Help About German Reich And No Gum Dilemma

Sorry so many questions, but this is very important to me as a noob.
I'm very interested if you can assist with your experience. Can someone explain to me German Reich (most th Third Reich) and the gum question? I got a lot of postage stamps of the German Third Reich, they are extremely preserved and clean and have good CV, but it seems that they do not have gum or I am so stupid that cant identify it. What is the state of the Third Reich with the gum? How much no gum on the Third Reich stamps would reduce the value and how should they be declared at the selling add? MNG? (Mint no gum). MNH isnt fair, right?

*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***

Most people that collect Mint Third Reich collect MNH (Mint Never Hinged), as it is rather easy to find. MH (Mint Hinged) and Mint no gum are less popular.

In my experience, the market value for no gum is about 10% of catalog value for better items (and complete series). For common material Mint no gum it is even less. For MNH the market value is 20-35% of catalog value.

You are not stupid, nor did you miss anything. The gum used on German stamps is easy to identify. If you don't see any gum, it's not there!

As for the question of value - the stamp market, especially in Germany, - is very picky about the gum. Catalogue values for never-hinged stamps will run 300%-1000% higher than hinged examples for the 3rd Reich era (1933-1945), with two notable exceptions - the "OSTROPA" souvenir sheet & stamps, and the "Hindenburg" airmail stamps - both of which are valued more with no gum.

Catalogue values vary greatly for never hinged stamps in other eras - with the exception of the "inflation" era, which has little value in any unused state.




Correct. MNH means that the stamp has pristine, original gum that shows no disturbances.

If no gum, expect far less than catalogue for original gum stamps.

Brian

A lot of old albums have mint hinged stamps that eventually wind up stuck to the pages. Sometimes the only way to save the stamps is to soak them off.

Thanks for your help guys. No, there is not any sign of hinge, its clear as snow, just no sticky gum and the interesting thing is that none of stamps from this album have a gum

What I meant in my previous post is that maybe they were all stuck in an old album and someone soaked them off (removing hinge and gum in the process) and mounted them in another album.

Also some collectors would remove the gum before mounting, based on local climate.

I got it now.Yes,a good idea to me as a newcomer would not crossed my mind.It explains the situation. Happy to be on this forum, many people have knowledge and is ready to help.

My understanding of the early Third Reich issues is that a lot of the stamps were issued with an 'acid' gum. They wouldn't corrode your hands in handling them though

Over a number of years, this gum would begin to 'tone' the paper they were issued on and this reaction prompted a lot of collectors to wash the gum off in order to preserve the stamps themselves. This is why you see a lot of stamps from this era with no gum.

Maybe specialists in this area can add more to this topic?

Chimo

Bujutsu

But I certainly wouldn't lick them!

The stamps I mentioned in the previous response are those you are referring to - the "OSTROPA" souvenir sheet and the two Hindenburg airmail stamps. They are valued without gum because there was a small amount of sulfuric acid in the gum recipe that, over time, will actively corrode the stamps. I have numerous examples for show & tell, but nothing has been photographed. I will try to post something this weekend (if I'm lucky)

Brian

What I believe the original poster was asking was why are a large number of Third Reich issues - especially Hitler heads found in mint condition but without gum. I have entire pages of TR stock that have no gum. My theory is that in the aftermath of the war to prevent the use of TR stamps as regular postage in postwar Germany vast numbers of mint stamps were washed to prevent their use. Former Third Reich stamps were overprinted in many towns and regions to allow their use. But either acting German postal officials or the Allied Military governments wanted to discourage the use of anything that remained from the National Socialist era or reminded anyone of the same. Remember also that Germany was largely destroyed by Allied bombing and the Red Army - chaos and confusion reigned in postwar Germany for several years until the Allied Military Govt and later the Marshall Plan began to help restore the infrastructure, industry and living conditions.

If anyone else has any theories or info to add - I would love to hear it as I have wondered as well about stamps with no gum.

