Portugal Stamps [7th Post] / Hungary stamps [9th Post]

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Today I have one series from Portugal and one other  from Hungary... they are relatively large series , and neither of them is completed... deep in my head ,having all the 20 Portuguese stamps was not a problem ,but when I was classifying them ,a last minute missing $30 stamp release again to life the 'Hulk' in me ( a disgrace to Philately,I know!!!) and I turned my house upside down , looking for the very,very common $30 stamp... How could  I miss it???!... well, here are the remaining 19 stamps of this beautiful series...

The stamps are presented here with it's fv increasing , but the series was issued in four groups ... 3 groups of 4 stamps and 1 group of 8 stamps... two of these groups were issued in 1972 , one other in 1973 and the last large one in 1974...the stamps are [Litho] printed, and so we can find examples of all sorts of color misplacement and other printing problems always associated with these base series with a large number of stamps issued...

As You can see ,the illustrations of the stamps are related to Historic , Natural  or Architectural  Famous places in Portugal...it is without doubts  a nice series..!

Portugal 1972/1974 "Landscapes and Monuments" (20) [Litho (Casa da Moeda)] Sc(1123,....,1134)(1207,1209,...,1214)

Now we will start talking about one of the most famous series in the world... it is Hungarian, as I said in the beginning and it has two main designs , one for the low f values and other for the k high values....

 Here are the two illustrations I was talking about.. You can for sure recognize them , not only for their beauty but also because they are really famous designs... the f values show us the Hungarian Crown at the center of the design ,and above it the Mythical Bird of the Magyars , the Turul... , flying on an empty white center background...
The other design, the k design show us King Francis Joseph wearing the Hungarian Crown.. it is a simple but beautiful illustration , with some very nice "Art Nouveau" elements (sometimes difficult to spot correctly due to imperfections in the printings...) surrounding the central portrait of the King....
This two designs were issued from 1900 to 1916, giving place to 4 main Issues : 
A) 1900/1904
B) 1904/1906
C) 1908/1913
D) 1913/1916
To identify and classify correctly the stamps , we have to always take in mind the Wmk and the perforation...The wmk is the main differentiating factor because each one of the above issues has a particular wmk... I will use some pictures of an old SG catalog to show the wmk's ... the wmk's usually don't appear in it's complete form, so we will see only pieces of each one of the Wmk... fortunately  the identification is possible because the wmk's are quite visible without the use of instruments or chemical processes... 

A) The first issue of 1900 has a wmk that only is completed in a group of 4 stamps... it show us the Hungarian crown inside an oval , connected to other ovals....it is easily identifiable.. 
two perforations are possible in this issue... 12x11.5 and 11.5 ( with higher cv...)...

there is a small detail in the design of the wmk that I could not fully understand... The cross that tops the crown is inclined to the left , while in other two of the wmk's it is inclined to the right... if we are dealing with the same Crown (Crown of St. Stephen or Crown of Hungary) this detail should be kept identical... why this difference?..perhaps someone could teach me more about the History of this crown and perhaps of these particular wmk's...(we can see in the f illustrations that the Hungarian Crown at the center has the same left inclined cross at the top...)

From all the stamps I show today , only a small number of them are new entries to the collection... despite the fact that this is the first time I talk about this series in the blog, I already have a lot of these stamps in the collection... so most of these are spare stamps or just color variations , etc... 

Hungary 1900/1904 "King Francis Joseph , Crown and Turul" (20) [Des (J. Bohm)][Typo] Sc(48,49,50,,53,56,57,58,58,59,60,60,60,61,61,64,64,65)

B) This is the wmk that appears in all the stamps belonging to the 1904/1906 issue... this is already a single stamp image , that is to say that the wmk could be completed in just one stamp... In must part of the cases, we can see only part of the image and the bottom or Up parts of another image , so I could say at this point , that there is a major difference to be retained between this wmk and the next one , that is the termination of the 3 small bottom base "legs" of the Crown...in this wmk , they end with just small points or "dots" , and in the next one, as we will see they end with well defined small circles... this is important , because sometimes the details of the Crown do not let us decide which is the wmk, but the presence of circles or dots will "light "us the right way...

