Rare Classic Covers From Around The World

felt like a show and tell on covers, post what you have, something you find extremely beautiful or something you know is rare.
would be appreciated if some info follows the picture though, so it's not just picture spam.


i'll start out with this extremely rare object I recently found, which will hit the auctions next month.

due to changes in postal rates 7øre was needed instead of 5øre.
Due to failing shipping connection to the Faroe Islands the newly printed 7øre stamp of King Christian X in december 1918 didn't make it to the islands in time.
one of the solution was to allow cutting 4øre stamps in half. especially the smaller towns didn't recieve the new stamps until around late february. and was thus forced to use left over supply of 4øre.

now the 4øre came in 3 different issues, the perf 12 3/4 issue from 1905 VM crown and the perf 14 issue from 1913 VM cross and finally the perf 14 from 1917 VM crown.

these letters are quite popular and the cheapest combination is the 1913 issue. much rarer is the 1905 and even more rare is the 1917 issue.

this cover is an example of the 1917 issue, nicely cancelled in Vestmanhavn

this is 1 of 3 such letters known to come from Vestmanhavn.

Another rarity is this cover.



20øre cover from Copenhagen to Riga in Russia (at the time)

sent to Gustav H. Wolff who was a German sculptor who visited Russia many times on study trips to learn the craft.

the cancel used is experimental clock cancel used in a very short period in 1892, consisting of 2 clocks with mechanical "clock arms" that could be adjusted to show the hour and minutes as well of course as the date to the side.

the reason it never made it past experimental state was the ink that hardened caused the movable arms to get stuck and would thus require endless cleaning and maintenance.

naturally as an experimental cancel not many covers exist, and they are quite rare, and many forged exist.

but don't go looking for them without this warning:

rarely they're seen on stamps with fractions of the cancel (most likely legit) on a pair with more or less the entire cancel (without a doubt a forgery)
few entires have been seen, sent locally in copenhagen (most likely forgeries)
so be careful what you pay for such items.

this cover is real, it's one of few covers that has made the trip in the world.
sent from copenhagen 26th of october 1892 (gregorian calender) arrived in Riga on the 17th of october 1892 (Julian calender) 13 days behind the gregorian calender making the trip to russia in 4 days
and as such it's not a forgery.

on the back however is the stamp of the sender O.V.Riise who was the first chairman of the first philatelic club in denmark KPK.

O.V.Riise worked as a customs inspector in the danish postal service, and as such it would be likely to presume that his interest in stamps and contacts in the postal service would mean that he had interest in "making" covers for him self or collectors. which speaks against the legitimacy of the cover.

however, stamp collectors also send covers to people.. the affiliation between O.V.Riise and Gustav Heinrich Wolff is not known, neither is it know if the latter was a stamp collector. which, besides the fact that the cover made the trip, speaks for the legitimacy.

in either case, a beautiful and rare cover which is a priced object in my colleciton

This cover is a puzzle to the community of the danish Bicoloured stamps.



the cover was sent from "Rødby" to a lieutenant Fr Nagel (Frederik Carl Hochberg Nagel) postekspedient (a person working at the post office) at "brevpostfordelingen" (department of letter sorting(lacking a better word for it)) in central Copenhagen.

the rate is 8øre, cancelled ringtype cancel 60 sidecancel "Rødby"
all in good order.

then something happens in copenhagen, and from here it's a guessing game.

my guess being that Frederik, working at the postoffice relayed this cover to a family member, incomprehensive name, same lastname. "Ridder af Dannebrog" in Hoyer. (Frederiks birth town, at his birth part of denmark, at the time of the cover this part of denmark was lost to germany).

the rate to "Slesvig" was 12øre, so instead of writing whatever the cover contained, he just put on 4øre and relayed it (saving himself 8øre)

what makes the cover interesting and more or less unique, besides previous description, is that the cancel used on the 4øre is a so called "money cancel" reserved for sending valuables or money transfers, also referred to as "gum cancel" or "rubber cancel".

my guess is that he himself put it on, at work.
and i'm not entirely sure that this was legal at all at that time as matters of post was taking extremely serious.

but then again, this was either legal or not discovered because he later became a "post master"

great info, thanks for sharing. Love the clock cancel.

