What Do I Have Here?

I bought a large box of on paper world stamps at a local auction. I'm not sure why but I did see some high values and interesting postmarks on top. The bottom of the box was filled with hundreds of these. They all have common stamps from Poland and Czechoslovakia from the 50's. Some have interesting auxiliary stamps such as Express or fragile, etc. All are a fraction of some document or parcel. I used to get this sort of thing in those kiloware mixes back in the 70's and I am now wondering what the documentation may have been and what purpose the stamps served.

They are fragments of parcel cards. The whole parcel cards are fairly interesting since they have postmarks from both the sending and receiving post offices as well as penned documenation of the contents, sender, receiver, etc. I've picked up a number of Belgium parcel cards myself recently that are quite attractive, but haven't had a chance to scan any yet.

The parcel cards reflect the European love of bureaucracy. I have about 2 gallons of them from Hungary. In the U.S., we put stamps on a parcel and away it goes. In much of Europe, you have to jump through hoops and extend the secret handshake, and everything is duly recorded by the authorities, who are paranoid about random transactions.

It's a clumsy, inefficient system, and you can scarcely give parcel cards away. It also makes for mind-numbing, essentially-worthless kiloware.

On a positive note, you have postally used Czech and Poland stamps. I know collectors who will pay $1/ea for postally used stamps from this era - which is a huge sum for penny stamps.

I hasten to reassure any members with large quantities of essentially worthless inter war period parcel cards of SHS/Yugoslavia that they can stop worrying about not being able to give them away. I will happily receive them all, and reimburse your postage from what I will save from having to buy them at the current rate of £5-£10 each.

There are some from Yugoslavia but they are even smaller fragments than the two I posted. If you want I will scan them, probably in an email. I can understand collectors wanting true postally used. As a kid in the 60's I accumulated a bunch of both countries as that is what the mail order approval companies buried us rookie collectors in, of course they are all CTO's.

Thanks for the great info guys.

Wow, where are these people? I have a whole bunch of 100% authentic
postally used Czechoslovakian stamps to get rid of plus some
DDR and Polish Peoples Paradise.

Haha we do exist

$1 a piece for used Czechoslovakia and Polish Stamps...............

Rileysan is correct. There are some collectors of Eastern/Central Europe who go after genuine postally used stamps (stamps that actually went through the postal system for regular mail; not CTO, favor-cancelled, not philatelic covers). There are some stamps from a few time eras and areas in which CTO predominated, and genuine postally used stamps are the exception and not the norm.

I've seen these type of collections sell at auctions for well above both catalog value as well as auction estimate.

Likewise, Bamra1 has an important point. It's only worthless if you can't attract the interested buyers. It's not just any parcel card, but the era/area of the parcel cards is all important.

Do I understand any of it? No. But obviously the specialist do, and when they do make write-ups or get things organized, it can get rather interesting.

ouch, Hungary and Czechoslovakia are my second and third biggest countries by stamp totals.....will most assuredly be checking these stamps very closely