In this issue we can have two distinct perforations : 12x11.5 and 15....

In this small group of stamps from the 1904/1906 issue, I want to highlight the two very different 2f Olive Yellow ( the first stamp has 12x11.5 perforation and the 2nd has 15 perf...) and the pair of 5k in the end... this pair presents two nice postmarks , but it also have many rust spots , so it's value is highly diminished... there are also some different shades of blue in the 6 2k stamps presented...

Hungary 1904/1906 "King Francis Joseph , Crown and Turul" (16)(15) [Des (J.Bohm f's)(O.Tull k's)][Typo] Sc(68a,68b,69b,72b,77b,81b,82b,82b,82b,82b,82b,82b,83a)

[Updated 15/06/2017 22:56 ] The last of the 6 2k stamps was incorrectly placed in this image and it's right place is with the stamps of the 1913/1916 issue... Sc(102) ... Sorry for the inconvenience... 

Regards..

C) This is the wmk of the 1908/1913 issue.. the presence of the circles in the bottom base of the Crown could be  , as I said before, very important...

This issue only has stamps with perforation 15...

I only have 4 stamps of this issue to present, but I want to talk about a small detail present in some of the Hungarian postmarks of those days... the Hungarian Crown appears also in the top center of the postmarks , and this bring even more emphasis to this beautiful series... You can see clearly this detail in the 30f and 60f stamps presented... ( the detail was also visible in previous stamps, of course).. 

Hungary 1908/1913 "King Francis Joseph , Crown and Turul" (17) [Des (J. Bohm)(O. Tull)][Typo] Sc(67,77,78,80)

This is the wmk of the last of the 4 issues of this series....the wmk is completed only in groups of 4 or more stamps...

The only perforation of this issue is the 15...

This is the last group that i have to present and I wish to talk again about the "Art Nouveau" details, very well presented here in this 3 Carmine 1k stamps... this 1913/1916 printing was the one that better highlighted those details...

in this last issue we also have the 12f lilac on Yellow and the Green on rose 60f both originals from this issue...

Hungary 1913/1916 "King Francis Joseph , Crown and Turul" (20) [DEs (J. Bohm)(O. Tull)][Typo] Sc(84,90,94,95a,98,99,100,101,101,101)

Well, we've reached the end of this post, and this is the time when I must say that I hope You have liked this very superficial approach to this Hungarian series (it has much more to say if we try to see it in a more detailed way ..) ... the Portuguese series is beautiful and simple..not much more to say about it , and ....

SeeYou

Stamps and Scans..

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In this post I will show some stamps from Hungary and South Africa... Let us start immediately without no more delays..

This is not a particularly rich post in beautiful and 'dazzling' stamps... I will show 3 definitive series, and most of the stamps we will see are [photo] printed, a fact that is determinant in their  final 'unappealing' qualities ... the South African series , in the other side, is very beautiful and with a nice printing , but we also have to know that there is a time gap of 30 years between them...I also have a nice and beautiful Hungarian Sport series to present... any of today's series is complete, but i think I have sufficient stamps from each one of them to proceed with the classification...

