A wrapper from the Kingdom of Samoa

So tempting to start a new collection of Samoa. At times Samoa was independent, at times under English, German, New Zealand and United States control. Since 1962 Samoa is again an independent nation. For philatelists and postal historians there is plenty to go for.

Collecting a cross-boundary item as I do – "Newspaper Wrappers Worldwide from Before 1900" – I sometimes touch on areas so fascinating that I get tempted to start up a new collection.

Looking for wrappers on the Internet in December 2006 I came across an unusual one at Ebay. The starting price was low. Having acquired some extra information from the seller I made what I thought was a fair bid 77 US $. You can imagine my surprise when I saw the price going steep upwards and ending at 1.981 US $. I am sure the seller was delighted and just as surprised as I was.

What is so special about this wrapper? According to the postmark dated August 16 (no year), it was sent from Apia on the Island of Upolo, which is part of the group of 14 islands that lies about 1600 miles north-east of New Zealand and bears the name of Samoa. The addressee is a Mr. Kusenach, in Lehe, which is a small town near Bremerhafen at the North West coast of Germany. The wrapper is directed to be sent via San Francisco in the United States.

The postage is made up of a 1 penny stamp from The Kingdom of Samoa (probably SG 35 issued in Mai 1890) plus a 1 cent stamp from the United States (Y&T 1931 no. 70 issued 1890 – 1893). This combination is unusual.

The reason behind this special rate is that the United States had joined the UPU in 1875. Samoa was however still not a party to the UPU cooperation, and therefore the question of the validity of Samoan stamps for oversees postage was raised. Mail from Samoa for e.g. Australia and New Zealand was accepted without surcharge by their postal authorities, but for delivery in the United States and onwards additional postage was needed. For a letter 5cent; for a printed matter 1 cent (at least according to our wrapper).

References:

World History Stamp Atlas by Rossiter and Flower 1986/1991

Stanley Gibbons, British Commonwealth 2000 Edition

Yvert et Tellier Catalogue de Timbres Postes 1931

A Jewel of Danish Philately: 48 sk. block of 4

At a recent auction held by Enger in Norway one of the jewels of Danish Philately was sold for a considerable sum: A block of four of 48 skilling bi-colored issued in 1870.

The block is special in two ways. All four stamps have the so-called "thick frame". All 48 sk. have that frame so the 48 sk. does not exist with the thinner frame that is the frame common to most bi-colored editions. As always there are exceptions and I shall revert to them in a later post.

The other reason why the block is special is because the stamp in the South East corner has the inverted frame. Yes you are right. A thick inverted frame. In one sheet of 100 of 48 sk. stamps only two stamps have the inverted frame. The two stamps with the inverted frame are called isolated inverted thick frames, which is natural since the other 98 stamps in the sheet have the normal thinner frame.

How does one recognize a thick frame? Yes! it is a bit larger than the normal frame. In fact if you measure the corner feather North East we are talking about 0.2 mm. A normal feather measures 2.6 mm. A thick feather 2.8 mm. But it is not just the feathers that are bigger. The whole frame is a little bit bigger.

If you face a real thick frame you cannot miss it, however – and there is always an however – the clichés of the normal frame do become worn and sometimes a stamp from a printing having been printed wholly or partly with worn cliché’s do look as if they have thick frames. They do not. I show you one of each. First a genuine thick normal frame followed by a stamp printed with a worn cliché of a normal thinner frame.

Enjoy the 4 block because you will probably not be able to see it live. The purple color very easily fades when exposed to natural bright light and therefore the block is not likely to be shown at public exhibitions and fairs.

Danish Bicoloured: The Elusive Frames

The Danish bi-colored stamps (1875 - 1905) are wonderful stamps. Pretty and full of unsolved mysteries. You can spend hours learning about how they were designed, produced and finally delivered by the printers to the Postal Authorities. If you have studied enough, which presupposes having enough material; If you have acces to the right literature and have acquired some experience in identifying the secreets, you may be able to determine a stamp by its printing and maybe even by its original position in the sheet.

