Some stamps from Colombia

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I was planning to do this post with Colombian stamps for weeks...before starting with some of the older stamps,I like to make some considerations about the meaning of the Coat Of Arms of Colombia, endlessly repeated in many of these similar designs...

The coat of Arms can be divided in two parts : A) Exterior of the Shield B) Interior of the Shield

A) at the top of the shield ,one Condor looking to the right and holding an olive crown in the beak...the Great bird is resting above a scroll saying "Liberty and Order"...The condor itself represents freedom and the olive in a major part of its representations, means peace...B) the interior of the shield can be again divided in 3 parts: A1) the lowermost part ,represents the isthmus of Panama and two ancient boats, one in each sides of the Isthmus...The Isthmus of Panama was until 1903 part of Colombia and it is a small piece of land with the Atlantic Ocean in one side and the Pacific Ocean in the Other.. the boats represent commerce and Economy...A2) The middle section of the Shield show us the  Phrygian cap, traditionally related to liberty A3) The uppermost  section of the shield represents at each side a Cornucopia (or 'horns of Plenty')  ...from the left one silver and gold coins are falling and from the right one Tropical fruits ... this is clearly a mention to the richness of the Colombian soil and to the Agricultural and Mining Activities...[ wikipedia ]

well, after this short introduction to the Colombian Arms,lets proceed to our stamps...

As I said before ,the classical period of Colombian Philately is mainly 'ruled' by consecutive Designs having the Colombian Arms as Central Vignette (always with a very similar look) and simple Frames, with the several labels (Country , Currency, Numerals,etc)  always changing place and Format  from series to series ... so even when the stamps seem identical, a second look could be desirable and useful...

All the stamps from the classic Period I have to present today are from the Republican Period of Colombia's history... I think a few words about the history of this country are necessary...Spain's conquest of what is now referred as Colombia began in 1525 and lasted until 1550..Colombia,Venezuela and Ecuador were part of the Spanish Vice-royalty of New Granada...a rising at Bogota in 1810 led to the Bolivar's  victory over the Spanish Troops and a new Territory including Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador was born in 1819,... after the breakaway of Venezuela and Ecuador ,Colombia was known as Republic of New Granada... in 1858 a confederation of nine states was created under the name of Grenadine Confederation...in August 1886, the country was renamed Republic of  Colombia and the sovereignty of the states was abolished , and they became Departments...we are now arrived at the first days of the Republic of Colombia,where several of the above stamps began to be issued... some of them are from the first republican Issue of Colombia, in 1886/1888...

I have to make a small correction , because the first two stamps are prior to the republican period... let us start to divide them into series and time periods...

1st)2nd) from the 1883/1886 series, and the particular difference to all the others is the country Label , at the borders of the Central Oval figure...that label is "Correos Nacionales de los EE.UU. de Colombia" ..there is a clear reference to the United States of Colombia and the inclusion in the design, of nine starts above the Condor's head is also due to the nine states confederation...

1883/1886 "Colombia's Arms" (7) [Litho] Sc(119,123)

3rd) This stamp belongs to the first series where portraits were issued...the first value is yet a coat of Arms ,but the others are portraits of important personalities of Colombian History...in this case , we have one representation of Bolivar...the papers used in this issue are tinted ..it is also part of the 1st series of the republican period, and so the Country label is "Correos De La Republica De Colombia"... I don't know who is the designer of these portraits ,but they seem very uninteresting and Childish...there are several perforations possible for this series...

1886 "Personalities" (9) [Litho] Sc(130)

4th)5th) back to the Coat of Arms stamps... here we have a Blue on Greenish blue and a Deep blue on blue stamps...again , tinted papers were used in these period's printings...the country label continue to be the same , and two perforations are available...

1890/1891 "Colombia's Arms" (5) [Litho] Sc(151,151a)

6th)7th)8th)9th)10th) this is a series that introduce us some new Coat of Arms Designs and some old with new colors... the 6th stamp is clearly similar to the 4th and 5th,but it is a new color situation...we have respectively a black on buff , a red on yellow, a Orange brown on buff , a red brown on salmon and a brown on rose stamps...several perforations and mixed perforations are again possible..