Before starting to talk  about this definitive series, I need to remember that all these stamps have the same small size and the differences in some of the pictures are due to the bonding process of the individual stamp images... 
This series , know as "Budapest Buildings" , is divided in 3 sub series, issued respectively in 1951,1952 and 1953.. As I said in the beginning of the post, the series is [Photo] Printed, and this fact brought me some unexpected difficulties.. 2 or 3 weeks ago, I bought a new Scanner and I am still in the process of learning some of the capabilities of the machine.. I already discovered that ]Recess] printed stamps could be scanned in higher resolutions, and the increase in the image quality is sometimes impressive... now I' learning that ]Photo] printed stamps should only be scanned in lower resolutions... so I programmed the Scan with 4 different operations (settings) , according to the stamps I am scanning... if  I am working with [Recess] printed stamps the resolution used is 600ppp (or higher if i am scanning only parts of the stamp..) ; in [Typo] stamps I use 500ppp and in [litho] printed stamps , 400ppp... but in the case of [Photo] printed stamps, the resolution should be 300ppp... I have to apologize because some of the [Photo] stamps I show today were scanned with 400ppp , and the result was not good with some loss of image definition... this first series to be presented, was the last one to be classified , so it was scanned with 300ppp... let us now return to the technical data of the stamps... the series is Watermarked but the wmk is not visible in normal conditions and with no special instruments...the paper is of medium thickness and the Artists involved in the production of the stamp are unknown to me...it has perf 15 in all the 3 sub series...
[1st Group] 1951 "Budapest Buildings" (6) [Photo] Sc(962,...,967)
[2nd Group] 1952 "Budapest Buildings (2nd series)" (8) [Photo] Sc(1004,...,1009)
[3rd Group] 1953 "Budapest Buildings (3rd Series)] (12) [Photo] Sc(1048,1050,1051,1053,1055,1056,1056A,1056B,1056C)

  

This is a 1955 series about Winter sports and activities...the designs are very beautiful and are part of the work of two Artists : F. Gall and J. Vertell...
1955 "AIR MAIL : Winter sport Activities" (8) [Des (F. Gall)(J. Vertell)][Photo] Sc(C158,...,C162)

some stamps from a very famous Definitive series from 1963/1964... the main purpose is to represent transports and communications..the stamps are divided into two categories where the perforations are different.. the lower f values (here represented) are perf 11 and the higher ft values are 11.5x12 or 12x11.5 ... some of ft values are already in the collection ( in fact , some of the first stamps I have classified are from this series...).... these stamps were scanned with 400ppp , so you can find some problems with the definition, because the stamps are poorly printed... 
1963/1964 "Transports and communications" (22) [Des (S. Legrady)(F. Bokros)][Photo] Sc(1507,...,1514)

SOUTH AFRICA

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This is the 5th Definitive Series from South Africa, issued in 1988... The Art work is from Hein Botha, who has designed many more stamps for South Africa and neighboring Countries...The series is about Succulent Plants and was issued between 1988 and 1993... The stamps have Perf 14x14.5 and are [Litho] printed, but there are also some coil stamps who are [Photo] printed and Perf 14 HOR... I think that to correctly value these stamps, it is better to have a South African Catalog, because there is much more information in these catalogs than in the Sc,Mitchel SG or Yvert World catalogs...
1988/1993 "5th Definitive Series / Succulents" (19) [Des (Hein Botha)][Litho] Sc(735,737,738,739,740,741,742,743,745,746,748,751)

well, next weekend there are more stamps to show.. 

SeeYou

a Weak post

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First I want to say that in this post I will make some experiments with the new Scanner... the scans could not be the best, because I have to try different resolutions and first I need to understand the way of correctly working with this new device...

I have selected some stamps from Hungary ,Romania and Danzig...

HUNGARY

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I choose to present today some very famous designs from Hungary... some are normal definitive stamps and others are overprinted stamps...

These are stamps from the King Charles IV and Queen Zita  Series...the Queen's design is without doubts one of my favorite portraits..all the stamp, frames included , is very well accomplished.. the designs are work of  Imre Foldes (1881/1948) , an important  Graphic Designer that distinguished himself in the creation of Poster's and illustration of books...

These and other stamps I will present , are from a lot I bought some time ago and sometimes they present rust spots .. this is not a great problem for me , but it decrease the value of the stamps (not this one's , of course, because they don't value nothing..!)... the 20f stamp is missing...