I would love to hear from our member "PostmasterGS" on this particular topic.


Peter

At the end it's your choice . I'm after the design of the stamp so I don't care about the gum.

Another possibility is that after the War many soldiers brought home stacks of sheets of stamps as war souvenirs. Many were mis handled or improperly stored and became stuck together. consiquently they had to be soaked to save them. One time I bought a large lot and it had a "brick" in it consisting of about 25-30 sheets all stuck together.

This wouldn't have been necessary as the Allies invalidated all Third Reich issues. If they were that concerned with TR stamps being used as postage, they could have just destroyed stocks they found after the war. The Allies issued their own stamps in the immediate aftermath of the war, and Hitler heads could only be used in emergency situations if a special obliterator was applied.

No-gum stamps are probably the result of a collector who didn't know how to care for them. Hitler heads are common even in beginner collections, which tend to not get mounted correctly, stored correctly, etc. As they get recycled out of these beginner collections over the years, it's likely that a lot of them were stuck to pages and had to be soaked off.

The_Pope, gum from that period is yellowish and shiny on most issues. So it's very easy to tell gummed from no gum. You can value no gum at 40%-50% of the hinged price in the Scott stamp catalog, though the buyers are scarcer for no gum stamps. If you are signed up for ebay and can connect to the US ebay site, you can look at the auctions ended for the last 90 days and confirm this. Collecting no gum is a cheaper way to get the more expensive stamps.

The theories given are interesting but I find them doubtful. There are a lot of no gum German stamps back to the Germania and Eagles, as well as the postwar issues. Germany was always very popular country heavily collected in the US as well as Germany. There were large quantities issued and large quantities used. With so many stamps there is bound to be a large overall number ending up no gum -- uncancelled stamps saved, stuck down stamps from collections rescued. There are large quantities of no gum US stamps. too.

Washing stamps to prevent use is not logical. A little glue on the back and who can tell if used on a letter? Simply making older stamps invalid would make them useless, as noted before. Washing stamps after the surrender does not explain the no gum Reich stamps from the 1930s which were no longer being sold in post offices by the end of WWII.

As for war souvenirs, the ones that were shown to me with the stories "liberated", "captured", "taken off a dead soldier" were just one or two stamps, Hitler heads or a couple times one of the Afrika Korps stamps (not in Scott). The stamps were genuine but always damaged somehow. US troops were pushed to the limit to get to Berlin before the Soviets; there wouldn't be a lot of time for scrounging or looting. Again, souvenir hunting doesn't explain the fair number of no gum stamps from the 1930s.

As Germany recovered big time in the 1960s, more collectors returned or started up and dealers in the US sent German stamps to Germany as the demand was there. When the NH craze took hold, there was movement of NH to Germany (US collectors didn't care much initially) to the point where much of not most NH went back to Germany from the US. So what we are looking at today in the US are the leftovers, which include no gum stamps. Plus with fewer serious Germany collectors in the US (owning a Germany album), there's just a lot of Germany available overall. What keeps the Scott prices up is the demand in Germany.

A US no gum stamp would just get glued on a letter. Who would want to bother covering a letter in 3c and 4c stamps nowadays? -- not many. And if the recipient is a collector, boy, will you get complaints. There's still loads of US 3c and 4c no gum around. You can't use no gum Hitler Hitler Heads for mail, so they just sit.

I'm not really sure German stamps are any more prevalent in MNG condition than other countries.

But at any rate, the quantities that can be found in that condition today aren't the result of any central policy or event. I think TheArtfulHinger and hy-brasil hit the nail on the head. Many of the TR issues, especially the definitives, are very common. They are more likely to be in numerous collections, and more like to have been treated in a manner that eventually required soaking.

hy-brasil's point about the market distribution may also play a part -- the German market (as in, the market in German itself) is obsessed with gum quality to a far greater extent than the US market, so the distribution is inevitably skewed, though to what extent it's impossible to really tell.