Portugal [8th Post], Angola [6th Post] Cape Verde [3rd Post]

New Entries

Lately I have spent many time with a part of my collection that has became increasingly important..the first stamps my father left me , were from the Portuguese Colonies, but with time I became deeply involved with stamps from all over the world, learning many things from many different Philatelies...now I am back to my roots and this part of my stamp collection had a great boost with the small collection I bought last October, I think... It had stamps from all over the world but with a special emphasis in the Portugal and colonies Philately... today I have some new entries that came from that collection..let us start with Portugal..

These are the stamps from the 1st Independence Series... there are 3 of these series that are mainly focused in the vast History of the Country..it is perhaps one of the group of series with more representations of fierce battles taken place somewhere between the XII and the XVIII centuries..[ if You are a fan of War stamps,You must have these.!.. Libyan stamps (there are many of them..) from the end of the 70's and 80's are also very good in this particular thematic and I think there was a annual series about famous Libyan Battles.. Great stamps...!]...

the stamps were engraved by two British Artists, George Harrison and Norman Broad and the printing was work of Thomas De La rue , Co, London... the AFINSA catalog tell us that only the frames are originals of this series ,while the vignettes were not designed with the purpose of being used in these stamps...in the end , we have here a nice series with good design and engraving details...

1926 "Independence (1st Series)" (21) [Des (Frames (Eduardo Avelino Ramos de Sousa)][Engr (George Harrison)(Norman Broad)][Recess (Thomas De La Rue Co., London)] Sc(377,...,397)

Here is the 2nd series, now a smaller one , with just 15 stamps...The work of De la Rue is very good with the engraving work at charge of Harrison and Broad again...The design of the stamps was work of Alberto de Sousa , Roque Gameiro and Alfredo Morais.. Sousa was a Monster of Portuguese Stamp Designing with hundreds of stamps from Portugal and Colonies... Roque Gameiro, one of the Greatest Portuguese Illustrators and Painters and Alfredo Morais an important Illustrator...
This time the stamps show us the Guimarães Castle, the Knight in Battle is Gonçalo Mendes da Maia (O Lidador) , the lady with a wood stick is the Aljubarrota Baker Lady, the man with the Law Book is Dr. João das Regras and the man in the Yellow portrait is Dr. João Pinto Ribeiro...the battle also represented is the Battle of Montijo...
1927 "Independence (2nd Series)" (15) [Des (Alberto Sousa 2c)(Alfredo Roque Gameiro 3c,32c)(Alfredo Morais 5c,40,4$50)][Engr (George Harrison)(Norman Broad)][Recess (Thomas De La Rue, London)] Sc(422,...,436)

Starting now with the Angola'n stamps,we stumbled into one of those series that repeated itself for every single one of the colonies....it is the Marquis de Pombal Series...

These are Postal Tax due stamps, and we will find here again the work of foreign Artists... The design was from Hugo Fleury , an employee of  Waterlow and Sons...The engraving was at charge of J.A.C. Harrison (1st and 2nd stamps) and G. Fairweather (3rd stamp) and the Printing was made by Waterlow...


Angola 1925 "Marquis de Pombal / Tax due stamps" (3) [Des (Hugo Fleury)][Engr (JAC Harrison)][G. Fairweather)][Recess (Waterlow and Sons)] Sc(RAJ1,...,RAJ3)

This is a series from 1938 and it is about the President's visit to Angola, but the design of the stamp itself represent something we, Portuguese call "Padrão" , that is a marble or Stone Column with the Cross in the top and Portugal's Coat of Arms just below... these signs were left behind whenever the ships arrive to a new land,just to mark the presence of Portuguese Navigators...it is a beautiful stamp ,this time Designed , engraved and printed by Bradbury Wilkinson....

