Getting Started With Cinderellas

I've been looking at some of the cinderella threads on this forum. I've enjoyed collecting stamps for quite a few years, and I have some country collections on the go, as well as an interest in engraved stamps from all over. This led me to my first cinderella – a label produced for the 1911 Postage stamp exhibition in Vienna. So now I'd like to find other items like this. So the first questions are - what to go for, where to find the items, and how to know what the stuff out there actually is.

My first thought was to focus on those international art exhibitions of the art nouveau and art deco era, in the hope of finding something Mucha-esque. Google showed me a few such exhibitions, so I looked at eBay, and found a wide range of items at an equally wide range of prices. I tried searching under specific dates or the names of art shows, such as the Venice Biennale, but that didn't get me very far. Then I noticed that some sellers seem to have a lot of material, so I searched by seller. That was a bit better, but I still didn't know what to make of the different prices being asked. Unlike my 1911 label, most of the stamps don't reveal what it is they show, or when they were produced.

It all seems to be a bit random. Perhaps I should just choose images I like, and hope that I'll find my way through experience. With that in mind, I've ordered some things from three or four sellers – some I do know what they are, but others just look interesting.

Is this the best way to get started?

I don't collect Cinderellas, and have been selling on eBay a bunch of US ones that I acquired. The range of subjects is near-limitless, so I agree the best starting point seems to be to define an interest and go on from there. If you want to give yourself a bigger pool to choose from, it's worth looking at auctions - you can often find biggish lots of Cinderellas (which would include fiscal stamps in UK auctions).

Another thought - can anyone tell me if there's an online database for cinderellas? Either worldwide or just local for one particular country or topic?

Cheers - Strider

There is no general online database for cinderellas. In print, a catalog would clearly be much larger than the Scott catalogs; revenues alone would probably be larger than the Scott catalogs. Any listings are basically where you find them included in country-based sites. Often enough, they are only lists with unuseful descriptions.

For Mucha, there's lots of collectors out there and forgers to prey on them. You may know already that the first postage issue(s) of Czechoslovakia are Mucha designs, probably the great bargain in Mucha material. As for art deco and art nouveau designs, you might try to find cinderellas included in Pinterest collections. Don't forget the postage stamp end, not only stamps but postcards and advertising covers.

Prices have surged for cinderellas in the last couple of years. Historically, they have ranged in price from cheap to ridiculous, so with that changing market, it's up to you to determine if something is worth it to you by comparison of prices sold and offerings by dealers with actual stores. Reproductions/reprints are always possible, condition is as big a factor as for stamps, so you are largely on your own without a trustworthy dealer.

Welcome to the world of Cinderellas Strider (though it's not like I'm an old hand, I've been collecting them for only a couple years)

As Hy-Brasil indicated, there are so many millions of cinderellas that no one catalog could contain them all.

Charles Kiddle has published numerous books by topic - cars, planes, ships, balloons, etc.

There are a variety of catalogues for exhibitions which is a popular category. Exhibitions up to 1940 is what I decided to collect because I also like Art Nouveau and Art Deco images from the early 20th century. Below are the catalogs that I use the most (screenshots from the beginning of my write-ups):





The Gardiner and Greiczek catalog alone runs over 900 pages, and only goes up to 1914 - even more exhibition stamps were put out in the 20s and 30s, and there is no general catalog for them.
Malorzo and Pen took a stab at assigning dollar values to the stamps. Gardiner and Greiczek (G&G) decided that there wasn't enough of an established market to name prices. They assign scarcity ratings of common, uncommon, scarce, rare and very rare.

If you are buying single stamps online, I would expect to pay $1-3 for common stamps, $4-10 for uncommon ones, $10-20 for scarce, $20-30 for rare, and over $30 for very rare.
I recently paid $47 for this very rare 1906 Dresden Art Exhibition stamp:




About the only way to pay less than $1 is to buy a collection, as in a 1000 stamps album for $500 on Noble Spirit

There are a number of online dealers that specialize in this material -
a good one is:

http://www.probaj-stamps.com/index....pod=18&str=2

He/she breaks them down into numerous categories, and you can search for "Art Nouveau" which will give you a couple pages of results.
Of course the dealers that specialize in this material know what they have and will charge accordingly for a rare stamp.
For me, one of the fun parts is just searching through eBay listings - many small time dealers just list these stamps as "cinderellas" without any further identifier - they have no idea what they have because they don't have the literature, and you can occasionally pick up scarce/rare stamps for $3-5. eBay has so many listings under cinderella (39,000+) that you can scroll until your arm falls off and you can grab one of these before one of your fellow specialists does, because they just didn't come across it.

Unfortunately the catalogs are all out of print and hard to find. If you send me a message at my junk email address I might be able to help you.

Happy hunting
Bob

strider - sorry - it would have helped if I included my junk address - *** Private information removed by Staff. Please do not post your address/email/phone number etc. ***. If you contact me I can give you my real address and some help with the catalogs maybe.