1892/1899 (11) [Litho] Sc(151,148,152,152a,153)

11th)12th) the last two stamp share the same design and and are part of a 1898/1901 series...we have a red brown on salmon and a brown on rose stamps...a single 13.5 perforation is available...

1898/1901 "Colombia's Arms" (4) [Litho] Sc(163,164)

It is now time to be back on our history lesson...in 1899 ,a Civil War broke out between the Liberals (Non Religious) and the Conservative (Catholic) Government...the war ended in 1902 and as a result the supplies of stamps from the Capital Bogota were cut of and provisional issues were made in several parts of the Country....from this disturbed period I only have two stamps from the Barranquila Issues, printed by Francisco Valiente F., Barranquila, and two stamps from the Bogota Issues, printed by the National Lithography.....   

  [Left] this stamp is part of Colombia's first pictorial series ...it represents the river Magdalena...the series has 3 stamps,but SG present us various color possibilities for each one of them..
1902/1903 "Barranquila Issues / Views of Colombia" (3) [Litho] Sc(195)
[Right] from a series with pictorial stamps,portraits and coats of Arms...
1903/1904 "Barranquila Issues / Pictorials,Portraits & Arms" (16) [Litho] Sc(222)

[Left][Right]  a curious aspect about these stamps, is that  we could expect some kind of label identifying the Issuing Department,but actually there is only reference to "Republica De Colombia".. the fact of these two stamps are not used make 's me a little suspicious about  their provenience,but their cv is so small that in the end I think they are not faked in any manner...

1902/1903 "Bogota Issues /  Colombia's Arms" (9) [Litho (Lit. Nacional,Bogota)] Sc(268,270)

These 10 stamps belong to 3 different series sharing common designs...

1st)2nd) 1917 "Portraits, Landscapes and Coat of Arms" (12) [Recess (Perkins,Bacon & Coº.Ltd.,London)] Sc(340,341)

3rd)4th)7th)8th)9th)10th) the 3c and the 8c  blue spares are just different shades...

1922/1929 "Portraits,coats of Arms and new designs / New colors" (11) [Recess (Perkins,Bacon & Coº,Ltd,london)] Sc(372,372,401,372,400,401)

5th)6th) "Coat of Arms" (1) [Recess (Perkins,Bacon & Coº,Ltd,London)] Sc(359) [red on Yellow]

This Numeral Design was issued in two separate series,the first in 1904 and the 2nd in 1908/1916...the first two stamps are from 1904 and the others from 1908/1916...the main difference between them is the Printer's name written at the lowermost part of the stamp, below the inferior frame...in the first case (1904) we have Lit.J.L.Arango,Medelin) and in the 2nd (1908/1916)  ,the National [Litho] Printing Works, Bogota (Lit. Nacional)..there are in both series several types of some stamps ,but i will not talk about them because I think it is not necessary in the moment , leaving an explanation to a future post...after we see these stamps in detail,we clearly see that  the printing is more detailed and precise in the 1904 issue..

1st)2nd) 1904 "Numerals" (9) [Litho] Sc(316,317)

3rd)4th)5th)6th) 1908/1916 "Numerals" (6) [Litho] Sc(325,325a,326,327)

"In 1918 the introduction of the three centavos rate and the difficulty of obtaining replacements for the 1917 definitive series persuaded the Colombian Post Office to order a locally printed provisional series" ( please see pdf document ) As you can see ,the first 4 stamps have designs already issued previously, but with the label "Provisional" , over the center of the stamps (this label is not an overprint of any kind ,but was included in the master plates..).. the last two stamps are a complete series of 1926...

1st)2nd)3rd)4th) 1920/1922 "Provisional Stamps" (8) [Litho] Sc(361,362,263,364)

5th)6th) 1926"Provisional Stamps"  (2) Sc(395,396)

Now we can begin to show some pictorial stamps from more recent days...these stamps have in common the fact of being Overprinted or Surcharged...all were Engraved and Printed by Waterlow and Sons...

