Netherlands, 1852
Portrait of a bearded king facing right, with a boxed FRANCO postmark.
Illustration of a historical stamp for learning, shown at screen size. Not valid for postage.
How to read it
POST ZEGEL and a king’s head, no country name: the Netherlands’ first stamp.
- 1POST ZEGEL
- Inscription
- POST ZEGEL · 10 C
- Meaning
- POST ZEGEL is Dutch for postage stamp; C is cents. No country name.
- Issued by
- Kingdom of the Netherlands
- Today
- the Netherlands Flag of Netherlands
- Year
- 1852. Issued 1852.
One fact
The first Dutch stamps of 1852 showed King William III.
Source and public-domain rule
Creators died more than 70 years ago. Published 1852; no designer or engraver is named on the stamp or the source file: anonymous, 70 years from publication. Copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years, counted from 1 January of the year after death. Every named designer and engraver of the stamp died before 1 January 1956; any contributor who was never named counts as anonymous, whose term is 70 years from publication, and the stamp was published before 1956. Legal sources: Directive 2006/116/EC, Art. 1(1) life + 70 years; Art. 1(3) anonymous works 70 years from publication; Art. 7(1) comparison of terms for works from outside the EU; Art. 8 terms run from 1 January, Switzerland, Norway.
Scan: Netherlands 1852 N2o.jpg on Wikimedia Commons (revision 1002562877), licence templates {{PD-old-100}}. Downloaded 2026-10-19, sha256 5104ec323ea7…; cropped and cleaned for this site. Facts checked 2026-10-19 against source 1 and source 2. Research record, not legal advice; a human rights review is pending. Spotted a mistake? Tell us.