1918 "King Charles IV and Queen Zita" (6) [Des (Imre Foldes)][Typo] Sc(127,128,130,131,132)

These are stamps from the first series where this famous design of Odon Tull appeared.. the series is complete and is commonly known as "Harvesting Wheat"..the design is repeated in future series until 1923 (the series was issued in 1916 , already after the Death of the Artist, in 1911..) This small series is different from the others because the numerals appear in white color...there are other series with numerals in the main color of the stamp, or in black..)
1916 "Harvesting Wheat" (2) [Des (Odon Tull)][Typo] Sc(106,107)

These are some of the most famous stamps from Hungary, with the beautiful design of the Parliament building...there are several series with this design , normal and overprinted... the design started to be issued in 1916 and the Country label was altered with the changes in the Political System...at first , in the 1916/1918 series we have something we can call the "Monarchic" label 'Magyar Kir. Posta'... then in the 1919/1920 the label was simply 'Magyar Posta' as we enter a very small  Republican period, because in the next issue of 1920/1924 we already have again the label 'Magyar Kir. Posta'...some changes in the small square where the currency label appears... we must  always have a look to the existence or not of double frame in the square, to the square's background color and to the color of the label itself.. this aspects could change with each new issue... I will not enter in further considerations about these and other aspects (watermarks, etc..) , that only were interesting in a post dedicated to this series only...
1916/1918 "Parliament Building" (19) [Des (Vilmos Brandmayer)][Typo] Sc(119,120,121,123,125,126)

Now I have some Overprinted stamps...

As in many other Countries, during the transition from a monarchic System to a Republican one , an Overprint  "Republic" is used to give time to the issue of new Republican stamps, and to allow the Postal Services to end the stock of  Monarchic stamps in circulation...these are two series with that Overprint ("Koztarsasag" ).. the first series is the one presented above, with King Charles  and Queen Zita, and the other , a beautiful War Charity Series ( shown in other previous post...) 1918 "Overprint 'Republic' on 'King Charles IV and Queen Zita'" (6) [Des (Imre Foldes)][Typo]  Sc(168,169,170,171,173)
1918 "War Charity" (3) [Des (Jeno Haranghy)(J. Diveky)][Typo] Sc(B58,...,B60)


DANZIG
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I will show some AIR MAIL stamps from Danzig, representative of the several series issued ...

stamps from the 2nd and 3rd Air Mail series... the first series (I don't present any stamp of this series..) doesn't have a particular design, it is assembled by previous stamps Surcharged and overprinted with Air motifs...the 2nd series has stamps with 2 of the different formats shown above... the Wmk is a also a key factor in the classification...(in this 2nd series the Wmk is known as 'Honeycomb' and is vertically oriented..).. the 3rd series presents us the 3 different formats and the wmk is similar ( not equal..) but horizontally oriented..other aspect I should highlight is that the small formats have always perforation 14 and the medium and large formats present a 13.5 perforation...
now the stamps shown above...1st Group] 1)2) two different shades of blue Green from the 2nd series Sc(C4,C4) ..3)4) two identical stamps from the 3rd series Sc(C14,C14)  2nd Group] 1)2) 3rd series Sc(C16,C17) 3rd Group] 1)2) 3rd series Sc(C18,C19)
1921/1922 "Airplane over Danzig" (6) [Des (Max Buchholz)][Typo]
1923 "Airplane over Danzig" (12) [Des (Max Buchholz)][Typo] 

Danzig stamps designed by Max Buchholz 

These are stamps from the next Air Mail series to be issued, in 1923..the 250000m  is missing in this 2 stamps series..
1923 "Post horn and Airplane" (2) [Typo] Sc(C23)

two stamps are missing in this 1924 series...the higher value of this series ( that is missing) is from a larger format... I don't have proofs that the last series and this one are also work of Max Buchholz , but  the general traces of his design at this time are here...two spare stamps are also presented, with some light differences in color...
1924 "Airplane over Danzig" (5) [Typo] Sc(C27,...,C29)