1st) 2nd) both the stamps in it's original form are from the series "Colombia's Resources" from 1932.. , but  the first is overprinted "Oficial" and the other is surcharged..

1937 "Overprint 'OFICIAL' on '1932 Colombian Resources'" (13) [Recess (Waterlow and sons, London)] Sc(O11)

1937 "Surcharge '5 Centavos' on '1932 Colombian Resources'" (5) [Recess (Waterlow and Sons, London)] Sc(455)

3rd) The design of this stamp is originally from 1937,but this particular 10c stamp was issued in 1948 and Overprinted in 1953

1953 "Overprint 'AEREO' on'1948 Tequendama Falls'" (1) [Recess (Waterlow and sons,London)] Sc(C231)

Through out the Years, some of our well known European and American Printing companies were active in Colombia and some of them had so much work that opening a subsidiary Company in Colombia was the answer (De La Rue Colombia)..from the 20's to the 60's this Foreign Activity increased a lot , and in the end of the 40's and 50's we could find activity of ABNC, Waterlow, De La rue, Courvoisier , etc , some of them in the same year...! this great  market for the Printing Companies only diminished considerably with the arrival of the Hungarian Stamp Designer Imre von Mosdossy  who worked preferentially with  the Vienna State Printing Works...

Presented above are some examples of Engraved and [Recess] stamps by Waterlow and De La Rue...they are all from the 40's and 50's...

1st) 1948 "José Celestino Mutis and José Jeronimo Triana" (1) [Recess (Waterlow and Sons)] Sc(555)

2nd) 1948 "Tequendama Falls" (3) [Recess (Waterlow and Sons)] Sc(570)

3rd) 1954 "AIR Mail / 300th Death Anniversary of St. Peter Claver" (1) [Recess (Thomas De La Rue)] Sc(C258)

4th) Colombia , like other South American countries has a extraordinary number of Air mail stamps,and it was common in the 40's and 50's each normal postage issue being accompanied by an Air Mail issue of the same series (most of the times with different designs...)

1948 " AIR Mail / 9th Pan American Congress, Bogota" (2) [Recess (Waterlow and Sons)] Sc(C148)

5th) 1951 "8th Death Anniversary of D.G.Valência (Poet and Orator)" (1) [Recess (Waterlow and Sons)] Sc(595)

6th) 1955 "Colombian Forces in Korea" (2) [Recess (De La Rue)] Sc(C269)

7th) "Death Centenary of Archbishop Mosquera" (1) [Recess (De La Rue)] Sc(C261)

8th) 1955 "Greater Colombia Merchant Marine Commemoration" (4) [Recess (De La Rue)] Sc(C271)

9th) 1956 "AIR MAIl / 4th Death Centenary of St. Ignacius of Loyola" (2) [DEs (I.V. Mosdossy)][Recess (De La Rue)] Sc(C287)

Stamps from a very famous Air Mail series , representing views and Famous places from Colombia...The engraving and printing work is of De La Rue and it is quite good, as we can see for example in the 1st stamp presented ...

1954 "Air Mail / Views of Colombia" (15) [Recess (De La Rue)] Sc(C241,C242,C244,C245,C249)

to finish this long,long post I have some "Unificado" stamps...

in the 40's the two former Colombian Airlines SCADTA (Sociedad Colombo-Alemana de Transporte Aéreo ) and SACO (Servivio Aereo Colombiano) were united in a new company called Avianca... in 1959/1960 this Unificado stamps were issued (overprinting some stamps previous issues) following an agreement between Colombian state and Avianca to unify the Air postage in all the mail the Company transports..

All the 4 original stamps belong to the previous 1954 series, presented above...in 1959/1960 the small airplane with the 'Unificado' label was overprinted in those stamps...

