Germany - Soviet Occupation Zone, Specialized Collection

Thanks for sharing. I love old school, homemade collections.

Thanks for sharing your collection!

I thought I was the only one who collected Soviet Occupation Zone!

Not only are there a lot of plate flaws but you can also get lost in color, paper and gum variations.

Dan

What I personally like to do is also put in a cover if I can.

The cover shown is one that will be considered to be Philatelistic, but that is okay with me. The postal rate is correct and the backside carries the receiving postmark from Chemnitz.

Note the difference in how a normal paper stamp and greek insurance paper stamp look(the stamps in the upper left corner).

As danstamps54 already mentioned, lots of varieties to collect.

I've never heard the term "Greek insurance/revenue paper" before. I've always heard this type of paper called "cigarette paper."

Lean something new here every day!

Dan

In answer to danstamps54 post.

It is indeed commonly known as zigarettenpapier/cigarette paper.

This paper was intended to be used in Greece for either insurance paper or stamps(i do not known which one exactly).

I knew that when I posted, but I used the description used on the pages shown, this avoid confusion by adding a new and different description.

I should have also mentioned the common cigarette paper description seperatly, sorry for the possible confusion.

Just found this one: Michel 51 East Saxonia. Plate flaws 1 and 7 on same stamp. plus scratch/break left side of value.

This stamp is field 86 of the sheet. This is the only stamp that has both flaws.

Plate flaw 51 I: upper left corner white pyramid shape on edge does not look like a pyramid.

Plate flaw 51 VII T in Post is broken

Nice to see the other examples and information.

I don't collect plate flaws in Soviet Occupied Germany stamps (SBZ). It's difficult enough for me to collect the regular variations! It can get complicated (and expensive) quickly!

For those of you unfamiliar with SBZ stamps, let me give an example:

The East Saxony stamp that Johan showed, MiNr. 51, has 10 "standard" combinations: Paper differences (3); gumming differences (2); types (2) and paper color (3).

The paper can be:
1. Grey to yellowish, thin paper with a fine net structure (0.07 – 0.105mm)
2. Grey to yellowish, thin paper with sharply climbing laid paper lines (0.075 –0.095mm)
3. Grey to yellowish, thin paper with sharply falling laid paper lines (0.075 – 0.095mm)

My scanning skills are not good enough to provide pictures of these paper types. The usual procedure is to hold the stamp facing you in front of a bright light to look for the paper lines. It can be a real bear if your stamp doesn't have good margins.

There are two gum variations:
1. Smooth or horizontally stripped gum, yellowish to brownish



This type of gum was difficult to scan. The picture is from the Michel Spezial.

2. Economy gumming "Spargummi."

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This is an interesting type of gum. In order to reduce the amount of costly gum on a stamp, a perforated stencil was placed between the paper and the gumming machine. The gum was only transferred at certain points. That explains the "honeycomb" look.

There are two types of stamp:
Type 1 has the top of the numeral three coming to a point and Type2 with a flat topped numeral:



And last but not least there are three paper color variations: black-brown, pale grey-brown and (brown) black. The differences are subtle and don't show up on a scan. It is customary to get a BPP certification to distinguish these colors.

This just touches the different variations found on SBZ stamps. There are other color, gum, paper, watermark and perforation variations on other SBZ stamps.

These differences don't address the hundreds of plate flaws. In fact, the Michel Spezial says: "More even than the other East Saxony stamps, MiNr. 51-52 have such a great number of genuine plate flaws that a complete cataloging would exceed the scope of even a specialized catalog."

If you like flyspecking, these stamps are for you!

Dan