I received another rare one from these issues today.
In the original post, I stated this WRT the Germania stamps:
Quote:
I'm only missing 4 stamps, of which one is common (P V a), one is fairly common (P V k II), and two are practically impossible to find (P V da and P V m). The 5 Mark value is rare because there was little use for that denomination, and the 25 Pfennig is rare because it wasn't among the stocks transported to China, so the only copies are those carried by individual soldiers.
I recently won at auction a postcard sent by a soldier of the I. Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment, to Germany. The soldier sent the card registered and used Germania stamps to cover the cost of postage.
Included among the stamps used on the postcard was a copy of the 25 Pf stamp (MiNr. P V da) which had to have been transported to China by one of the soldiers or possibly from the stocks on-board one of the transport ships. This is the highest CV (€8,000 on cover) stamp of the set (possibly excepting the 5 Mark value, for which Michel doesn't have enough data to set a CV).
This means I'm only short two of the Germania stamps -- one minor variant which isn't rare (MiNr. P V k II) and the 5 Mark value (MiNr. P V m) which is extremely rare, as it not only wasn't stocked in China, but it wasn't available in Germany until Dec 1900, meaning most troops would have been headed to China before it was available.
Posted 11/10/2020 5:59 pm
