German Feldpost In The Crimea

In November 1943, the postmaster for German troops in the Crimea decided to relax a previous prohibition on shipping parcels back to Germany through the feldpost system. In order to control the amount of parcels being shipped, he required parcels to have postage in the amount of 20 Pf and a parcel permission stamp.

The parcel permission stamps were printed by the local newspaper "Der Kampf", on newspaper in sheets of 10x10. The text reads "1 Päckchen Richtung Heimat", or 1 parcel to the homeland.

They are found in two sizes --


Type I -- 41x23mm


Type II -- 36x28mm

The Type II also features a unique typesetting issue -- the "n" are actually inverted "u".

These stamps are pretty rare, and currently catalog for €1,600 each.

Interesting Postmaster. I have never seen these before. Thanks for sharing.

Chimo

Bujutsu

Current events being what they are, your timing is impeccable!

Are there many forgeries out there?

As far as covers, would it be safe to say that these would only be found on piece(s) since they would only be used on parcel wrapping, or bag tags?

Brian

Despite the fact that they're valuable, and would seem to be easy to forge due to the poor quality of the legitimate issues, there don't tend to be a lot of forgeries out there. Or at least not good ones. Just not enough demand, I guess. Forgers would rather take people's money on fake Tunis feldpost stamps, since the demand for those is always sky high.

All legitimate uses should be on piece. Michel notes that a piece should be considered "complete" only if it has the parcel permission stamp (with or without the 20 Pf), sender and receiver address, and the proper Feldpost markings (usually unit number and Feldpost cancel).

I did a quick search to see what's out there right now, and sure enough, the only two I found used are on piece.


This copy, from which it appears someone removed the additional 20 Pf stamp, went unsold at the last Christoph Gärtner auction. Starting price was €1,300.


This much smaller piece is being auctioned at the May Jennes and Klütterman auction. Starting price is €500.

WOW! I collect Germany from this period but never knew of these until now. What beautiful material you have and thank you for turning me on to these but, it's unlikely I will ever have any of these in my collection. One never knows though? Thank you again -Jeff