Ricardo Veloso y Cía

Avenida de Italia 62, (at the corner of Neptuno), Post Office Box 1115, Havana, Cuba

This firm produced perfins from 1917 to 1949.

Ricardo Veloso Guerra founded Libreria Cervantes in 1910. In 1925, he applied to the post office officials to obtain permission to perforate postage stamps. He attached a sheet of paper that was perforated by his 10 die machine and had 3 perfin stamps affixed. He got an affirmative response the next day. Here are those documents:

Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

Page 4

The letter of acceptance refers to the Decree of 1920 pertaining to the use of perfins on stamps. It reads:

Decree No. 321 of January 1, 1920, authorizing the use of perfins on Cuban stamps:

"Article 65. The public can mark stamps with distinctive perforations without the loss of their postal validity, provided that the perforations conform to the following rules:

  1. They will only form letters, signs or figures and they must never represent advertisements of any kind.
  2. The letters, signs or figures may not exceed one-third of the dimensions of the stamp.
  3. The diameter of the holes shall be equal to that of the perforations that separate stamps from each other and the distance between the perforated holes shall be equal to the distance between the stamp perforations.
  4. The paper removed from the stamp by the perforations may not represent more than one eighth of the total surface of the stamp.

Stamps marked with distinctive perforations that do not conform to the above rules shall be void."

RETURN to perfin main page.