Help Identifying German Stamps

Hello all
please help me to identify this set as I couldn't identify the surcharge
thanks

aboauf,

The stamps are from Soviet Occupied Germany. Michel nos. 179, 173 and 181. I have no clue where Scott stuck them.

The German currency was revalued unexpectedly and caught the postal services off guard. They had no revalued stamps. For a period of about two weeks in 1948 each town used their hand stamp to show that the new rate was paid until new stamps could be issued.

Yours is from a town in OPD district 29, the Magdeburg area. I can't make out the town.

My avatar is another example. 99.99% are either later dated favor cancels or downright forgeries. Even specialists in this area pull their hair,

Dan

These are "hand overprint" stamps from the Soviet Zone of occupation of Germany. When the western allies revalued the currency on June 21, 1948, the Soviet authorities were forced to improvise and had to locally overprint existing stamps with devices normally used for packet card routing.

So, these stamps are from district/area 29, OPD Magdeburg. The town name is Tangermuende.

Since the overprints are simple, and since the usage period was short, the genuine stamps are hard to find. That is to say, the vast majority of these hand overprints are forgeries, and to be taken seriously (as far as value is concerned) they must be examined and marked by a bonafide expertiser/Bundespruefer.

thank you all :) it was a huge lot I bought from a famous german stamps seller years ago but I am starting to sort it now
I don't think I can find any a bonafide expertiser/Bundespruefer. so I will keep them separated till I find someday out of curiosity
regards

I don't have much to add to what has already been stated. There are approximately 2030 different overprints. On average each one was used on about 15 different values. So if you want to collect a "complete" set you need approximately 30,000 stamps.

Literature on the hand stamps is hard to find and almost entirely only available in German. Here is a link to an introductory article (in German):
https://www.philaseiten.de/cgi-bin/...431&CP=0&F=1
You can start a search with this term: "Bezirkshandstempel".

Due to the number of forgeries the only way to collect these stamps is on cover, in my opinion. Even then I could not be sure if it is genuine, philatelic or a forgery. Collecting Germany has many minefields but this one is professional grade.

thanks a lot for the article,I appreciate it
I don't normally collect older german stamps and now I know how tough it could be :)

Germania,

Thank you for the interesting link.




I couldn't agree more. I collect Soviet Occupied Germany (SBZ) in some detail but even my German SBZ collector friends shy away from this area.

I have a "complete" set from Sommerfeld, Germany. I purchased them a long time ago with my eyes wide open knowing they were not authentic. I didn't pay much and I wanted examples for my SBZ collection. Besides, the town is almost my last name, Sommerfeldt. That's why I use it as my avatar.

I never bothered to send them to BPP. The failure rate is too high to justify the expense. If they were authentic, the set would go for a CV of 2500 euro. No collector would let that slip through.

Dan

Great thread! Very interesting to those of us just getting more deeply into German stamps of the period.