Secret messages conveyed by postage stamps

 

Most philatelists are familiar with the antiquated technique of positioning postage stamps in certain ways to silently express sentiments.  Recently Poemas del rio Wang posted a comprehensive and extensively-illustrated explanation of the phenomenon - the best I've encountered anywhere on the internet.

On philatelic and auction sites you sometimes find postcards which illustrate with small pictures, similar to naval flag signals, what it means if the stamp was stuck in this or that position on the card. The custom is probably as old as the greeting card itself, which started its world conquering tour from the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1869. I’ve found the oldest mention of it in the 13 July 1890 edition of the Hungarian provincial weekly Szarvas és vidéke, which indicates that it had to flourish long before that date...

In the simplest version, the various positions of the stamp indicated, as the pointer of an erotometer, the temperature of love... Other cards, on the contrary, informed the unwanted suitors about the reasons for rejection through the position of the stamp... The majority, however, conveyed more subtle messages, from hesitation through desire to rejection, and even specific instructions such as “tomorrow at the usual place!”..

Sometimes the language became more articulated, and expressed the shades of emotions not by turning one stamp, but through the relations of two stamps, such as in the following...

Much more at the excellent source.