Next meeting - MONDAY, january 6, 2025
PARIS STAR CANCELS
By Joel Thompson
After many years as a philatelist, I have hundreds of copies of a single stamp issue. Each stamp issue has a pedigree, but it might also be unique by virtue of its usage, the cancel on it, which forms the basis of what we call “character” or “postal history.”
As a beginning collector at age eight, I became fascinated with old stamps, the older the better, such as the mid-19th century French stamps bearing the profile of the French emperor Louis Napoleon III or Ceres, the goddess of agriculture with a sheaf or crown of wheat and a bunch of grapes in her hair. Many years later I acquired large amounts of these stamps as collection remainders or dealer stock. That began the adventure about what these stamps were all about.
After Great Britain introduced the first adhesive postage stamp in 1840, a perpetual tsunami of personal correspondence and business communication ensued. That resulted in a need to govern the collection and delivery of each piece of mail. Every country felt compelled to have post offices. France, with its many towns and cities as well as numerous colonies, was particularly affected by this new rage of communication.
In the nineteenth century, France published billions of stamps. Each piece was marked first with the departure and later the delivery point, as had become customary globally. Many systems of cancels for stamps were developed in France over several decades, especially in Paris, the mail hub of the nation.
In France as a whole, the stamps bore large or small numeral cancels denoting the post office and town or city where the mail was collected for distribution but also various grills and other “mute” stamp “killers.” Sporadically, the circular date cancels normally applied separately to the piece of mail fell on the stamps instead.
In Paris, with a post office in each major neighborhood, grids marked with alphabet letter and number combinations were used to cancel the stamps for a time. Such cancels were also applied to stamps on mail carried along railroad routes.
From 1863 to 1875, the era of the Louis Napoleon III and Bordeaux Ceres stamp issues, Parisian postmasters also canceled stamps with a six-point star of dots preponderantly with a number from 1 to 40 in their middle, according to the post office location receiving the piece of mail to be delivered.
Years ago, confined to my apartment with flu, I coped with my illness by sorting out the contents of two large boxes filled completely with French stamps. In the boxes, I found hundreds of envelopes containing duplicates of individual stamps primarily from the 19th century. I had bought the boxes from Art Brill, a legendary stamp dealer, at the White Plains Westchester County Show for $15. Bored with their contents, Art wanted to get rid of them because they contained mostly common low value stamps. He was delighted to sell them to me. As I sorted through the vast lot, I focused on the different type cancels on the various stamps, especially the occasional star cancels. I wanted more of them. I found what I could from stamp show dealers while sorting through their stock. One day, I had the luck to win a trove of these star canceled stamps in a Downeast Stamp Auction, and my pursuit to amass a master collection of them began in earnest.
Taking an overview of the 19th century French stamps, I needed reference material to sort them out appropriately by cancel. I acquired two of Fritz Billig’s books that include articles on the early French stamps and Vincent Pothion’s pair of books on Paris and France Obliterations from 1849 to 1876. Billig defines the Paris star cancel period as being from 1863 to 1875 and lists the years when the 39 post offices first used these cancels. Pothion also notes the star cancel bearing the 40, used by a very small office linked to a hospital for a brief period. The star cancels with the 40 are exceedingly rare and became one of a few “holy grail” objects of French philately. While the Billig reference only pertains to a basic set of the cancels including their dates and post office of origin, Pothion lists variations of the 6 and the 9 in the stars, as well different types of the 1 and the 4, and the stars with an empty space that contained no number.
The Paris-type star cancels also have a history of usage before they were applied to stamps with numbers in them. They can be found on the first stamps of France, Scott numbers 1 to 9, and on the Napoleon issues of 1852 to 1860. While the basic star cancelations were always in black ink, red star cancelations were applied to certain government mail.
While the mails were disrupted during the German siege of Paris from Sept. 18, 1870, to Jan. 28, 1871, regular perforated typographed stamps became largely unavailable, and the post offices in Paris were mostly dysfunctional. The French government printed imperforate Ceres stamps for general usage during the Siege using lithographic methods based on the printing of its first stamps. Very few of these stamps are found with star cancellations on them, and I have yet to see any such on surviving covers or wrappers though they surely exist. Nonetheless, I have found two such stamps off cover, one with a 28 in the star and the other with a 21, indicating those post offices were functioning while the lithographed stamps were available.
While a set of the basic 39 different star cancels can be assembled with patience for a small sum, the variations of them will involve a long pursuit and much patience with the reference material in hand under well-focused eyes. Covers, postal cards and wrappers bearing the stamps arise now and then. Sometimes, the star cancels are smudged but they can be deciphered using the circular date stamp that identifies the post office of departure on the mail piece.
stamps of thurn and taxis
By Joel Thompson
Since the beginning of civilization, scribes and messengers have been employed by rulers or leaders to help hold nation states, business and trading interests, territories, and the world together.
As the European populace grew and regional governments and nation states evolved, the need for mail services also arose.
