Austria 1908 Issue And 1916 Wartime Printing (50 Shades Of Gray??)

Well, I need a little help here figuring out the difference between regular and wartime printings of Austria 1908 issue for 60 years of Franz Josef reign.

This question was brought up before, but no solution was found.

https://goscf.com/t/24180

I only have Scott Classic to go by and it differentiate wartime printing as on grayish paper dated 1916, and does not include 50h stamp. So, basically we have to condition to go by: grayish paper, and 1916 postmark.

So let me start with 60h stamp. I have several of those.






There looks like to be several different shades of the grayish tone.

I can make out year on the postmark on two of the stamps. Th second one from the left is 1915 and looks pretty grayish, and the one in the middle is 1914 wich is an extremely gray one out of them all and taller than all others.

Next one is 72h:





Third stamp from the left appears to be dated 1916, but it is not as gray as 1914 example of 60h.

Next is 1K. I cannot really make out any of the dates on cancels.





Next is 2K and 5K. The year on 5K looks like 1916 (nice Tyssa cancel).





And this is the one that stunned me the most 50h. According to Scott there was no wartime printing of 50h, yet here it is.





And between two stamps possibly dated 1916:





Any thoughts?

I don't have Michel Spezial for Austria, so can't really help much. Someone who does should chime in. I wonder, though, how certain you can be about the dates on the cancellations you can read, i.e., are they not perhaps post office codes, as we often see printed right after the date?

And here is something else to consider. It's from Germania in a recent thread concerning peace and wartime printings of Germany. https://goscf.com/t/70892




Germania emphasizes, here or elsewhere that the transition from peace to wartime printings was gradual, without any exact demarcation in time, and the progress wasn't constant. Still, anything on truly grayish paper should be late rather than early.

In any case, I wait to see what someone with more expertise will say about the pretty obvious differences of paper color that you note.

My thought is that the earlier ones were on bluish paper, which would make the third and sixth ones in the first scan from one of the war printing and the rest from earlier printings. The tall stamp is just an artifact of the line perforations, the sheet wasn't moves quite the right amount between rows.

EMaximus

In my understanding the date was in the for m of 22.IX.15-8 such as dd.mm.yy-n, but don't really know what that last number stands for.

On 60h second stamp is from 1915 (likes like), middle from 1914 (definitely 14). Those that postmark 1916 looks like 16 but not really sure. The format is different though. Date printed in column instead of a line. It is possible that the middle 60h stamps got its tone from the paper it was attached to.

Yes, it is possible there were various printing with different paper quality throughout the war time. I would actually say more likely. So it is hard to tell which tone of gray Scott is referring to.

I wouldn't worry about this much if it wasn't for that pesky 50h on grayish paper.


billsey

So, are you trying to say that the early printings of this issue were on bluish paper? I don't see any notes about it in Scott, but again Scott is not very informative. If this is the case, than it would be quite difficult to differentiate between bluish and grayish papers. They all look bluish gray to me.

22 IX 15 8 : day/month/year/dispatch time

I agree. There's no doubt about that paper color. We need someone to check Michel Spezial for Austria.

vayolene

Thank you for clarifying that. I thought that what it is but was not sure.

Hopefully, somebody with Austrian Specialized catalog will drop by.

I found my Österreich Spezialkatalog and figured I could easily answer the questions posed earlier. But I am afraid I am going to muddy the waters. My catalog is from 1982 so that may be part of the problem.

These stamps are part of a set issued between 1908 and 1913. The higher values, 50H through 10 Kr were printed on Kupferdruckpapier (paper for copper printing). No other paper is noted. The catalog notes different paper types for other issues so it ought to for the 1908 set if there were any.

And no peace/war printings are noted either. If these stamps were not printed after 1913 that would make sense. More research is needed.

Thank you Germania

Does this catalog describes this Kupferdruckpapier? Does it have like bluish-grayish tone?

Kupferdruckpapier is a soft absorbent paper frequently used by artists or printers who transfer to the paper an image engraved on some harder material, such as a copper plate. (For mass production, e.g., of stamps, the image must first of course be transferred to some much harder material, e.g., steel.) Neither my Michel Deutschland-Spezial nor Williams, Fundamentals of Philately gives any info about the color of this paper. Here, however, is an image that I found online, showing that the paper is available in different hues and shades.

This thread prompted me to buy a copy of Michel for Austria (Mitteleuropa 2012). For these stamps it contains no mention of "grayish paper" or any reference to "wartime printings". Instead, Michel has two distinct series, both 1908-13. The first includes values 1-35 Heller on coated (i.e., chalky) paper (Mi 139v-149v) and 50 Heller-10 Kroner (Mi 150w-156w) on white to yellowish "Tiefdruckpapier" (presumably what Germania's 1982 Spezial edition calls "Kupferdruckpapier;" see examples in post above).

The second series includes only the 1-35 H on "ordinary, not coated, paper" (Mi 139x-149x).

In short, without some evidence of their existence, I'd disregard Scott's "Wartime Printings on Grayish Paper ('16).