This time it's about finding the right stuff on eBay. I'm interested in labels relating to exhibitions, esp art shows, in the period approx 1900 - 1939, and especially the ones with striking art nouveau, art deco and such designs.
So I open eBay, and type Cinderella in the search box. Result is 39,000+ listings. Adding "exhibition" to the search box isn't really helpful, as the events frequently describe themselves without using the word exhibition. And they often show dates in terms of months and days, but not the actual year.
As the prices can be minimal, I need to take several items from the same seller – I don't like paying more for postage than for the item! So I've identified a few sellers who seem to have lots of material, and then I can search by seller name. If there are more items from an individual seller than I have time to look at, I arrange them in date order – the ending soonest tab – in the hope of not letting things get past me.
So far, that's what I do. Is there a better or an easier way of finding the stuff you want on eBay?

eBay
Employ the text string CINDERELLA ART SHOW EXHIBITION
Select the right hand box STAMPS

Enter
Go to "advanced"
Save the search

You shall now have daily listings of what you seek
every time you log on

That's the way I do it too.
I also have favorite sellers , so that I can order multiple items and reduce the shipping/item cost.
Unless you are looking for a specific stamp like Dresden 1906 art exhibition, it is indeed overwhelming just doing general searches because there is so much out there, and a lot of sellers haven't gone to the trouble of adding identifiers such as Dresden 1906 to their listing. They just call it "Cinderella" and let it go at that and it's up to you to find it. But that can be part of the fun - you can find a really choice item before the specialists do, because they don't have the time to scroll through all 39,000 listings either.

My offer from the previous post still stands.

Go to:

https://www.seal-society.org/

A great place to start.

Hi, Strider - I have recently discovered poster stamps myself, and have been learning as much about them as fast as I can. Let me share a little of what I've gleaned from my recent "discovery".

I've been collecting stamps for 55 of my 58 years, and I had never even HEARD of "poster stamps" until about a year ago. Last year I was seeking various foreign revenue catalogues to build up my personal library, and I would notice that when I would search for foreign ("foreign", to me, is anything outside the US - I live in New Orleans, LA) revenue stamps... I would often see a listing or a link to a "poster stamp". Finally after seeing this mentioned a few times, I decided to investigate and good lord, it's a new money pit for me. But I couldn't be happier, because these are absolutely amazing,

First, there are the exhibition stamps (German: Ausstellung) that you mentioned in your original post. These are really nice and my personal favorites - whether it is an exhibition for paper products, electrical items, dogs, aircraft, or even a garden show - what makes these so easy for me to collect is that they are DATED. Because I came from collecting postage stamps, I am used to the chronological order associated with collecting, and that made collecting these quite comfortable for me. There is a classic catalogue, if you can find it: Cazin & Rochas published, in 1914, a catalogue titled "Catalogue des Timbres Commémoratifs" which is a very good (not complete, but excellent nonetheless) listing of exhibition poster stamps. The catalogue reaches back to what may be the earliest poster stamp from the 1840s, through 1914. German cities from 1907-1914 have the most listings. The catalogue lists the stamps (description only, no photographs) and color/perf varieties through summer 1914. (WWI apparently brought poster stamp production to a near halt) I bought a copy from a German bookseller last year for about $80 and it was worth it. It's in French, which I can read but is also easy to understand if you use google translate on the camera setting. The book is very difficult to find but really nice to have.

Next are product advertisements. Some of these are just stunning, with some of the best designers (Ludwig Hohlwein, Kurt Bottcher, etc.) behind many of these. Charles Kiddle's catalogues, if you can find them, are an excellent source of information. There are other works out there as well, look for the bibliography on the poster stamp collectors club website http://www.posterstampcc.org

A third type of cinderellas that I like are the World War I-related items. There are the famous "Delandre" stamps, which are mostly French military but also include a lot of propaganda stamps as well - some 4,000+ were produced between 1915-1917 when the proprietor was arrested for various crimes. Besides the Delandre stamps, there are various propaganda items produced by the Central Powers. Some of these are foil labels, some shaped like bombs or mortar shells, with messages like "Gott strafe England" ("God punish England"), or other wartime-related messages. There are many colors/varieties of these as well. These are catalogued in a 1993 book by New Zealander Alan Jackson titled "For God, Kaiser, and Fatherland". There are many other stamps listed in here, propaganda labels, charity stamps, etc - it's fascinating area all in itself. And there are WAY more of these than I ever imagined existed.

These are the three primary types of cinderellas that I collect. There are some really beautiful charity seals out there as well, and then there's the fascinating ephemera that Jim Drummond had been capturing in his works.

But since you're focusing on the exhibition stamps, you may want to learn a few of the designers who were behind many of those that were produced. I know there is a beautifully illustrated set of books - in German - that lists many of the major works of many graphic artists/poster designers, but it is expensive (5 vols for about $250 if you can find them). That's if you're really really interested in the artwork itself on the stamps.

Sorry for being so long-winded! But this is a new subject to me as well and is really fascinating. Look at listings on eBay, do google image searches on topics and artists, see what you like. No need to get everything - just get the ones you think look nice. That's what I'm doing - for now, at least!

Barry

Strider - I meant to answer this so I'll do it separately here.

Type "Ausstellung" in your eBay search, and filter your search: Category > Stamps

Rod's suggestion above is excellent as well!

Barry

Cinderella Philatelist October 2021
Ex CALSTAMP SCF USA

Many thanks to everyone - your helpful responses have been very encouraging. I'm enjoying my eBay searching and my collection is beginning to take shape. And there's a lot to learn from the posts on this forum.

Best from the Chilterns!

Neville