Over nearly 600 years, beginning in the 13th century and ending in the 19thcentury, the Tasso family, later known as Thurn and Taxis, developed and devolved as a major message and mail delivery service in Europe. It began in Italy in 1290. It did not cease business until 1867 when the Prussians took over the company’s headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany, during the Seven Week War.
Amadeo Tasso is credited with creating this business, then known as the Compagnia dei Corrieri, or Company of Couriers, in about 1290. The mail service was concerned initially with deliveries between Rome, Milan and Venice. Its business historically thus became the start of Europe’s modern postal service.
As the family’s mail service evolved, one of Tasso’s descendants, Roger de Tassis established in the 15th century a new postal sevice for Italy that subsequently expanded under the auspices of the Holy Roman Empire to provide and dominate mail delivery across all of Europe.
Franz von Taxis, who later headed Italy’s courier service, was appointed the official postal courier of the Holy Roman Empire by Emperor Maximillian I in 1489. Von Taxis became the postmaster to Philip I of Spain in 1504. With that support, he expanded his family’s business to provide mail services to private citizens as well as imperial governments.
By 1516, the Taxis family had extended its service to Brussels, Belgium, while its network had grown to include Spain, Italy, Prague as well as France, Germany and the Low Countries. Though it was challenged by the Thirty Years War that troubled the Holy Roman Empire from 1618 to 1648, the family maintained its virtual monopoly on mail delivery. In 1650, the family changed its name to Thurn and Taxis, German style. It remained as the official postmaster of the Holy Roman empire until the empire’s breakup in 1806. At that point, it became a private mail service in competition with other couriers in various state entities while the Napoleonic Wars disrupted its business network. As a result, Thurn and Taxis, which had been a mega mail delivery service, shrunk back gradually to a small vestige of its prior self, focused more on Germany regionally than Europe as a whole. The firm ended in 1867 when the Prussians took over its headquarters in Frankfurt during the Seven Weeks War led by Otto von Bismarck to unify Germany as a nation rather than a region of states.
Thurn and Taxis issued stamps beginning in 1852, as inspired by Great Britain, France, Spain, and several small states such as Bavaria, Baden and Prussia that had in the recent past created mail services and stamps for them. Thurn and Taxis had stamps printed for both its Northern and Southern delivery districts. The districts each had three sets of imperforate stamps and two sets of rouletted stamps, one with plain perforations and the other with colored perforations. The stamps of the Northern District had a square design, while those of the Southern District had circular artwork. The stamps are plentiful with many remainders left from the closure of the postal service. Collectors need to beware of stamps reprinted in 1910 to satisfy their hobby’s demand for them. However, stamps as issued from both districts in very fine condition with genuine cancels are relatively rare and can be costly. Stamps of lesser than desired quality abound, and it is possible with a small amount of money to gather up all the 54 stamps to complete a Thurn and Taxis collection. Genuine covers, especially franked with the higher denomination stamps, are rare and expensive. Even so, very nice covers with less than four margin low denomination stamps can be purchased for a small amount of cash to highlight a collection.
At its height, the mail service employed about 20,000 delivery personnel across the European continent. It had a network of routes with stations where the couriers could find fresh horses and deliver and pick up letters, newspapers and packages. The couriers often rode through the night to speed deliveries. They sounded a horn to announce their arrivals. That post horn was to become a symbol of mail delivery services to this day, along with the black and yellow Thurn and Taxis family business colors. The Norwegian post horn stamp series became one of the world’s longest definitive stamp sets. The word taxi became attributed to motor cars as delivery vehicles, which remain predominately yellow in New York City today.
Overall, as the first organized mail delivery service, Thurn and Taxis may be recognized as a model and inspiration for the formation of national postage delivery systems and many private contemporary ones as a development out of the age-old messenger and currier work that kept the leaders of the ancient world aware of each other, much as journalists of the 21st century and the internet carry on today.
Horrid #122 Lincoln sold at auction
By Joel Thompson
This badly damaged stamp – the 90-cent face value of the 1869 Pictorial set (Scott #122) -- not even of album-space-filler quality, sold recently in an eBay auction for the ridiculous price of $434, while it would have a catalog market value of $1,900 as very fine.
This horrid stamp appears to have been put through a washing machine, dryer and a microwave after being extricated from tomato sauce atop a spaghetti dinner as if it were a bay leaf. Some collector was apparently so desperate to fill an album space he had no concern for his very high bid to win this unfortunate, bedraggled stamp. It is likely the worst stamp I have ever seen since I began collecting at age 8.
However, no attractive copies of this issue are available for under $1,000, as you may see on all auction sites. But the $434 paid for this worthless adhesive might have been better spent for many nice stamps -- less rare, perhaps, but considerably more attractive and having an actual value among collectors.
The stamp shows multiple obvious faults. Describing them would take at least a half hour. We should not choose to buy anything so terrible, instead saving our money for better stamps. There are no attractive copies of this stamp available to the common man. Most have ugly cancels obscuring Lincoln's face as well as poor centering. They basically appear aged and beat. Wealthy collectors long ago vacuumed up the excellent-looking copies and now compete for them at high prices as they become available. Copies of VF quality, with attractive cancels or mint, are not seen on internet auction sites or the Buy-It-Now sites we normally frequent. That has been true for decades.
