Help With German Stamp And Postmark Collection Please

Hoping to get a little information on a stamp/postmark collection that I found. The album has hundreds of the same stamp on little cards with a different postmark on each and different dates. Stamp is of a satellite and dates are late 70's and some 80's. Google translate helped me determine that they are from The German Federal Post office and the postmarks, as best I can tell, are from different exhibition and exchange shows. Wondering what the little cards are called? Also wondering what the number on each postmark represents. Any any other information you can provide would be appreciated as well.Thank you.

The numbers on the cancels are the equivalent of our ZIP-code.

Peter

Thank you Peter.

These are cancellations for special events. The four digit number at the bottom of the cancels is the postal code for the city or town of the postmark. The cancels are from The Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), before the re-unification with the former German Democratic Republic (DDR).

The 5 pfennig stamp was used to "catch" the postmark; it would not pay for postage by itself. So, this was someone's collection of special postmarks. I don't think this area (modern special events postmarks) has ever been too popular with Germany specialist collectors in the USA.

Thank you very much for that information. Do you know how someone would have gone about getting these. There are several hundred covering a 2 and a half year period and some days there were 20-30 different postmarks. Would someone have to go to each location or was there another way to accumulate them?

This is a German (meaning, by Germans) way of collecting, so the precise methodology is beyond me. I have seen East German stamps with special postmarks on small perforated cards, as well as West German 5 pfennig stamps on larger cards and covers.

The Michel stamp catalog (Germany) shows huge numbers of first day cards for the West German stamps, but you don't see these items in the USA, i.e., they are really not collected here.

My guess is that a stamp dealer or collector would have (large) numbers of these cards or covers cancelled and sell them to special event cancel collectors.

That makes sense. Thanks so much for the help.

In Australia, this discipline is "PICTORMARKS"
(Pictorial Postmarks)

Images / Author "BrissyPete"

Interesting. Thanks!

If you dig into the discipline, it can be pigeon holed as "Mutilated Stationery ~ Cut Squares"

The only boundary, is one's imagination...........