1935 "Airplane" (5) [Typo] Sc(C36,...,C39)

To finish this small part of the post dedicated to Danzig stamps, here it is a complete series of the Anti Cancer Campaign, with pictures of Medical Scientists... the Scientists represented are : 1) Gregor Mendel 2) Robert Koch 3) Wilhelm Konrad Runtgen

1939 "Anti Cancer Campaign" (3) [Photo] Sc(238,239,240)

ROMANIA

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stamps from a series honoring King Ferdinand... it is another one of the many series designed by Ludovic Bassarab , one of the Greatest Romanian stamp Designers... there is one value missing, this time the lowest ..sometimes it is hard to understand what is the reference point chosen by the catalogs to give the color attribute to a stamp... this is really a problem because two different catalogs give sometimes two different colors to the same stamp... the references could be the portrait backgrounds, the numeral backgrounds, the numeral itself, the frame lines, etc.. it is important to understand in each series what is the reference point  used by the catalog we are using... [ I think this should be a minor problem to the most part of you , but I work with many catalogs and the differences between them alerted me for it's existence...]
1926 "60th Birthday of King Ferdinand" (10) [Des (Ludovic Bassarab)][Photo (A. Bruckmann, Munich)] Sc(291,...,300)

1941 "Red Cross Fund" (5) [Photo] Sc(B164,...,B168)

OK..this is the end of the post... I am currently thinking in some changes in the frequency and size of the posts... perhaps in the following weeks some news will be available..

SeeYou

No answer

New Entries

I was thinking , in the beginning of the week , to present some Bavaria stamps.. But Wednesday I remembered this Hungarian series and so I started to think in a post  about this famous Numeral series ...There is much to say , but there is nothing new to say.. many people have studied this series profoundly , during years of research, with many more resources...collectors of this series have many items of each watermark, are always searching for wrong positions of Watermarks, there are many different shades and possible combinations of several factors at once...

Let us start with a brief comment about the time frame of this series...it first appeared in 1874 and is divided into several other sub series..

A) 1874/1876 Unwatermarked Series / Colored Numerals / many perforations

B) 1881 1st Watermarked Series / Colored Numerals / several perforations or combinations../ design background of light horizontal lines

C) 1888/1898 Numerals in Black or Red (ft values) / same Watermark / two perforations.. / vertical lines as background of all the stamp

D) 1898/1899 no ft values / Crown Watermark in Oval or Circular figure / two perforations../ vertical lines as background of all the stamp

now I will use, the most perfect stamp I have to show today.. it is a stamp in excellent conditions.. I will use it to talk about the general design of this series..

the design presents us the St. Stephen's Crown (Hungary Crown) over a mail envelope and Postal horn, surrounded by a laurel crown..Four Corners are presented and a frame of dots.. labels appears below the Central design... in this stamp we can see also the Vertical lines as the stamp Background...

The first picture show us the series with all the 5 values... of course we have to remember that in order to have the series in it's most complete form , we must have these 5 values for each one of the 5 perforations that are possible..I want to talk a little about colors.. when you are defining what is the color of the stamp or just trying to find the color you read in catalogs, have in mind both the color of the design and the lettering and numeral color...

There are two different varieties possible when we are talking about the 4 corners presented in the design (not the corners of the frame , but the one's that are designed immediately below the labels "Magyar Kir Posta" and on both sides of the crown.. In the 1st variety these corners appear well defined and sharp...in the 2nd , they are somehow blurred or even partially missing.. that's what happens with the 2k stamp (at the right) , where along with it's bad condition we find no corners or find them with difficulty...you can see also the 3k witch is in better conditions.. 

Fig. 3 is the photo of the backside of fig.4 .. Yes , it is a block of 10 from a Postage due stamp from 1881, with the same design...you can see clearly the Watermark in it's complete form , never visible in a single stamp(only in blocks of 4 or more stamps...) the Kr surrounded by Oval figure watermark has two varieties..the 2nd , presented from 1887 , has lightly bigger labels (We are talking about differences between 13mm and 15mm..).. As I said before all this watermarks could appear in different positions, and for the Experts in Hungarian stamps, there are different values of most of them..