1959/1960 "Overprint 'Unificado' on '1954 AIR MAIL/Views of Colombia'" (21) Sc(C330,C338,C343,C346)

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A common language

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Hello, again... taking advantage of the fact that some of the stamps I have to show today are from Great Britain, I wish to talk a little about the Anglo Saxon culture that is dominant today ..in the end of the 19 Century we still had several languages struggling themselves to reach domination... we add a larger french influence, German , Spanish, Portuguese , English of course, Italian  and others... with the end of WWII , peace was achieved in Europe and the US take a predominant role in International Politics and Commerce with it's Culture being largely broadcast by Cinema , radio and Television.. of course the English language , rapidly dominated all the others, and with Bill Gates computers in the 80's, there was nothing else we can do about it...!! Why can't we just accept the fact ??? don't we need a common language?? Why is the English so bad? for example , it is much easier to learn than my Natal Portuguese or the French..! with my experience in the NET, I found that there are people who still resist ,  always writing and commenting in their languages... with all the respect those people deserve me , to read their blogs or posts , I need to use the Net translators, and it is not the same thing , we all know that..!!! never mind the mistakes You made when You are writing in English, never mind the construction of the phrases, please try it !! We have to catch this ' Train ' !! it is already in movement !! if We don't catch it now we will have to begin searching again for dominance, and worst , we will have to wait for the next train to arrive.!! By accepting English as your current way of communicate with others in the Net, You are not accepting nothing more than that..! You are not accepting Political views or Religious Views.. You are accepting a Fact!!! a fact that will be in the future very difficult to find again... 

Let us now return to the stamps ...

I have some KGVI Great Britain Commemorative stamps, a few stamps from Dominica and Colombia Air Mail stamps...

GREAT BRITAIN

 There are nine commemorative series from King George VI... I have some of them  complete and others with stamps missing... I want to again highlight the obvious fact  that I am a World collector, so by principle I don't mind to much with the general overall aspect of my stamps.. sometimes it is not the desirable , but I cannot have all my stamps in optimal conditions.. that would be unrealistic for me , because there are many, many stamps to collect, beautiful or ugly, expensive or cheap and my finances are not the best part of me..! all the stamps are very common, and almost all of the series have some varieties, and it is a strange fact that those varieties are only accessible for someone who has a Specialized catalog.. ( they are not important varieties, if we speak in it's monetary value, but they should be more of the 'public domain' ..)

this stamp is related to the Coronation of King George VI... it is a single stamp series , but it has many possible varieties...I have 5 similar stamps and I didn't find any of the varieties, so I will not talk more about it.. the stamp is designed by Edmund Dulac... I like to write a few words about Edmund Dulac.. being a French born Citizen , but British Naturalized , he was very important to France and to Great Britain with his stamp designs... during WWII he designed many stamps for the French colonies and even for France (remember the Dulac's Marianne..) but he designed also very important stamps during the reign of KGVI for Great Britain...He was a very interesting link between the UK and France...  

1937 "Coronation of King George VI" (1) [Des (Edmund Dulac)][Photo (Harrison & Sons)] Sc(234)

This is a series commemorating the Allied Victory in the WWII...

1946 "Victory Issue" (2) [Des (H.L. Palmer 2.5d)(Reynolds Stone 3d)][Photo (Harrison & Sons)] Sc(254,255)

this series is incomplete and show us again King and Queen , now some years later...

1948 "Royal Silver Wedding" (2) [Des (G.T. Knipe)][Photo (Harrison & Sons)] Sc(267)

This is a series issued mainly for use in the channel Islands, so it should be considered a Regional Issue... however the stamps were sold in Great Britain , in some of the Head posts of the Royal Mail.. the series commemorates the liberation of the channel Islands..

1948 "Channel Islands Liberation" (2) [Des (J.R.R. Stobie 1d)(E. Blampied 2.5d)][Photo (Harrison & Sons)] Sc(269,270)

another incomplete and beautiful series related this time with the Olympic Games... the stamp designed by Edmund Dulac is the only missing , and at the same time for me the most beautiful of the 4 stamps...

1948 "Olympic Games" (4) [Des (Percy Metcalfe 2.5d)(Abram Games 3d)(Stanley D. Scott 6d)][Photo (Harrison & Sons)] Sc(271,272,273)

between the Olympic Games series and this one, another one commemorating the 75th Anniversary of the UPU was issued...I just got one of those stamps  (series of 4) so I don't present it... this series is the last commemorating series of King George VI reign..