Angola 1938 "1st visit of Portugal's President to the Colonies" (3) [Recess (Bradbury Wilkinson)] Sc(292,293,294)

I had already almost all the 10 stamps of this AIR series but some years have passed without the missing 8$50 and 12$50 stamps appear in my World...recently I the entire series ,just to have those two stamps... it is a very beautiful series, now clearly [Litho] printed,like almost all of the Portuguese Colonies stamps of the 50's 60's and 70's....

Angola 1965 "AIR MAIL" (10) [Litho (Casa da Moeda)] Sc(C26,...,C35)

Now I have another AIR MAIL series, this time from Cape Verde... it is also another of those common designs repeated in the colonies...

A series from 1938 where we return to the foreign British influence in the printing and engravings... The illustrations are from Arnaldo Ressano Garcia, a Career Military that when had the time , published many illustrations and caricatures in several Magazines ... it is a beautiful design with printing of Bradbury Wilkinson...
Cape Verde 1938 "AIR MAIL / Portuguese Colonial Empire" (9) (Des (Arnaldo Ressano Garcia)][Recess (Bradbury Wilkinson)] Sc(C1,...,C9)

Another of those series where just 2 or 3 stamps were missing.. well,they appeared and finally it is a new entry to the collection...a fact we must have in consideration is that the printing of these stamps is not the best ,because there are several problems with the correct position of the colors that often appear misplaced in the design...
A interesting thing I have to say is that in the group of stamps that my father left me , there were 2 envelopes full of stamps of the $50 and 2$50 values... I never understand the real reason of this fact and I don't find anything special in the catalogs,so I remain in total ignorance about the real intentions of this strange stock of stamps...maybe one day I will find something interesting... 
Cape Verde 1968 "Products of Cape Verde" (10) [Des (José de Moura)][Litho] Sc(345,...,354)

Well, we reached the end of this small post... hope You like it..!

Goodbye

SeeYou

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

New Entries

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

Portugal [ 6th Post ]

New Entries

Today I will focus in the last years of XIX Century, with some Portuguese stamps from the 3 D. Carlos I series and from other series from 1898 ...

It is no secret that the so called D. Carlos I Mouchon series of 1895 is one of my favorites , perhaps one of the best portrait stamps ever produced (always, in my opinion...)... it is curious to know that the incursion of Eugene Mouchon into Portuguese Philately is not restricted to this series alone,but started some years before,with the design of the portrait in  the last original King D. Luis series of 1884...when we are talking of Mouchon and his work,we should know that the 1890's was the period where his work reached real excellency with some very,very good and very famous works..I have talked a lot about this period, trying to find more information about that special "stone" background he used in this period... well,unfortunately I don't have more data to offer you,so I will leave it to future posts...

Let us start with some stamps of the first King D. Carlos I series of 1892/1893...

About this series , we have to know that it was issued with various papers and perforations... I will not enter into these world of detailed specifications (although ,I have made my homework ,during the classification...!) , using in this post the more general approach of Scott world catalog .... we need also to know that this series was reprinted in 1900 (the 3 higher values of 150r, 200r and 300r) and 1905 (all the others)...in this softer view of the series, I have just one value missing : the 150r...

All these stamps are new entries except the first 3 values (5r,10r and 15r)..

1892/1893 "King D. Carlos I" (12) [Des (Vignette Manuel Diogo Neto)(Frame José Sergio De Carvalho e Silva)][Typo] Sc(67,67,68,69b,70,71a,71a,71a,72,73,73,74a,75,75,77,78)

We have now the "Mouchon" Series, because of the designing and engraving work of the French Engraver...the series is completed wit all the values presented, but we must not forget that it was replicated in all the Ultramarine Provinces and in the Atlantic Islands of Azores and Madeira...to have all of them in his completed form is a great task,but it is in my future plans...it is a great stamp,beautifully finished in all it's details...
You can easily see that shades are in the Main "Menu" ,with lots of them for each value... catalogs only talk about one or two main colors for each value,but between them there are all the other shades possible...to talk about colors is a big problem for me, and I think that i'm not the only one with this difficulty...with this series there are no problems , but for example in the US 1922 series there are some varieties of the 2 cents Washington  that depend only of the color ( sometimes a minimal change...) ... This is a Big Problem.. What is and what Isn't !?? Who say's so?? how to classify a stamp if we are not sure of the colors ..??  I think that someone should clear this foggy situation we have , with catalogs saying different things about the color of stamps...but i think this is a war I already lost..nobody cares.!!..

