Does Anybody Else Collect Indonesian Revolutionary Stamps?

Does anybody else collect Indonesian revolutionary stamps 1945-1949 (not including the Vienna issues)?
I've been into these for about 3 years and still have as many questions as answers.
Outside of the Dai Nippon catalogues I have, information is hard to come by.

For example:
1) Is anyone familiar with the "night sky" variant? I've only seen one other stamp than mine advertised as such.
See a normal version of that image below, followed by a "night sky" variant. How was the sky inked in? Why?





2) What do you do about CTO stamps? CTOs are very prevalent among these issues, and as noted in the Dai Nippon catalogue, a number of issues are known only as CTO.
If you have a CTO stamp that is not one of the ones "known only as CTO", is it inappropriate to put it in your collection?
I recently purchased on eBay some stamps from the apparently well-known Bulterman collection, and the group included a number of CTOs.

3) What about stamps that are not listed in the catalogue? According to Dai Nippon, new issues are still being found.
Below is a stamp I have with a black Repoeblik Indonesia in frame hand stamp in addition to a violet manuscript surcharge.
The catalogue only lists a violet/violet combination.




Is there any point in getting a cert? If it's genuine, can I say anything other than "I have a genuine stamp that's not in the catalogue"?
When can you say I have the only reported stamp? For that matter, when you read about a stamp as being one of only 2 known, or 1 of 4 known, who exactly is keeping track of these things?

Thanks,
Bob

Not a specialist in these by any means, but a collector of interim issues worldwide when I find them.



The litho screen in the top stamp shows it started with a photographic negative. You can look up how the lithographic printing plate is created. For the "night sky" type, I suspect the negative or even the original artwork was retouched by hand. There's a lot more changed besides, like the bottom line of the river, the top of the volcano/mountain, a partial figure at the front of the carabao, etc.


Perhaps to try and improve the design or maybe try to fix a bad negative to make a new printing plate. The carabao are clearer here but they did fail on other parts of the design.



In this case, I would collect them and label them as such. This seems to be like other areas where postally used is very much harder to find in many cases. There are also favor-cancelled items which can be hard to tell from postally used. Overall, it's a matter of personal preference.


Again, a matter of personal preference. You at least want to try to make sure you don't have a forged cancel, though.



It depends. You are paying for a service, and if something is (so far) unique, you could get a "no opinion" back, obviously. For the stamp above, does the written part match the violet/violet surcharges? Then I would say it has a definite shot.


What else would you want to say or could say? If this is from ex-SoandSo's collection, that could be useful.


I would use weasel words like "currently the only reported stamp as far as I have been able to determine" or somesuch. It has to first be proven to be genuine or have experts assert that it is; there's the rub.

It's usually the author of an article maybe quoting some other source or being part of a specialist group. And if it's an older source, that number can change and change dramatically over time.

Encompassing and interesting reply HB

This topic is way beyond my knowledge,
but I offer the following, in case it be of assistance.

The 3c Turquoise (3 Rupiah Surcharge) may be a stamp from the exclusive use in Sumatra ?
Alas! the author fails to indicate any colours.
The design is similar.

Bib: Japanese Occupation of the Dutch East Indies
1942-1945
Tom R Beeker
1982
Page 43
Cockrill Series Booklets No#27

rod, I think you would be of a similar mindset as would a lot of worldwide collectors here. You'd snap these up and save or trade them off if they happened to pop up. Yeah, rather esoteric stuff here, but I'm sure you (and a lot of others) have unidentified/unidentifiable stamps or cinderellas squirreled away, waiting for the day when some info comes along about them.

So, here we are. And it's here we get to see a fair amount of oddball items, just like the Counani issue you recently showed off.

Further Information on the 3c Turquoise.

Japanese characters at top read :
"Japanese Imperial Government Postal Revenue"

The Katakana characters at the foot of the stamp phonetically spelling
"Malaya" or rather "MA-RA-YA" (there being no "L" in Japanese)

Stampdoc and Hy-Brasil.

Thanks for sharing the fruits of your interest and research re this topic. Am an amateur, subject-wise (focus has been completing the more common Vienna printings).

It's always rewarding to learn from other SCF members' specialty philatelic research.

The four Katakana characters at the foot of the stamp are "SU-MA-TO-RA" or phonetically "Sumatra".

Jan

Thankyou everyone for your input.

Rod, my blue-green colored stamp is indeed from the definitive series issued by Japan for use only in Sumatra. In Scott it is under Netherlands Indies N15-N26.
It is interesting that the translation of the katakana is "Malaya". The Dai Nippon catalogues indicate that these katakana stand for Sumatra. The Japanese divided Indonesia into 3 occupied zones: Sumatra and Malaya, administered out of Singapore by the 25th Army(so perhaps Sumatra and Malaya were considered synonymous), Java administered by the 16th Army (the definitive stamps issued for use on that island had different katakana), and the eastern archipelago, administered by the Navy.