1) 1881/1890 "Numerals" (5) [Des (Janos L. L'Hiver)][Engr (P. Haske)][Recess] Sc(18,18,19,20,21,21a,21a,22a)

4) 1881 "Postage due Numeral stamp" (1) [Des (Janos L. L'Hiver)][Recess] Sc(P4)

I will start this small talk about the 1st "Black Numeral" series, by talking about the 1k stamp.. there are two varieties of this stamp.. one where the numeral is printed in a separate operation, being first printed the designed and them the numeral.. in this case the numeral use to be darker than the overall black used in the stamp... in the 2nd, the numeral is included in the plate , and in this case the central part of the envelope is removed to create a small space in either one of the sides of the numeral...

to continue with the analysis I will say that in the first 3 values of the series, there are no vertical lines in the stamp background, as you can see in this 1k stamp... 

in this 24k stamp , like in many others, you can see these vertical lines , outside the frame..

well now we are in presence of a 3 stage Printing operation:

1) [Litho] the Vertical lines in all the stamp

2) [Typo] all the design

3) [Typo] Numeral

A curious point in this series, is again related to the colors..in values superior to 5k the stamps are presented as being bi colored.. in a first glance we only see the general color of the stamp.. later we understand that the other color is the color of the vertical lined background of the stamp.this fact is clearly seen in this magnificent 24k stamp, and the color is "Purple and Red", being the overall color Purple and the color of the vertical lines Red.. this is difficult to see in most part of the stamps...
This series is also watermarked with a large Kr in oval , as I said before..
I present many shades of some values because i think they all have differences..
1888/1898 Numerals" (14) [Des (Janos L. L'Hiver)][Litho / Typo] Sc(22Ac,25,27a,28,29,29,29,30,31,31,31,31,31,32,33,34) [the 2nd and 3rd stamps were misplaced in this series... sorry..]

This is the 3rd series of "Numerals", with a different Watermark.. This watermark presents us the Crown of St. Stephen , at the center of a Oval or circular figure... The image at the left presents us part of the Crown in Oval figure...this watermark is only visible in it's totality in a block of 4 stamps...This series is subdivided in four series Sub Series..
1) Perf 12 x 11.5 and Crown in Oval figure
2) Perf 11.5 and Crown in Oval figure
3) Perf 12 x 11.5 and Crown in circular figure
4) Perf 11.5 and Crown in Circular figure..
stamps with  Perf 11.5 are much more valuable.. Seems that I was lucky in this lot , because I have some of these stamps... The real problem with this series is to identify the watermark in the space of one stamp.. I think it is a little strange that any part of the design has been altered also.. there should be a clue in the design to help us in this moment... but the truth is "I cannot find it.." .. so I cannot leave the Scott codes , because i don't know what is the watermark of each stamp.. oval or circular..?? strange , isn't it?? I need to buy a big lot of these stamps , just to have material to study... perhaps then I'll reach to a conclusion... perhaps some Hungarian friend , could share some light into this "Dark" moment..!!.. An Hungarian Catalog, please !!...

Before I leave, I must say that there is a difference in some stamps.. even with the presence of those vertical lines that forms the background of the stamp ( not of the design..) , some stamps continues to , at first sight, present a design with horizontal ligned background , and others clearly a squared background ( a net of perpendicular lines...) ; you can see this difference watching the 8k and 15k stamps.. could this be an important difference...?? I don't know..

Seeyou

[ I think, now that I read the post again, that wrong interpretations of my words could happen... when I say that the difference in the size of the labels Kr (in the watermark) is something between 13mm and 15mm , I want to say that is about 2mm...!! Sorry, I know , Bad English, but the idea was there...] Updated 10/03/2015 02:15