The Wayne Broehl Indian Postal Stamps collection

The Wayne Broehl Collection of Indian Postal Stamps contains approximately 5,400 postal cards and 1,200 postal envelopes that Broehl purchased from India to enrich his stamp collection. The cards and envelopes record the history of the Indian postal system. Present in the collection are cards and envelopes ranging from 1803 to 1908, although a bulk of the bundled pieces of the collection are from 1830 through 1890, when the Indian postal system went through a rapid series of changes within a few years. The postal system itself was established under British rule in 1837, so the pieces from before that year represent both the official British postal service (stamps issued by zamindars - or government tax collectors) as well as privately Indian-owned, “dawk” postal delivery companies. Broehl’s collection continues to chronicle the developments of the Indian postal service after the Indian Post Office was officially established in 1837 - the stamps on each letter correlate with the year and time period in which they were mailed. The collection dwindles after the 1870’s, since by that time, India’s postal service had for the most part been regulated, and each of the issued stamps during that time were used heavily and are not as rare as the stamps with shorter issue-lives.

The collection also contains nineteen guides to postal history auctions, pertaining to the late 1970’s through early 1980’s.