Poland Red Cross Dachau Sheets (With 6 Stamps Each)

Hi There,


I have 6 of these souvenir sheet semi-postals issues for for the Polish Red Cross presumably for the Dachau concentration camp relief.

Five of them are perforated and one is not.

The perforated ones all look the same to me except perhaps for different placements of the red cross "imprint" which is barely visible.

When I search on E-Bay I see people referring to different Block numbers.

Can anyone provide me a resource where I can figure out how to differentiate these sheets? Many thanks!

Hi! Maybe this will help you :
http://www.stampcircuit.com/fr/stam...venir-sheets

One more link : https://encheres.catawiki.eu/kavels...amp-inverted

As far as I know there are is no online catalogue for these.

After WWII there were many Displaced Persons camps across Europe, some of these produced stamps for an inter-camp postal system & they were genuinly used. More info here - http://www.stampdomain.com/country/...mp/index.htm

These sheets, however, are not in that category, being issued purely as fund-raiser labels having no postal validity although CTO examples are available.

They are listed in all post-war Polish catalogues with a note as to their Cinderella status.

Dachau-Allach was a subcamp of Dachau in the outskirts of Munich in Bavaria. The initial issue was of four stamps in Aug. 1945, followed by mini-sheets including, 1, 4, and 6 stamps in Nov. 1945. These were issued by the Polish committee for Dachau-Allach to memorialize the atrocities committed at the Concentration Camp. Notice the spelling error "Prize" for "Price"

All sheets were on white paper, Imperf - designated "A" & Perf 11 - designated "B", the format is 90 x 127 mm.

The sheet with 6 stamps is what we have here & it has the main catalogue number 5 in the latest (2016) Fischer catalogue

Lozenge shaped watermark
5xA
5xB

No watermark
5yA
5yB

"DM" watermark
5zA
5zB

So there are 6 varieties of these for the complete set

HOWEVER

Unsold remainders were given to the Polish Red Cross (PCK} & it was they who embossed their logo in the bottom right corner before selling them, the originaly issued sheets did NOT have embossing.

These embossed sheets are not catalogued separately, only noted, so I have no idea as to which ones were embossed although, theoretically, it could be all six.

The current Fischer catalogue lists these sheets @ 200 Zloty each, although that is a pipe dream, they currently sell for $10-15 each on ebay.

Then there are the "rare inverted errors" of which there are a surprisingly large number of examples. These list for $100+ on ebay & they never sell.



Some more info on the 3 pages here - http://www.stampspoland.nl/series/c.../dachau.html

Jay Carrigan used to have a nice webpage on these issues, but his site lapsed following his death. Much of it is still available via the Wayback Machine, but some of the images are missing from the archive.

I managed to snag a copy of most of his webpage for reference purposes before it lapsed. Here's what the Dachau page looked like in its last iteration -- here.

Wow, thank you all for this fullsome information Very helpful indeed.

I apologize for my delayed reply-- have been busy with my "real job" but will spend some time studying these Dachau sheets this weekend!