Mef (Middle Eastern Forces)

Just a "show and tell"

From Terry Steer 2003

Very interesting Rod --

Every time you post something like this, I feel King George whispering to me -- just buy a small lot and sort them. You won't get hooked ...

So far, I have resisted.
KirkS

We are working on you Kirk,
It's just a matter of time.

With your buying power, hopefully the cat price
will skyrocket.

Did you notice how the cross on the crown
magically fits into the "up" part of the perforation?
British engineering at its best.

I have one with a "mombassa" pmk,
wondering if that qualifies for correct usage

There are variations galore in the overprints. Spacing, square stops, round stops, oblong stops, font quality...SG#M10, which is a plain vanilla 5d brown to the untrained eye, catalogues over 400 pounds.

Here are a couple variations:






Among the qualities that can't be discerned in this scan comparison are qualities of the inks. The spacing of the stops is visible here, though.

I'd be curious to know about the Mombasa cancel. It is clearly outside of the areas listed in the catalogue, but it nevertheless seems like there could be a connection...the overprints were valid in the UK, but I've not seen mention of their being valid in any other commonwealth countries.

Crikey, apologies in order,
I must have named this stamp when I began collecting,
I have presumed. The visible pmk is "ASSA"
That could be anywhere.

The wheel mouse makes it a snip to ID variations
in opts, as one toggles between the two.
The diff between M1 and M3 is only half a mm.
No mention in my 1993 SG of a vanilla brown.

how come I never saw any of those MEF overprints, they are cool!

Could be the port town of Assab in Eritrea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assab

Sorry, I thought about hyphenating "plain-vanilla" after uploading, and didn't. I meant it in the "regular old" sense.

These overprints are made on common stamps, so if one pops up with a higher catalogue value, the first assumption should always be, "could this be a forged overprint?" If someone thinks they have an M10, obtaining a certificate would be in order if one needed positive confirmation of that i.d. This is doubly true when purchasing one identified and sold as a higher-value stamp.

Some exhibiting postmarks from the Dodecanese Islands,
Not known if genuine.

The penny red shows (ISOLA)? which lies on the Istrian Peninsula
that doesn't make sense

"Isola" may just refer to the Italian word for island in that context...I'll see if I have some corroborating postmarks that show more of the strike.

Guessing.

I have all of these in my book as Eritrea (Scott #1-15 and J1-J5). Is there a way to tell these apart by country without a postmark?


Jay

Rod222 has a Mombassa postmark! This one I have... I could swear it has an Italian postmarking. Not too good in the eyesight department these days but I think I see it postmarked 1945.




Anyone know Italian enough to see a word or half word? Could have been used in Libya. Very instructive topic for me as I have one or two Gvi MEF and BMA Eritrea. Nothing out of the ordinary I suspect but great interest.

The M.E.F. stamps were valid beyond Eritrea, and neither SG nor Scott break down any details about locations of usages of the various detail permutations.

That being said, there might be specialist literature that has attempted to connect the differences in inks, stops, spacings, etc. with certain printers in certain locales. If that could be done, then you'd have to ask whether the various printings stayed close to home, or ranged across the territory. (SG notes the Army Printing Services in Cairo as a likely candidate for some of the overprints.)

Circa 1948, there were British Military Administration stamps specifically overprinted for Eritrea, but they include "Eritrea" in the overprint.

The long answer to your short question is that there is no readily-available information in the major catalogues connecting your examples specifically to Eritrea, or any of the other areas of usage.

[edit: This was in reply to jayvin...I see scotzm inserted a neat little postmark in between while I was typing...]

http://www.gbos.org.uk seems to have most eventualities covered. Great site for all GB overprints

Ah! good one, nicely solved

I am going with Nigel, not Mombassa but Assab,
(with the added weight of Assab be a coaling port)
illustrating the danger is presumptive cancel reading


Nice collection there Jay!
I see one could have a collection of both "shade" variations
of KG6


more presumptive cancel reading...
"e Pacchi" on your cancel refers to the CDS use,
"e pacchi" = "and packages"

To ID Eritrea as I understand it
the OPts must be
1d to 5d must be 14mm high and upright oblong stops
or 13.5mm long and square stops.


My very first image shows the "sliced M"
row 6-10 of the 1942 sheets.

BAYERN1kreuzer... thanks for that. It gives me a lot to work on now. Great work!