The Danish bi-colored stamps are not rare stamps. Most of them were produced in millions. Some of the denominations you can even still buy by the hundreds for 15 - 20 $. Others will cost you more.

Their design consists of a frame and an oval. In order to determine their type according to the catalogues you need to understand at least the difference between a normal and an inverted frame. You will see the difference clearly from the old drawing shown above.

I will not dwell on the details of the differences between the two types in this posting. The point I want to make is, that you can only very rarely determine their number in the catalog and thereby their value by their type of frame alone. You need to combine the information of the type with more information to do that. Therefore never accept information given at auction or by a seller about the type of a stamp as the only and final proof of the identity of a stamp if the auctioneer or the seller claims that the stamp is rare and valuable because of its type of frame alone.

Some stamps with a normal frame can in facty be very rare; some stamps with an inverted frame can also in fact be very rare. It all depends, which denomination and which printing they belong to. And in order to determine that, you need a whole lot more information about this series and experience in dealing with this information as I have already stated above.Therefore if tempted by an offer of a bi-cored stamp with a rare frame always demand a certificate by an expert known to posses the necessary knowledge about the subject.

Here follows two samples. One stamp with an inverted frame and one stamp with a normal frame. Soon I'll come back to complicate matters telling about thick frames, which can also be devided into the to types mentioned.

How to deal with faulty stamps! Point of view

Hand in old faulty stamps to your club or society, put them up on stiff sheets with a plastic cover and lend them to members who want to learn about early editions.

Surprisingly often I see faulty old Danish stamps, especially from the “skilling" denomination period of 1851 – 1875, offered for sale at horrendous prices. I wonder what happens to these stamps in the end, since they are rarely sold for the price that the seller asks? I have however noticed that some of these faulty stamps reemerge in collections put up for sale. Suppose the seller is thinking, if I bury them among other stamps, which are in a better shape, buyers will not notice or not mind? May even increase the total price of the lot?

What do I mean when I say faulty? I mean missing perforation, cut into or cut off all perforation, smaller or bigger creases, corners missing, thins aso. They really look and are clearly faulty bad quality stamps. What do I mean when I say horrendous prices? I mean the full or close to full catalog price. Their real value if any is a small fraction only of the catalog price.

My advice to sellers of old faulty Danish stamps is the following. Describe them for what they are, faulty. Put them up for sale at auction at the lowest possible selling price. Put them up in lots of 10 or 20 and I am sure the sellers will see that these stamps have after all a value as study material. Many a collector’s question about type, colour, variety, print aso could be answered by the collector him- or herself, if only they were owners of a sample.

Another idea would be for the stamp collectors clubs or societies to encourage their members to hand in these faulty stamps, put them up on stiff sheets with a plastic cover and lend them to members who want to learn about early editions.

No need to say, that the above pieces of advice is valid for all countries as far as old or classic stamps are concerned. It is only because I am Danish and a collector of Danish stamps that I make my comments on the background of my knowledge of classic Danish stamps.

A Danish letter card for North Schleswig, probably unique. Why?

I want to show you the front and back of a letter-card sent from Kolding, a town close to the Danish border with Germany, as defined as a result of the war with Prussia in 1864 (changed again in 1920), to my town of birth, Haderslev, a few kilometers south of the same border.

The card looks a bit worn, but never mind. I consider it very rare if not unique, and if this holds true, a stain here or there and a bit of rust do not matter. Very probably it is the only card of this kind in existence.

Since the card does in itself not provide too much information I have had to dig it out from various sources, and only thanks to good friends in the philatelic world, I succeeded.

Its destination, Haderslev, is clear from the front. Equally so is the fact that it was transported by railway all the way to Haderslev. I know this is so from the postmark which says "FYEN.JB.P.B. 27.3. 3. TOG". This particular postmark was, according to "The Railway Post Offices of Denmark 1847-1972" from 1979 written by Anthony M. Goodbody, used by the railway post bureau created in 1865 in the island of Funen. The bureau covered the line between Nyborg and Middelfart.

