Q45 September 23 2007   member 239 Mixed currency Mixed currency might not be the right term as Milliemes and Piastres had been around a long time. Egyptian stamps had their values in Milliemes since the De La Rues and the last one to use Piastre was the crown overprint on the 2pi post due. On January 28, 1982 Piastres were reintroduced as due to inflation the Millieme has almost become valueless and at 10Milliemes to one Piastres the number of the denomination dropped by a factor of ten overnight. The first stamp was the commemorative for the 14th Cairo International Book Fair and at 3p (30m) and was for the internal letter rate. This was followed by four other stamps all in Piastres until the set for the International Conference on Marine Science was issued on April 24 but this set reverted back to Milliemes. The following issues all continued to use Piastres until July 5 1983, just over a year later, when the Ramadan festival stamp was issued as 20mill. This was the last use of Milliemes on Egyptian stamps. Why this reversion to Milliemes, I can only think these stamps were designed before the decision to use Piastres, possible the festival stamp may have been designed the same time to the previous one Were Milliemes stamps ever demonetised and perhaps are they still valid to day, any ideas? What you can find are covers of this period using both Milliemes and Piastres stamps which appear to go through the post OK. Again however using 10m = 1p the rates of the covers I show don't seem to quite make sense. Has anybody got later covers then these where Milliemes stamps were used either with Piastres stamps or alone?

10.8.89. 50+20pi for reg. express. The postage was 60pi, I doubt that 10pi covered registration. ?.9.84. 1pi+5pi for inland express. The letter rate was 3pi and supposedly 5pi for express No readable date but the cover does show the last issued Milliemes stamp.