Postal Rates

POSTAL RATES OF HUNGARY

INTRODUCTION AND INDEX

Understanding the postal rates of Hungary is a key to being able in interpret items of postal history, but these have not been well understood. Information has generally been available only from scattered articles, books and catalogues, mostly in the Hungarian language which can be difficult to interpret correctly.

A review of available information has been cross-checked with archival information from the postal instruction documents, now available on-line up to 1948, in order to improve traceability of the data. More modern data have been collected mainly from Magyar Posta’s publicly available rates sheets.

The rate information is broken down by class of mail, each class being subdivided and accessible as pdf file via links. Click on a link to open the file. The files are of varying length depending on the nature of the data and period over which such data are available. They include numerous notes and translations of postal document notices where relevant.

Section 1.1 contains an overall introduction, caveats, details of sources, the approach used, and currency, weight and distance data. It is suggested that this is looked at first. For each class of mail the first item in each sub-list contains some background information on the operation of that class, the methodology of establishing the rates, and the sources.

1. General notes and data sources	1.1 General notes
2. Letters, inland	2.1 Inland rates – 1850-1918 2.2 Inland rates – 1918-1926 then to 1945 2.3 Inland rates – Second inflation period – 1945-46 2.4 Inland rates – 1946-2025 2.5 Inland – value declared 2.6 Notes on War Tax
3. Letters – foreign	3.1 Foreign rates 1850 – 1918 3.2 Foreign rates – First inflation period – 1918-1926 3.3 Foreign rates – 1926-68 3.4 Foreign rates – 1971-2025 3.5 Foreign declared value rates 3.6 Notes on Sea-post Surcharge
4. Postcards	4.1 Inland and foreign rates – 1869-1945 4.2 Inland and foreign rates – 1945-1946 4.3 Inland and foreign rates – 1946-2025 4.4 Sending postcards as printed matter
5. Printed Matter, Samples, Business Papers, Newspapers, etc.	5.1 Definitions 5.2 Printed papers 5.3 Samples 5.4 Business papers 5.5 Newspapers 5.6 Books 5.7 Braille literature for the blind
6. Special services (registration, express, urgent, etc.)	6.1 Inland 6.2 Foreign
7. Airmail surcharges	7.1 Regular services – to 1945 7.2 Regular services – from 1946 7.3 Parcels 7.4 Special flights 7.5 Zeppelin flights
8. Postal money orders	8.1 Inland 8.2 Foreign 8.3 Cash-on-delivery – Inland 8.4 Cash-on-delivery – Foreign 8.5 Postal money order collection
9. Parcels	9.1 Inland Fahrpost 1842-1871 9.2 Inland 1872-1919 9.3 Inland 1920-1945 9.4 Budapest local parcel service 1932-1944 9.5 Inland 1945-1946 9.6 Inland 1946-2025 9.7 Foreign rates 9.8 Small valuable boxes (Értékdoboz, 1891-1946) 9.9 Small foreign parcels (Kiscsomag, 1930-2002) 9.10 Foreign rates, ‘M-sack’ (2002-2024)
10. Postal forms	10.1 Postal forms
11. Occupied territories	11.1 Postal rates of occupied territories 1919-1921