Luxembourg's Classic Rome-Frame International Reply Coupons

International reply coupons were first issued by member-countries of the Universal Postal Union on October 1, 1907. The basic design of the first coupon issue (shown below) is referred to as the “Rome frame.” This design continued in use until July 1, 1930, when a new design—called the “London frame”—appeared.

During this nearly 23-year classic coupon period, Luxembourg issued five Rome-frame coupons to pay four different tariffs. Moreover, when tariffs increased, some of the coupons were up-rated with the new value shown by manuscript. All of the Rome-frame coupons are very scarce.

Type 1 (1907):

30 centimes

(lines separate the paragraphs on the back side)

Type 2 (1909):

30 centimes

(paragraphs on the back side not separated by lines; first paragraph of text consists of four lines)

Type 3 (1910):

30 centimes

(like Type 2, but the first paragraph of text consists of only three lines)

Type 4 (1913):

30 centimes

(like Type 3, but the country name is printed in large-size, Egyptian-style type)

Type 5 (date unknown):

37½ centimes

Tariffs

10/01/07 . . . . . . 30 centimes
04/15/16 . . . . . 37½ centimes
10/20/17 . . . . . . 55 centimes
04/23/20 . . . . . . 90 centimes

Two of the classics are shown here.

Type 1

Issued at Luxembourg-Gare on January 11, 1910.

Type 3

Issued at Roodt (!) on December 26, 1919,
and uprated in pen to 55 centimes
(only reported example).

Bibliography

Basien, Dieter & Hoffkamp, Fernand, Tarife der Briefpost in Luxemburg 1852-2002, (Luxembourg: P&T, 2002), pp. 160-162.

Paul-August Koch, Wim V. M. Wiggers de Vries, and Auguste Wery, Die Internationalen Antwortscheine von Belgien und Luxemburg (Krefeld-Traar: Bund Deutscher Philatelisten e.V., 1984).

André Hurtré, “Postal Reply Coupons—International Reply Coupons,” http://mapage.noos.fr/AndreH1/encri.htm