1918 Poland German Overprint Poczta Polska Help

Hello, I have some stamps that I can't find in the scotts catalog and I would appreciate anyone's help trying to figure out what the stamps are. I think they might be German occupied stamps that Poland just overprinted when they became an Independence but I don't really know. Any help would be appreciated, I will upload an image, thank you.

Hi,

They look like local overprints from the city of Kalisz but I don't think they are genuine.

some here:
http://catalogue.klaseboer.com/vol1...polager2.htm

quote:

There's a great write-up on the Kalisz local issues on Ben Nieborg's site.

http://www.stampspoland.nl/index.html
Scroll down to - LOCAL ISSUES 1918-1919>German Occupied Poland>Kalisz

Your copies are from issue 2

A couple of things to add.

The first issue was used commercially. After use, the rubber handstamp was first sent to the National Museum in Warsaw & then onward to the Ministry of Posts & Telecommunications. Somewhere on this route a reprint was made, which can be distinguished by the smudged printing using an analine Violet clearly visible on the reverse.

Issues 2-5 were speculative & philatelically inspired by a Warsaw stamp dealer, many covers being addressed to Wilhelm Bernstein in Warsaw.

Hi YeaPolska.

Thanks for the link to stampspoland.nl. I had forgotten about it and it really is an excellent site.

However, I am still not convinced that churchtractor's stamps are genuine.

I appreciate everyone's feedback and information. The stamppoland site has some good info on there. Yeah I have the stamps with the lines through them and ones without anything on them when I was trying to figure out what exactly these stamps were. Are these a somewhat valuable stamp or are they in the same ballpark as the other occupation stamps from these years? I could scan a stamp for nigelc so he can make up his mind as to if they are real or not. When I get a chance, I'll have to sort through some of the stamps from Poland that I have, scan them and put them on here. 1860's -1970's a few, are not in the Scotts catalog, is that a good catalog at all to go by? They don't have a good image of the stamps, some images they have are hazy yet focus on the overprints. I mean, the Cracow issues and others stamps have some great colors that really pop but scotts seems to focus on the overprint and not the image & color itself.

The main current Polish catalogue is Fischer. Vol. 1 for regular, official & post due stamps, Vol 2 for Municipal, local, plebiscites, wartime etc.

Yours have a catalogue value of 40zloty mint-hinged/30zloty used each.

The English catalogue for these is "Poland 1918 Locals" published by Barefoot, where he prices these at £10 mint/£8 used. I have found his prices to be optimistically high.

I see sets on ebay advertised at $US60-70, but the same stuff keeps coming around suggesting that the demand for these is small.

I don't offhand know of any forgery guides so can't help with that. Given the poor printing you're going to need someone with experience with these to get a definite opinion.

To re-iterate, this issue is completely speculative , & produced for collectors, there is no non-philatelic useage of these stamps

hi: Kalisz philatelic cover.Different issue?


http://www.ebay.de/itm/Poland-cover...AOSw5ZBWG7zF

Yes, completely different issue. The cover illustrated has stamps officially issued by the Ministry of Posts & Telecommunication. The first setting of overprints were issued Dec 5 1918, whilst the second setting (which I suspect these are) was issued 15 Jan 1919.

An order went out from the Ministry very soon after Independence (Nov 11 1918) that only stamps inscribed "Poczta Polska" were valid for postage. This lead to a flurry of local postmasters overprinting their stocks before they received new officially overprinted stamps. Some of these locals were genuinely commercially used but mostly it's all highly philatelically speculative, still collectible though.

Here's a nice little cover, genuinely commercially used from Makow to Warsaw, dated 18 Dec. 1918.




The cover contained money & is franked with wartime Gen-Gouv Warschau stamps locally overprinted at Makow with "Poczta Polska" & two bars defacing the previous overprint. Note the use of un-modified war-era datestamps of Makow & Warsaw (Warschau).

Hi. Nice covers. The difference in aspect is always quiet obvious.
The first cover I posted ; we can assume it's a forgery then.The cancel
reads 24 03 18 ; way before the stamps were officially issued.?

Actually, no, it's all genuine even though philatelic. I too have obviously genuine stamps & covers from this period in which the year lugs haven't been changed & still read 1918.

The addressee Wilhelm Heinze was a postal clerk at the Poznan post office & a part-time stamp dealer. His biggest claim to fame is in producing forgeries of the "5" & "10" overprints on German stamps, the "Gniezno" issue of 1919, Scott 77 & 78. He stamped his initials "WH" on the back of his forgeries & we've all got them, often found on ebay.

Hi.Thanks for your response. Could you post a few of your covers where the date lugs havn't been changed?

Thank you, I'll look for the fischer catalog