 1895 "King D.Carlos I" (14) [Des/Engr (Eugene Mouchon)][Typo] Sc(110,110,111,111,111,112,112,113,115,115,116,116,116,116,118,121,121,123,124,124,127,129,129,129,130,130,131)

These are stamps of the "New Values and Colors" series of 1898...there are two values missing (Green 15r and the slate on pink 180r) ,but the point I want to focus now are again the colors...this time i have serious doubts about my 50r stamps... catalogs tell us that it is a new color on an old value,and the color is the ultramarine blue... well,the first two stamps I present are in my opinion variants of Ultramarine blue ,but an Dull Ultramarine blue...the other is I think clearly an ultramarine blue... the problem is that in the previous series the 50r was blue or grayish blue... must I classify them as normal grayish blue stamps from the 1895 series??? it is a doubt that I cannot dissipate without asking someone.. (If you want,please comment and leave your opinion..)...

these two series of King D. Carlos are known to be relatively pacific if we are talking about major errors, defects,varieties, etc...
However ,I always like to take a good look to all the scans I have to take ,and I found something out of the ordinary in the first 75r stamp I present in the image above...it is definitely a plate flaw...I think that it could not be a printing error or something like that,but had to do with the plate itself...strange..!!! one more of these useless strange things that I'm always finding...!...


1898/1905 "King D. Carlos I / New Values and Colors" (8) [Des/Engr (Eugene Mouchon)][Typo] Sc(117,117,117,117,117,119,119,119,120,120,122,122,125,126)

These are stamps from the series commemorating the discovery of the Maritime Way to India.. it is a beautiful series, designed by several Portuguese Artists and with a good [Recess] printing by Waterlow and Sons Limited, London...after a first look to these stamps,, the 10r and 25r called my attention,because they have poor illustrations, if we compared it with the others...it is almost as if it they don't belong here.. even the engravings look bad , due for sure to the excessive simplicity of the designs...

Some of the stamps are in bad shape, with problems in the perforations and occasional rust spots....
these designs were adopted to the Ultramarine Provinces and repeated several times with different country labels or simply overprints...

1898 "Discovery of the Maritime Way to India" (8) [Des (Roque Gameiro 2.5r)(Manuel Pedro De Faria Luna 5r)(Silvestre Correia Belém 10r)(João Vaz 25r,75r,150r)(José Julio Gonçalves Coelho 50r)(João Ribeiro Cristino da Silva 100r)][Recess (Waterlow and Sons Limited London)] Sc(147,...,154)

well,these were some of the Portuguese new entries ,but before ending the post I like to show you a very interesting book I bought sometime ago...

It is a small book written by the Philatelist A.H. Oliveira Marques in 1958, and it is called "Essays and Proofs of Portuguese stamps"...it is a book dedicated to those who collect these type of items,but for someone like me,it gives a perspective of all that is left behind the production of a stamp... the movements,the people involved, the reason behind this or that stamp, all the process,from the decision makers to the the printing...the book only looks over the stamps of the Monarchy, from the Queen D. Maria stamps to King D. Manuel II...interesting book...
Globalization was not a decisive idea in  those days so , and unfortunately , the book is written only in Portuguese...


another small post is ending, now that 3 years have passed since I've began this Blog...the format of the Blog and it's posts are constantly changing but the Main idea remains... to see and talk about stamps that I own and are new to the collection...
I hope you like the blog and if that is the case, 

SeeYou