My late friend Don Novicky waited three decades before he finally bought a better copy of #122, mint no gum with VF centering and excellent color, for $950 about 20 years ago. It was at least a-one-in-a-thousand find regardless of its selling price. His patience and perseverance resulted in finding that great stamp.
The lesson here: look before you pounce -- and let the stamp pass if it appears to be too costly or worthless, as was the case with the one shown here in my opinion.
classic stamps of mexico
By Joel Thompson
Collecting the classic stamps of Mexico becomes decidedly one of the most challenging endeavors in the philatelic world for anyone seriously involved. It requires a range of resources: ready cash, reference material, making friends and wiliness to listen and learn.
If we were to define these classics as being issued and used from 1856 to 1883, the 149 stamps so defined involve 11 design categories, all basically overprinted with district names or numbers and having different cancels. To begin the exercise of identifying the stamps within each category, special references listing their district names and numbers as well as distinct cancels are required.
The stamps were marked with district names or numbers for each of the issuing post offices to enforce the integrity of the overall Mexico mail system. This objective was designed to eliminate or curtail stamp thievery, forgery or misuse. In that their time, persons mailing a letter or package from any post office throughout Mexico were required to use the correct marked stamps for that location. As a result, the 149 stamps in the classic category bear in total many different district markings and cancels.
Fortunately, the effort to enforce integrity and financial wellbeing in the Mexican mails involved the meticulous keeping of records regarding each stamp sold and ones that went unused as the 11 categories of them unfolded over their 28 calendar years. Philatelists using these historical records have been able in large part to determine which surviving stamps are rare or common in as much as some districts used very few or none of each type of stamp and others, many. Therefore, in determining how much any collector might pay for any of the stamps, the idea of rarity versus market demand has been developed to determine their individual offering price.
As a general guideline of what is rare or common in terms of cost, collectors gravitate to the Scot Specialized Catalog of Stamps and Covers. A lot of dealers use that catalog to set the prices of their offerings including the Mexican classics without regard to the actual worth of those stamps determined by relative scarcity and market demand. To provide a fairer context, Nick Follansbee, a leading Mexican expert and auctioneer of these stamps, developed a catalog covering the period of 1856 to 1910 to aid collectors in identifying each stamp and understanding its value.
Follansbee’s catalog and understanding his method of determining value is beneficial but only a starting point in the adventure of collecting the Mexican classic issues. Other references pertaining to the specific category one might choose to collect are also essential along with a copy of a Peter Tayor’s Postmarks of Mexico 1821 to 1883. Specific references for the Hidalgo, Eagle, Maximillion, 1868 stamp, and Juarez issues are available along with one monograph devoted entirely to just the first blue half-real Hidalgo stamp of Mexico. References may be found at the American Philatelic Society library or the Mexican Elmhurst Philatelic Society International site htps://mail.mepsi.org . This online site includes a list of dealers that offer the whole plethora of Mexican stamps from the classics to contemporary issues as well as digital references to use directly or purchase in CD form. Collectors of Mexican stamps would benefit from joining MEPSI, which publishes the “Mexicana” periodical on all aspects of Mexico philately. Dues are $35 per year. Getting acquainted with Mexican stamp dealers, participating in their auctions or meeting with them at shows is also a plus.
1845 U.S. Local Post by D.B. Blood & Co: Early Forgery of Ca
By Joel Thompson
"THE STRIDING MESSENGER"
I am unlikely to find or be able to pay for a nice real copy of this Philadelphia local stamp which is said to have inspired creation of the Superman comic hero. Therefore, I resorted to buying this fake at a much-reduced cost compared to its listing price as a fake on eBay or its catalog value VF of $125 if mint or $250 minimum if cancelled and $800 on cover with certification.
Some versions of this stamp are grayish or brown toned like this one. The design is very good in this copy but the real one is more refined and less crude in its fine details. This stamp listed among the Locals is probably the most fantastic U.S. stamp by design. It was created in four versions by D.O. Blood & Co., featuring the Sky Walker figure leaping over the Merchant Exchange Building that then contained the Philadelphia Post Office.
The stamps are listed in the Scott Catalog as 15L3 to 6, with each stamp issue number after the 15L, through 15L6, as all type L30. Some minor details are different among the four stamps, but the bulk of their artwork remains the same. Market values for VF copies vary from $750 for the 15L3 to $200 for the 15L6 used. However, those prices may reflect just the limited demand, not the scarcity of these stamps owned by a small handful of collectors who specialize in Local stamps. Such rare stamps were used before the government-issued ones in 1847, leaving a person like me with the fakes such as this one I was able to find.
Its design, like the Black Jack #73, remains exceptional among all stamps. It is part of the reason why forgers and replica makers have teamed up with stamp dealers to supply collectors from the beginning of the hobby, which remains so to the present day.