1951 "Festival of Britain" (2) [Des (Edmund Dulac 2.5d)(Abram Games 4d)][Photo (Harrison & Sons)] Sc(290,291)

the two series commonly known as "High Values" (1939 and 1951) are both  [Recess] Printed.. these two stamps are from the 1951 series and they are not in 'the best shape'... both the stamps are designed by Mary Adshead  and printed by Waterlow and Sons..

1951 "High Values / 2nd Series" (4) [Des (Mary Adshead)][Recess (Waterlow and Sons)] Sc(286,287)

DOMINICA

it is not new that some Territories of the Great Empires of those days were in remote zones of the planet or just  one or few from larger groups of islands... so, the fact that I needed to know something more about the location of this Territory from the British empire is , in the end , not a surprise... well, Dominica is the largest of the Windward Islands , southeast of Puerto Rico...

the few stamps I have are from one of the 3 series sharing an original design of 1874 from Queen Victoria (I'm not counting with overprinted or surcharged series...)

another fact that I should not consider strange is that the name of the designer is unknown... many of the Designs with Queen Victoria Portrait s have unknown designers , because the designer was considered to be part of the printing Company or just because in those days this detail simply didn't matter.. this particular stamp is very beautiful and the engraving and printing is good, highly detailed .. we can see this fact by the Queen's Tiara and hair.. 
this time the used stamps have more value than the Mint or unused one's...

The first two stamps were issued in 1883 , the next 3 in 1886 and the last one in 1887..

1883/1888 "Queen Victoria" (9) [Typo (De La Rue)] Sc(16,17,19a)

COLOMBIA

before starting this presentation of some Air Mail Colombian stamps I have to talk about the SCADTA stamps... the task of transporting mail by Air in Colombia was granted to "Sociedad Colombo-Alemana de Transportes Aéreos".. after sometime working , the company started to have problems due to the large difference of mail arriving and departing Colombia... the quantity of mail arriving to Colombia was considerably larger than the mail that left the country..the SCADTA stamps (the most part designed and printed in Germany) became available in the consular offices of Colombia in foreign countries... so If you want to send mail to Colombia and have a better service , you only needed  to buy those stamps (previously overprinted with the initials of the Country of origin..) in the Colombian Consul Office and glue them in Your letter...the problem is that the system was not perfect and suffered several changes during the years.. this is the main reason of the importance , not only philatelic  , but also monetary of the covers from this period of time that sometimes present a great mix of foreign and SCADTA stamps, turning them in real objects of study for specialized collectors... each period of time had different SCADTA rules .. I left here a site where you can see some of the complexity of all this system and the beauty of the covers...  I also could tell you that Stanley Gibbons has a good section dedicated to these stamps in the  "South America" catalog...
I don't want to enter in further details because i'm not  a collector of these stamps in particular... the stamps I have to present are stamps that were available in Colombia, without overprints..

this single stamp is the only one I've got from the first series of 1921... there is another series with stamps issued from 1923 to 1928, and all the other stamps presented below are from that series...the difference is in the color (green in this case, blue in the next series...) , and in the fact of this first issue has perforation 11.5 (14x14.5 in the 2nd) and no Wmk (the 2nd series presents a Wmk )...The stamps have the label "Servicio Postal Aéreo de Colombia" ...
1921/1923 "Servicio Postal Aéreo de Colombia" (11) [Des (R. Klein)][Litho (Meisenbach Riffart & Co., Munich)] Sc(C29)

Both this series have 2 different designs...i present now the 10c,20c,30c,60c,1P and 2P...there are some spair stamps , just to see that various shades exist from each color...what troubles me it is the last stamp of the 30c I present... it is clearly one shade of Green , but the color should be blue... I think that it is too Green to be blue, but it is not from the 1st series because it has wmk and perf 14x14.5...strange..
This 2nd series has a label "Servicio De Transportes Aéreos En Colombia"
There is another great difference between the stamps of the 1st  and 2nd series...
2nd Series ) vertical design) floats in the wings of the aircraft.. Horizontal Design) small chapel in the left peak instead of the right peak in the first...
1923/1928 "Servicio de Transportes Aéreos en Colombia" (13) [Des (R. Klein)][Litho (Government Printing Works, Berlin)] Sc(C39,C41,C42,C45,C47,C48)