After using a wide variety of hand stamps in Sumatra at first, the Japanese later issued a machine overprint for use throughout the island. You will see the same Malaya/Sumatra characters at the bottom of the "T"




Under the Dai Nippon nomenclature this is a type 11 overprint - either no Republican overprint at all, or just a line through the Japanese characters or Netherlands Indies line. Obviously "just a line" is one of the easiest forgeries ever, so it's not considered legitimate unless it has a genuine cancel from the revolutionary period tied to it.
The Japanese overprint is called a 92z and the underlying stamp is called 53g, so this stamp sits in my album with a 11-92z-53g label. It can take a long time just to get the hang of the nomenclature.

I think it's about time I finally sent a few of my more valuable (hopefully) items off to an expertizer in the Netherlands. Neither the APS or the Philatelic Foundation will expertise these. Once I pay for their services hopefully they can answer some of my questions.

I thought I would show some of my other stamps, so you can see the wide variety of overprints and overprint combinations, which is what drew me to this area. Excuse the length, but I don't know how to post images in some sort of gallery view.
So far I have about 600 different overprints and combinations, but that's out of something like 6000, so I still have quite a ways to go.



The Republican overprint type is listed first, then the Japanese overprint type, then the underlying stamp.
A z after the overprint stands for black, v for violet, r for red, o for orange
This is a black Republican type 211 - Republic Indonesia 17mm - Japanese type 11 violet - on Nether lands Indies stamp 16b
So 211z-11v-16b
For the rest of these I will just say something like Rep 211 on Jap 11




Rep 213v plus Rep 13v on Jap 92z




Rep 214z (longer and in italics - inverted here)




Rep 221o (large Circle with PTT) plus Rep 213r (Rep Indonesia of intermediate length)




Rep 221r on Jap 51z




Rep 222v (small circle with PTT) plus Rep 211z on Jap 92z




Rep 231z (negative NRI in black disc) plus Rep 211z on Jap 92z




Rep 241z (NRI in a frame) on Jap 87v




Rep 351z (NRI not in a frame and without serifs)




Another Rep 351z - there at least 8 different sub varieties of this




Rep 352z (NRI without frame but with serifs)




Rep 353z (NRI with periods after letters - though missing after the I) on Jap 87v

I'm afraid something will happen and I'll lose all this so I'm going to post this first half and do the rest in the next post

Part 2 of Revolutionary overprint varieties.




Rep 32z on Jap88z plus Jap 30z (the cross)




Rep 41z (Repoeblik over Indonesia without a frame)




Rep42z (Repoeblik over Indonesia in a frame) plus Rep 401v (manuscript surcharge)




Rep43v (PTTR Indonesia in 3 lines)




Rep 51v (large RI without a frame)




Rep 52v (smaller RI in a frame) on Jap 92z




Rep53v (Rep over Indonesia in a frame) on Jap 92z




Rep 54v (Rep over Indonesia in a frame with Indonesia split)




Rep55v (PTT NRI in a circle)




Rep 61z (P.T.T. over Indonesia)




Rep 62z (P.T.T. over Indonesia in a frame)




Rep71r (ORI cloverleaf - Oeang Repoeblik Indonesia was the name of their new currency)





Rep 71v plus Rep215v (longest Repoeblik Indonesia) on Jap 88z

There are many other varieties which I don't own yet (i.e., rare and expensive), but I believe this has given a taste of the incredible variety in this area.

Bob

I also collect these stamps, but my accumulation is modest compared to yours.

Since I wasn't clear enough in my previous post, I want to re-iterate that the four Katakana characters:




read "SU-MA-TO-RA", which is Sumatra and not Malaya.

Malaya, as it appears on postage stamps, is:


which reads "MA-RA-I".

Jan

Stampdoc.

Very interesting selection.

Thanks for sharing. Appreciate the background/identifying remarks.

What was the catalyst or inspiration for your pursuit of this philatelic specialization?

Jan,

What do you do about the machine overprints of Java 1945? (Scott 1L1-22).
I have about 50 of them, and once I finally got my hands on a copy of W. Bruijnestijn's article referenced in Dai Nippon, it turned out that all 50 of mine are forgeries.
The difference between genuine and forgery can be a length difference of 0.3mm in the length of a word, or a missing serif on one leg of a K.
I despair of every finding genuine ones now - you can't tell differences that fine on most eBay scans, and American dealers generally don't carry these stamps.

Bob

Thank you for the correction.
My Catalogue is in error.

Calstamp,

I was just cruising eBay one day looking for dead country stamps which was my previous main concern, and I ran across an Indonesian stamp that looked like it had been cancelled 3 or 4 times, and when I looked at the description and it said MNH I was like what??

I started looking into these stamps with multiple overprints and got more and more intrigued and all of a sudden I had another stamp collection - much to the annoyance of Mrs Stampdoc.