In 1866 this line, however, was extended to Vamdrup in Jutland, which is important for the postal history behind our letter-card. Vamdrup, between 1864 and 1920 the very busy railway borderstation between Denmark and Germany, lies a few kilometers south of Kolding on the railway that would take the card to Haderslev. By the way, it was not until 1872 that the actual train wagons themselves were transferred from Funen to Jutland across the Sound of Lillebaelt since ferries made for the carrying of train wagons simply were not in use in Denmark prior to that year.

The reason why the route is important is the fact that the card bears no mention of the town of departure. However the knowledge we have on the name of the sender in combination with the message carried by the letter-card and the special rate used reveals that the town of departure is most certainly Kolding.

The senders name is Roose and the message concerns the deliveries of carriages with bran, a byproduct of grain processing. Roose was an important dealer in grain and feeding stuff in Kolding during the period 1870 – 1880.

The stamp used (2nd print of 4 øre bicolored) in combination with the 2 sk. stationery letter-card narrows the year of the sending of the card to 1875 more precisely 27th March 1875 according to the postmark. January 1st Denmark due to a monetary reform changed from Rigsdaler/Skilling to Kroner/Øre. 2 sk was converted to 4 øre. It follows that altogether the postage used was 8 øre.

But the rate at the time for letter cards to Germany was 10 øre? No postage due markings are found on the card. 8 øre, however, corresponds with the special border rate for Schleswig. This rate though was only valid for letters not for letter-cards except for the fact that until 30th June 1875, the day before Denmark joins the uniform rates of the UPU, lettercards were de facto treated like letters and among the very few Post Offices covered by the special border rate at the time were Kolding and Haderslev.

To sum up: This lettercard is characterized by 1) its mixed postage of sk. and øre, 2) its special border rate and 3) the fact that letter-cards were accepted de facto for this rate only between January, 1st and July, 1st 1875. Together these three characteristics make the letter-card rare, if not unique.

I want to thank Lars Engelbrecht and Jørgen Kluge, the latter being the author of an e-book on Danish Border Mail, for their invaluable help in confirming my belief that the letter-card was and is a border-letter.

French Balloon Post for Denmark - A Rarity

At the Internet pages of the French auction house Lugdunum Philatélie I noticed the above fantastic letter. The letter was posted in Paris on October 7th, 1870 its destination being Denmark: Mrs. R. Valentin, Amagertorv 27, København. It was posted by the son of the addressee. I presume that at the time he was attached to the family business in Paris, Valintin & Frankfurter, 4 Passage Violet, Paris. Anyhow, that is how the return address, which can be seen on the front of the letter, reads. The letter is franked with two Napoleon III stamps (with a laurel wreath), the 20c blue and the 30c brown, in all 50c which sufficed as postage for Denmark according to the red box mark PD on the front, " Payé à Destination".

What makes this letter very special is, however, that it left Paris in a pile of letters placed in a balloon. This fact emerges clearly from the letter front: "par Ballon libre". I am not a collector of French postal history and therefore it is with a certain reservation that I reproduce the following information (in other words do consult my source of information): As I understand it there were two kinds of balloons, manned balloons and un-manned balloons. Whether a letter was sent by the one or the other, can in certain cases be determined by the front of the pre-printed correspondence cards, which were very quickly put on the marked by private firms. If it said "par Ballon libre" the balloon was un-manned, if it said "par Ballon monté" it was a manned balloon. Out of the in all 67 balloons 55 were manned. The postage, the weight and size permitted, varied according to the type of balloon employed. That the manned type was soon preferred to the un-manned is self-evident.