To end the post I have a complete series from 1959 .. the first stamp is for normal postage and the others are  Air Mail stamps...
1959 "Birth Centenary of R.M. Carrasquilha" (3) [Des (Imre Von Mosdossy)][Photo ((Enschedé)] Sc(696,C315,C316)


 I hope that you have found this post interesting ... for me , it is satisfying if you begin to see some movies in English with English Subtitles...

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For the Building

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I must start this post by telling that my attention is divided lately , between my two stamp blogs.. this one and the new one... Unfortunately, I think the new one will get most of my attention in the future... This is something that I say not without some sadness , because this is a project I like very much and classifying stamps is for me one of the best activities life as to offer.. (this is not a joke...) ... but the new project I have started in July is much more rewarding , because it involves many other things I also like very much , like studying someone's life , digging in the past, searching in old archives and finding ways to discover people that do not want to be discovered... it is a project that offer's me (like this one, also...) a life time of fun and at the same time the possibility of doing something useful that has not yet the attention it deserves.. so I think something must be done to keep this blog active...the answer I get from myself is that I must make smaller posts, with just one or two groups of stamps and continue the rate of posts I have in the last weeks (it has diminished, if you look to the beginning of the blog...) .. I think 1 post for week it will be alright and this way I will not need 2 days at least to classify stamps and prepare the post....(perhaps a day will last for this Blog format...)

I was preparing some Colombia stamps for this next post , but it should be much larger.. I will make it with just stamps of two group of series...

This is a group of Postal Tax stamps Series.. the time frame involved goes from 1939 to 1950.. These stamps were obligatory in every kind of mail , and the tax was for the construction of the Communications and Postal Buildings ...
1) 1939/1945 "Communications Building" (7) [Litho (Litografia Nacional, Bogotá)] Sc(RA3,RA3a,RA4,RA5,RA5a)
2) 1940 "Communications Building" (5) [Recess (De La Rue Co Ltd, London)] Sc(RA8,...,RA11)
3)4) 1945/1948 "Communications Building" (8) [Recess (ABNC)] Sc(RA19,...,RA25)
        1947 "Communications Building" (1) [Recess (ABNC)] Sc(RA33)
5) 1948/1950 "Communications Building" (5) [Recess (ABNC)] (RA41,...,RA45)
I cannot find the correct code for the last stamp(20c Brown)...

from the 2nd to the 5th images , we have stamps of very small (15,25) dimension ..the stamps from the 1st image don't have Wmk and all the others have...

  
This second series represents some monuments or key Views of Colombia... there are 4 different designs .. the 1st represents a Pre-Colombian monument, the 2nd the El Dorado symbol and the others , a Spanish Fortress in Cartagena and a view of the Colonial Bogotá.

There are 3 different series with these designs , the 1st issued in 1941, the 2nd in 1948 and the 3rd in 1952...

 2)3)5)10) 1941 "Views and Monuments of Colombia (Air Mail)" (13) [Recess (ABNC)] Sc(C122,C123,C124,C128) 
4)6)8) 1948 "Views and Monuments (Air Mail)" (13) [Recess (ABNC)] Sc(C153,C154,C155)
1)7)9) 1952 "Views and Monuments (Air Mail)" (9) [Recess (ABNC)] Sc(C217,C220,C225)

I know this is a small post with few points of interest , but it is what I can arrange for now...in the future , less stamps will be shown, just one or two series... it has to be this way to keep the blog running.. I'll keep buying stamps, whenever I can (I have earned some money from an occasional job and I received two days ago a large lot of India and Pakistan stamps ... Great Lot!!..I finally bought something!!!!)

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P.S) The Island of Fogo Volcano (Cape Verde) has just erupted today.. you are welcome to visit this Facebook link and be updated..