Old Hungary Cancel

I am fascinated by old cancel stamps, like time frozen still.

You are not alone. Lots of us have cancel collections of socked-on-the-nose machine cancel or well-centered hand cancels. I collect them by country and/or region.

The one you show is a nice one, indeed!

Don

I was going through some Denmark material this weekend and found a lot of variations on Kjobenhavn (Copenhaven)early postmarks. I found one link that showed the different marks available, but no one ever tells you what all the extra marks mean. EXAMPLE: what does the 62 on the above stamp mean? The Denmark
cancels have such a wide range of marks it would be nice to know what they mean.

Oo - controll-letters. On the stamp above we have to do with a big post office, they used a lot of similar stamps. From 1893 the use of control-letters for big postoffices was compulsory. You may have an idea how many stamps were used at that time in that office, as controll letters begin with A, B, C (..)O ...., then Aa, Ab,Ac... Oa (...)... Oo. These controll- letters helped identify the postal clerck in case of reclamations.
Now the nr 62. In case of Budapest this is a bit complicated. Between 09.01.1900 -- 01.06.1933 post offices in Budapest were numerotated strangely. First number is the name of the district (in this case 6), the main postoffice in the district had the number of the district. ex. Budapest 6 was the main post office in the 6th district, then Budapest 61, 63, 63 etc. There were 3 district were the number of the postoffices exceeded 10 (5th,6th and 7th district) - so we can find Budapest 500, 501...600, 601.. 700, 701 etc.
This practice seemed to mislead especially foreigners about the number of postoffices in Budapest (more than 700 postoffices in Budapest ?!! :D) So from 01.06.1933 newly opened postoffices in Budapest were getting a number between 1 and 100 that was still unused, no matter in what district they were. But older post-offices kept their number.
In this case we have to do with the old numerotation: a post office in the 6th district. The numerotation of the offices was then changed again in 1955, but that`s another story.

Thanks Wadmalatz! That's the clearest explanation I've seen of Budapest post office numbering. It is hard to piece together information on Hungarian postmarks.

I assume that cancel is October 30th, 1933, and I assume the "23" is 2300 hours, or 11p.m. at night. Am I close?

Yes, it`s correct. In case of hungarian postmarks the date is Y/M/D.
(year, month, day).
23 is indeed the starting hour of delivery.
Here`s an example for a district with more than 10 postoffices (Budapest, 5th district, office nr. 10 in district- main office has number 5)




You may find other abbreviations in the center line, that refers to the date - É = éjjel = night. That was bw. 6 pm - 6 am. (18-06)





Year not known, July 20, start of delivery 8 pm (20). Must be Budapest, 5th district, as the number is too high.

N = nappal = day. Between 6 am - 6 pm (06-18)




Tiszalök (a small town - that`s why the third row is an ornament- no controll letter or postoffice number). Note the last 2 postmarks: 01.april and 02.april = instead of 0 a hyphen! So for the last pmk. the date is year: 1921, month: april, day:2 (02.04.1921), during day at 10.

Wadmalatz, could the "53" be a traveling post office? I've seen some TPO cancels that seem to be similar...

Cjd to your question: yes, there are similar TPO postmarks:




Mez#337;hegyes - Kétegyháza 124.

But I`ve checked and the one with 53 is from a Budapest post office (I`ve checked the VI volume of the Monograph. Some TPO postmarks 1925-1926 indeed look the same: have controll letters, office number.)
Some good news: The Monograph Project. Unfortunately this will take a lot of time. Till now only the first (General) part is available in english (PDF file on the left side, or docx on the right column).
Unfortunately the VI volume deals with postmark, I have no idea when it will be translated. Under STATUS they say they are looking for help :(.
http://www.mafitt.hu/fooldal/index.html

Till then if any of you have questions I`ll try to help (I have all 7 volumes of the Monography).

So what are the ranges of the TPO number markings? I have a bunch of postal stationery I may be able to find one or two TPO's on.

All I can tell you is that the number of Travelling Post Offices in Hungary by the end of I. WW was around 500.
1869 - 6
1870 - 8
1871 - 10
1889 - 111
around 1914-1917 almost 500.
At the beginning they were numerotated in order of appeareance. TPO-s were overtaken from Austrian Postal authorities 16.02.1868. Hungarian TPO nr. 1 and 2 on route Budapest - Wienna. Later another kind of numerotation: ranging 1-99 for routes starting from Budapest, 100-199 for TPOs in the north, 200-299 in east, 300-399 in south, 400-499 in west. Each line had around 10-30 offices.
- edit. Try this link (PDF, page 532!)
http://www.mafitt.hu/projects/monog...MBM-I_EN.pdf

But this probably changed after 1918
TPO - mozgóposta. But I think you should look for the station names and not the office number. If the postmarks you mentioned are on stationeries then probably are clear and readable.

I don't think I have found any TPO's for Hungarian post yet (I may be forgetful-I am not at home at the moment). I find that once you know what to look for, they are easier to find. WILL TAKE A LOOK AGAIN. tHANKS.

Here is a link to a Hungarian TPO site:

http://www.tpo-seapost.org.uk/tpo2/tphungary.html

Wadmalatz, thanks for telling us where to look in the large file. Great info, and great illustrations.

The TPO and military field office sections were just what I wanted to know.