Our letter was sent by an un-manned balloon on October 7th, 1870. In all three balloons were despatched that very day, out of which at least one was manned namely the balloon with the name of the famous George Sand. Another was called Armand Barbe and the third either had no name or was called Piper No 1. They landed in the non occupied areas of France and the letters were handed in by the finder at a near by Post Office for further attention. Of course the finder received a neat compensation for the trouble caused and a reward.


The contents of the letter sound the following:

My dear Mother
I confirm my letters from last week. We are still under siege, but have the best of hopes; the Prussians die outside Paris! I am in good health and I hope the same is the case for you, my dear Mother, and that all the family is in good health. My very best wishes to all of you, your affectionate son
J Valentin.

If we did not already know here is the explanation why the mail leaving Paris was shipped by balloons. The French-Prussian war rages and Paris is under siege. The war was declared by France on July 19th, 1870 and ended by the signing of an armistice agreement on January 28th, 1871.

To those collectors who look for more information about this period or about the postal history of France dating 1848 – 1878 I would recommend to turn to a beautifully illustrated book published this year by Michéle Chauvet and Jean-Francois Brun.

Mr. Brun informs that an estimated two to three million letters were shipped out of Paris by balloon during the siege most of them to destinations in France itself. How many balloon mail letters exist with Denmark as their final destination I do not know? I have been told about the existence of one other letter so maybe there are indeed two of them.

FDC's. Their role in a stamp collection need to well defined. Point of view.

Do you consider FDC’s relevant to a classical stamp collector? No! Unless it is a letter carrying Penny Black sent on the date of issue or a similar item from before the concept of FDC's were invented. Could even very well be of a later date if genuinely a letter reflecting the proper postal rate.

But why are FDC's not terribly popular among advanced traditional collectors? Because their postal purpose is questionable. They are wannabe letters, but never become letters. A letter is basically a message to somebody who is absent. If the receiver replies you even have a correspondence. FDC's do not carry messages, they just mark an event. The stamp on an FDC furthermore often does not reflect a rate for services rendered.

These facts do not mean that FDC's cannot form part of a stamp collection. I am sure thematic collectors wellcome them. I myself include FDC's in my open class collection. They represent my theme and add to the variety of objects. Whether they fall in the category of stamp related material (50%) or non-stamp related material (50%) I do not know. The judges will surely tell me if the balance in my collection is out of order.

FDC's should be accepted for what they are. A collector's item marking an event. Problem is that suffisticated dealers sometimes make unexperienced traditional collectors believe that FDC's belong in a traditional collection and even may gain in value like traditional stamps and covers sometimes do. FDC's, however, very rarely do gain in value to the great disappointment of many a young collector!

Help me write a book (E-book) about Stamp Collecting and Philately!

Many a fine book has been written about Stamp Collecting and Philately, but if you think carefully. When did you last see or hear about a new Introduction to our hobby? Specialized catalogues and studies, yes, but an Introduction? And in case you did, did it take into account the last ten to twenty years development within the field of Stamp Collecting and Philately or was it just a rehash of older books on the subject?

I have been asking for a recent introduction to philately in several bookshops in Europe, but unsuccessfully so. I suppose the demand for such a book is not con­sidered huge or even worth while testing by the publishing houses. All that can be said about the hobby has been said in details they might say, which is probably true, but in my view they are still wrong.

Why? Because during the last ten to twenty years, the framework with­in which Stamp Collecting and Philately has been operating has changed tremendously to the hobby’s advantage. Albeit that very likely there are fewer Stamp Collectors and Philatelists to day world wide than before – I insist on using both concepts – the hobby still merits the characteristic of attracting a world wide interest and due to the Internet and all the activity that follows from it, the hobby has better conditions today than for very many years. If given just a slight but intelligent and inspired push drawing on the collective knowledge of the past, but taking full advantage of the new framework I am quite certain that Stamp Collecting and Philately will continue to attract the interest of millions of people and help further understanding and tolerance among peoples, qualities strongly needed in the world of today.

