1982 The First Official Ascent Of Changste (Tibet, China) By German Expedition

I have found this interesting postcard... I am just curious how many of them have been sent in this way (with all members of the expedition signed).

Probably not many of them are available on the market...

Nice find!

As to ever seeing another:

Long before 1982, it was known that you could raise funds / recover expenses with this sort of thing, so there might be hundreds.

OTOH, they might have been targeted to sponsors who put money up front, in which case there might be only tens.

Either way, the Real Question is availability to us.

I would suspect that 99% of these went to non-philatelic hands and, moreover, a whole lot of those recipients (its only been 30-odd years) are still alive.

If you want to see another, you'd need to look in the right place, eg, perhaps the classified ads in Climbing Magazine.

Speaking of the right place, the OP could have been in World Postcards ...

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Johan Taks of the Dutch Everest Expedition made the first ascent 5 days earlier but didn't pull the proper permit!
Don
APS #094826

Nice card!

My guess is that there is not that many of them that are actually signed by all members (probably in the hundreds, as mentioned by ikeyPikey). But the problem that affects the retail value would be demand -- Changtse is not as popular as many other peaks and ranks 45th in the world. You'd really have to find the right buyer to get a very good price.

The Germans must have been really really annoyed when the Dutch climber Johan Taks (Takes?) climbed to the top 11 days before they did! Takes' climb is considered "unofficial" because he did it without a permit.

Now what is interesting is that the postcard was mailed 1 month BEFORE they actually set out to climb. So it does sound more like an acknowledgement of support, rather than an announcement of success or a postcard that was actually carried with the climb. The latter would likely be far more valuable.

The card thanks the recipient--a prominent SPD politician--for his support. (If my very poor German is correct!)

EDIT: Oh my. I think they spelled the poor man's first name incorrectly.

I really don't understand what happened... all cards have been signed in Germany, sent to Lhasa, and from that point sent back on the addresses a month before all those people have arrived in Tibet? I am not sure that China back in 1982. has been ready to let such a kind of "acrobations". In that case, some signed persons possbily never arrived to Tiber?

On the upper right corner of the message is written Okt(ober) 82... a small possiblity is that a day on the postmark could be an Error?

Btw. Helmut Rothemund has been a notable polician in West Germany... his SPD part is major left wing party in Germany still today (something like Democrats in the USA). He died about 10 years ago.

The postcard is simply dated the month of their planned climb. They mailed the postcard from Lhasa on 26Sep, two weeks before their climb.

Well-spotted!




The expedition would have been in touch with local guides, etc, many months before the climb, so sending a box of postcards ahead & asking for them to be posted from Lhasa would not have been hard to do.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

@ Ikey - yes, but why to do something like that? Why not to wait to arrive there and send the cards from there themselves?

While 1982 may seem like ancient history to some, I remember it with fondness. There were phone booths still, if you can believe it!

1982 was also the first year that Tibet was re-opened to casual travel. Given the difficulties of the time, I wouldn`t be at all surprised if members of the expedition were in Tibet for weeks and weeks before the climb.

They certainly had the plan for the expedition and enough foresight to have the postcards ordered, printed, and delivered.
Don
APS #094826

... but it all went horribly wrong when they found that there was no post office at the top of Changtse ...

Aye, but you're in rare form today, lad!

So apparently Johan Taks didn't finish his "To Do" list when he got to the top first!

It appears to be a commemorative item that did not get carried up and back down the mountain, but was simply autographed and postmarked in Lhasa. Given that the card was made for this climb, I would imagine that they made a large number of them and that all are signed by all of the climbers, and that some were given to people who supported them in in way or another and that some were sold to raise money to help cover the costs of the climb.