1/2 A = 30 centimes.

Double the deficiency (4 AS) needs to be converted into UPU gold centimes: 4 AS ≈ 35 UPU gold centimes. For any reason this taxation was not endorsed by the Pakistani postal authorities next to the “T” handstamp.

Correctly calculating, the U.S. postal authorities should have converted this 35 UPU gold centimes into 12 cents at a rate of 1 cent = 3 UPU gold centimes (rounded to the next full cent), which was in place since July 1948.

The U.S. postal authorities, however, did not know the exact amount of postage due in UPU gold centimes, so the postage due in U.S. currency (10 cents), which was added to the “Postage Due ... Cents / Foreign Sect. G.P.O.N.Y.” handstamp might have been something like a “best guess”.


References
Wiegand stands for Wiegand, Katalog der Aerogramme von Asien, 2000