Now what to do? Help me write a modern introduction to Stamp Collecting and Philately in the form of a book, or preferably an E-book. Help me to give those that are tempted to take up this old hobby the tools and instruments they need to become successful Stamp Collectors and Philatelists.

Let’s start by putting together a draft easily accessible and logical modern Contents section. As for a draft working title for the book I suggest:

Philately of Today
Introduction to Stamp Collecting and Philately in the Age of the Internet

Looking forward to hearing your ideas and comments!

With Collector’s Greetings

Svend

Why do I collect …. :The bi-coloured stamps from Denmark and DWI?

I collect the Bicoloured Stamps from Denmark and The Danish West Indies (DWI). Why? Because I find the colours of these stamps to be very pretty, especially the early printings of the series. With a little help from my friends I have also learnt to appreciate the challenge it is to be able to plate these stamps and to reconstruct whole panes. As far as the 4 øre and the 8 øre values are concerned plating them is often the only possible way to decide to which series and what printing they be­long. The more you know about these stamps, the greater are your chan­ces in finding real rarities for your collection without having to pay big sums of money.

I finished my latest post to my blog by encouraging collectors who exhibit or intend to exhibit their collections to tell their story of how they started building their stamp collection and also to tell the story of the collection, which are two different things. I also promised to tell the story be­hind one of my collections in my next post to my blog. Here it is:

The Danish Bicoloured series dating from 1870 – 1905 intrigued me ever since at the age of 6 I started collecting stamps. Being Danish and living in Denmark it was natural for me to collect postage stamps from Denmark and following the widely used AFA catalogue I also made an attempt to identify the few samples I had of the 4 øre blue/gray and 8 øre red/gray. All the other values were not within my reach since they were highly priced, several of them more than 100 Danish Crowns, (5 £ in 1960) and at that time I had no reason to doubt that the catalogues prices were always the right price.

Using a magnifying glass I tried to sensitize my eye to separate stamps with normal and inverted frames and of course thick and thin frames. The latter worked out well, but the former remained a mystery to me for many years, the reason being that I had a picture in the catalogue as my only guide and not one single original stamp with a thick frame like the stamp I show above. In fact I believed I had one, only the catalogue did not register it. Many years later I understood that my “thick frame” was but a stamp printed with a worn down cliché.

But it was the colours that fascinated me the most. However at the same time they caused me a lot of problems. Stamps with the same face value clearly did not look alike but distinctly different. The colour of the frame and the oval varied a lot.

12 – 13 years of age I several times at the public library borrowed the impressive book of G.A. Hagemann from 1941 about the bicoloured is­sues. Haagemann describes the colours in a very delicate and persuasive manner which still today is valued by the specialists.

However the colour descriptions did not lead me to a convincing result and the hardest one to convince is sometimes yourself. I looked for primary and secondary frame errors: alfa, beta and gamma, they were called by Hagemann, but to no avail. I did not understand the basic idea. What was the significance a ”frame group”?

Finally I put the books to a side and began sorting my bicoloured stamps according to how much they looked alike. I benefit from this exercise this very day – approximately 40 years later. It gave me a visual impression which I still remember. What I had not understood at the time was that I needed a lot more stamps in order to make progress along that route.

I acquired my first AFA Special Edition 1966 when I was 16 and again worked tirelessly on separating the printings inspired by a member of the local stamp club. But it wasn’t until as a member of Copenhagen Philatelic Society (KPK) I met collectors who really knew about the mysteries of the bicoloured series and were able to explain them to me that my collection started growing in a structured way.

Today we have the impressive book by Lasse Nielsen in 6 volumes about The Bicoloured Stamps of Denmark. You cannot do without it if you decide to work seriously with these stamps. However, you still need a comprehensive and large material for your studies, and a lot of paitiance in order to learn the special characteristics of the series, and not just the colours. The study group of the KPK on the bicoloured issues will help you. Collectors from all over Denmark and even a very keen and advanced collector from Hamburg, Germany, meet once a year to discuss bicoloured topics. Those interested are welcome.