I continue to introduce you to my stamps acquisitions. A while ago the snailmail brought me two slender envelopes stuffed with some ancient treasures. In this blog, let me present one of them.
The letter arrived from Alushta (town located in Crimea) and franked with two stamps: one pretty common 3-rouble stamp of standard issue and more intresting one, depicting a polar wolf - a representative of northern fauna.
I prefered to keep the envelope mostly for the convincing cancellation, but mostly I was intrested in the stuff it housed: selection of 5 stamps and cuttings. This is how resulted my attempt to beat two dozen auctions from the same stamp dealer. There were simply too many competitors, I couldn't keep up with other bids. Cant say the prices skyrocketed -- but they didnt stay at 1 rouble vele, as from the start. See, I generally limit myself to buying inexpensive, common stamps.
Ok, lets have a closer look at my trofeis.
This one came from Peru. A lot of regular postage issues of Peru (such as the 1886, 1894, 1895, and 1896 series featuring national coats of arms, historical figures like Atahualpa, Francisco Pizarro, or José de La Mar) were overprinted for official government use with such an imprint at the time.
The stamp is old but absolutely not rare, no surprise nobody was intrested in it. (Ten bids increased the price up to 11 roubles only!) Well... I actually dont collect the stamps from Latin America, tho I'd love to see some of them in my album and watch more closely. When the price is 0,01 -- why not?
The next one is not a stamp but a sort of a cutting (from an envelope?). Not a rare stuff again - those were produced and circulated in huge quantaties. A good condition - clean, no foxie spots, no cancellation signs killing its design, wide margins -- all this added the value to this piece. Letterpress printing in two colors created a relief effect on the paper. Awesome example of art and technology!
And no, its not a postage stamp -- the lot's description stated it was cut from a German document pre-1870 (a fiscal document? a notarial one? I’m not sure). I don’t have any other types of non-postal German stamps; this is the only one, and it’s quite old, too. All this make me feel like I had a bargain here, tho probably I didnt. The lot had 11 bids and I finalized it for 69 roubles (less than $1!)
And now the best part of the lot.
Three stamps of different denomination: Ein, Zwei, Drei silver grochens - depicting Friedrich Wilhelm IV, the king of Prussia. Stamps of this design were issued from 1850 to 1867 on white and tinted paper in an unperforated version, and the rarity/price of a particular example greatly depends on the year of issue, not only on the presence and type of cancellation, preservation, adhesive layer, etc. I should understand what exactly I have on hand (stamps of which year of issue)... but for this you need to be an expert :)
For now, I just enjoy watching the engraved portrait of said king who left a remarkable mark in the history of Europe - and sadly think that I got only three stamps from all the seria. (The complete series includes two more denominations, more rare). I didn’t manage to win these auctions so easily, there were 20+ bids and the price increased from 1 ruble to 250 rubles - and even this is less than many fixed-price ads (most of the time I see price tags that start from 500 .... to 2000 thousand rubles).
I should not I already had a red stamp -- but obtained another, with a differen type of cansellation, created manually by pen. Two same marks of same design - but due to their postal history they look absolutely different! What's your opinion - which one you would prefer to have in your album if you was a stamp collector?
For me, this one definitely look more appealing. Besides that it may serve as a good illustration to such a philatelia term as 'Pen cansel'.
(I currently consider of cooking an illustrated longread post on Philatelia vocabulary, but not sure if I venture into it or not, eventually. Slender posts rewards do not advise me going that way...)
PS. I forgot to tell you: all of the stamps in this combined lot, including shipping, costed me in the end 684 roubls (slightly above $8) - which is rather a more palpable price tag than 1$. But anyway I was happy to take a ride and to find myself in the end with a bargain even such a little one.
That was all for today. Hope you liked this piece of history and all the visuals; let me round up the blog here.
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My previous posts on stamps collecting: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15
All images taken by me, copyright (c) 
@qwerrie
@qwerrie