Amazing! I have never seen nor heard about the clock cancel. Too bad it didn't work out.

k

#163 I'm not sure about the stamp color and it's possible rarity but I find the combination of Czechoslovakia + persons name addressed to + the fact he was a baptist reverend a very interesting

Very nice covers!

Sorsh - That's some really attractive pieces of Danish postal history - thanks for posting
In fear of being slaughtered by Area66 ( ) I'll keep from posting any off my own

This stamp from IStamp is S.G.371 (Scott#163) and has, according to Stanley Gibbons, nineteen shades... I would expect only an expert would be able to differentiate the vast majority of those 19 shades.

I'm far from an UK collector or expert but we can eliminate the 15 Indigo and the 7 Pale milky blue… so we get down in price, 14-16 was printed with fugitive colors, on a used stamp they will have change so muich color, ID will be inposible

beside stamp under $ 1000 are not rare ....

I split the Hungarian newspaper stamps posts to a new thread.
Don

To quote area66

beside stamp under $ 1000 are not rare

Please remember, we are talking about covers here. These Charkhari stamps CTO, OFF-cover are worthless (I have many spares, if anyone wants to pay the postage...) but ON-over



The overwhelming majority were sold at considerably less than face value, before the set was removed. To find them used legitimately is very difficult. (Value? on a decent day, several hundred dollars; as loose stamps, not worth getting out my calculator.)

Yes Tony.

i was thinking the same regarding Area's comment.

there's another thing to take into account, the catalogue value does not truthfully reflect the rarity.

i have several stamps which aren't that expensive, but impossible to find and only few exist.

https://goscf.com/t/52341&SearchTerms=bicolour

the block of 4, 16øre which I posted is quite possibly the only block of 4 to exist in private hands outside the postal museum.
some inverted watermarks in danish and danish west indies only exist in few copies and are listed in the catalogue as being worth a little more than regular watermark.

and some stamp are listed very high for no reason as loads of them are available on auctions every week.

catalogue value reflects what the people behind think, and how many were printed. the prices does not take into account how many survived the years and supply and demand.

so, catalogue value is useless... only thing that counts is marketvalue.
some stamps sell for 1-2% of catalogue value, and some as high as perhaps several 1000% value.

to prove my point.

http://www.bruun-rasmussen.dk/searc...&mode=detail

this stamp recently sold at an auction, catalogue value 2 DKR (which is minimumprice) sold at 1312.50 DKR

I was referring to that quote when I said a stamp under $ 1000 is not rare . as IStamp said it's an interesting cover.

The word rare is over used, everywhere in this hobby.

I have to agree with Sorsh, catalogue values do not reflect rarity or availability for that matter and one can wonder if there is deliberate market manipulation by catalogue publishers. Seemingly common stamps are very difficult to find loose let alone on cover yet catalogue listings are, for some, but a few pennies. I have been trying to find fine used QEII British Honduras definitive issue varieties for a couple of years now with limited luck yet their catalogue status is modest at best.
I have reached the stage where I am willing to pay full catalogue price (and higher for that matter) to add the stamps to my collection.
The importance and rarity of postal history I believe can only be appreciated by collectors of similar collections. Despite Sorsh's description of the importance of the examples he has shared with us, their importance could be lost on the majority of us who are ignorant of Danish postal history, postage rates etc just as if I had added a piece of Cyprus rural postal history as recent as the 1930s or the '60s for that matter

@Moose
correct, which is why added history and facts on postal rates plus whatever information I could find on the people involved.
which is also the reason I added a request for people to tell us all why the object is of interest to collectors if not just themselves.

i have no clue about postalrates or rarity of cancels, stamps etc outside scandinavia, it does not interest me... but I can enjoy a beautiful cover, a fascinating story, the fact that someone is very knowledgeable about a certain area is also something I appreciate.

but like our chinese friend has done so many time - post a picture and write extremely rare
it's absolutely worthless without facts and a good story.