Austrian 1899 Newspaper Stamp - Fake, Changeling Or Cut-Out

Hi

I was wondering if anybody could advise on the stamp on the right, which I have scanned for comparison next to 'real' Scott P11 1899 Austria Newspaper stamp. It looks the same although less distinct print, wrong paper and wrong colour. I am assuming that it must be a fake or changeling. Or were there cutouts then?

Internet research has not uncovered any green variants of P11 type, so just wanting to ask for a second opinion before putting it away as a defect.

Any advice?

I believe your green stamp came from a wrapper that was used to cover newspapers in the mail . It would be listed under postal stationary .

Thank you - it is what I meant (probably incorrectly) by 'cut out'. I couldn't find any reference to postal stationery with this image on it anywhere. I have now - I wasn't looking hard enough before

I think that "cut squares" are where they are acutally squares (like your), and "cut outs" are when they have other shapes (usually ovals or circles).

In fact, a "cut-square" is just a more precise term than "cut-out", in the specific situations.

So: all cut-squares are cut-outs, but all cut-outs are not cut-squares :)

So, you didn't make a mistake in your description ;)

Sorry to reply to this old post, but I see that the question was not really answered. The Green version means that it was privately printed. The blue version is the "official" newspaper stamp. Both are newspaper stamps, however, from Austria circa 1899. I think that the Green version was not printed until 1901, but I'm not entirely certain.

Hi bfishburne,

I know some of these stamps were privately perforated but I don't see how any would have been privately printed? Can you tell us more about this?

By the way I'm not aware of any wrappers with this stamp design.

I believe floortrader is correct. The item appears to be either Michel Austria ZA1 or ZA2 of 1904. It looks to be a clipping from one of these newspaper wrappers. Cancel year of item is (19)05. ZA1 is blue on light yellow, and ZA2 is blue on green. So, I would say the item has been bleached. The paper is either naturally or chemically toned.

Thanks bookbndrbob,

I went straight back to my old Higgins & Gage catalogue and found wrappers with these stamps listed in the "Printed to Private Order" section.

The "printed to private order" items can drive you nuts, because they are generally not listed or noted in the major catalogs. If there are special pictures or inscriptions printed on the cards or envelopes, you can tell they are "p.t.p.o.", otherwise, you're "lost in the woods".

I'm sorry that I didn't have references on hand and I've hard a hard time finding them again. I stumbled across this web page once more: http://www.stamp-collecting-world.c...re_1901.html which describes variations on the series in terms of "vanishing bars." I have to admit that I do not understand this term.

I cannot find the reference that describes the green color as being used for private printing wrappers. I have been researching tons of stamps and I have thousands of websites to which I have gone for Austria in my history. I believe that the page was in German and I had it translated to English with Google translate. I thought I got to it by doing an image search on the blue stamp (I have a copy of the blue stamp), but when I searched by that image again, it did not find the green version. I only remembered it because I'd written a note to my father describing the blue stamp and the alternate green version.

FWIW, it is also my understand that the reason there was no currency on the stamp was because the currency in Austria was undergoing a 1:1 change between 1899 and 1900. Again, I cannot find the reference for that explanation, so please take all of this with a grain of salt.

bfishburne, you said the web page mentions "vanishing bars" Could this be what Scott refers to Varnish bars? On certain older Austrian stamps you turn the stamp slightly sideways to see diagonal bars on the surface.

Here is a page from one of my albums ,it shows both the Green Newspaper stamp used with news print and canceled . Also a sample of two of the newspaper stamps with varnish bars ,one were the varnish was soaked in water and shows the intented damage .

floortrader,

Thank you! That was very helpful. This forum is really pretty amazing.

jol34,

I'm sure it was "vanish bars" and not "vanishing bars." My apologies and thanks for the correction!