Romania Stamps [8th Post]

New Entries

In the end of my last post,I talked about Meddle East stamps to be part of this new post,, but with time I changed my mind... Initially I was thinking in Saudi Arabia stamps but some last minute doubts about  the presence or not of a wmk, led me to start with the classification of some more stamps from Romania ..I have a lot of Romanian stamps to choose from , so I had to focus in a well defined period of time... I then decided to show some series from 1940/1943..it is a period where King Michael I had started his 2nd reign (??!!..) that lasted for a short period of 7 years (1940/1947)  and revealed itself as a group of difficult days for Romania... 

Well,to be more precise I will start with a new arrival from the 1906 Jubilee Exhibition Series... it is a beautiful series with design and illustrations by C. Stengel... the stamps are [Typo] printed but I don't know who made the engraving work... it is a piece of information I do not have...I've got already the 40b and 50b stamps in the collection but they were never shown in the blog...

The first stamp I have to show ,from the 1940/43 period , is a commemorative of the foundation of the Iron Guard in 1927 by Corneliu Codreanu , represented in the vignette...
I could not find the other 3 stamps in my catalogs (perhaps I missed them, I don't know...[we should also notice that the label 'Romania Post' is not present in these 3 stamps...] ) but the subject is the same , with the logo of the movement and it's leader again well represented... 
1940 "13th Anniv of the Founding of the Iron Guard" (1) [Photo] Sc(B145)

The next series I have to show, commemorates the Annexation of  Transdniestria  .. after reading the wikipedia article about this region,You will see that claims and disputes over this land are very old, with the interest of several different Regional players...

The stamps issued in this period were all [Photo] printed,and to make things worst,, the printing was not one of the best...after knowing this small detail we can understand the reason why we don't know the name of the Artist that designed the stamps...in fact the name is printed at the bottom left of the stamps but the low quality of the printing don't allow us to understand it...even in the next large series , the same phenomenon happens...

1941 "Annexation of Transdniestria" (3) [Photo] Sc(517,...,519)

I am showing all these 25 stamps as part of the same series but the catalogs talk about two different series..in fact, both of them commemorate the restoration of Territories once part of Romania...These territories or provinces are Bessarabia and Bukovina.. these names are presented at the bottom center of each stamp... So, we have stamps with the label Basarabia and others with the label Bucovina... another interesting fact is that there are no repeated values, so we can merge the two series ,classifying the stamps by their increasing ' face value' ...

At the top center of each stamp,there is a a label with the name of the fortress or castle displayed in the vignette itself... these territories were retaken by Romania, during WWII 'Operation Barbarossa', where the country acted as a German Ally... 

I should say that I like much more the Bucovina stamps surely due to the Architectural style of the fortresses, because the Artist is the same (again unknown ,but present in the bottom left of the stamps.. I could not discover his or her name/[Ioan Baltag (???)])

1941 "Restoration of Bessarabia and Bukovina to Romanian control" (25) [Photo] Sc(520,...,535)(B179,...,B187)

Here we have two overprinted series of the original 1941 issue commemorating the 50th Anniv of the Carol I Foundation for Science and Art Development...these overprints are somehow related with the 25 stamps presented above... they remind us the occupation of Cernauti (Bukovina) and Chisinau (Bessarabia)  in 5 of July 1941 and 16 July 1941 respectively...

1941 "Occupation of Cernauti" (5) [Photo] Sc(B154,...,B158)

1941 "Occupation of Chisinau" (5) [Photo] Sc(B159,...,B163)

These are 3 stamps from a larger series of 8 values commemorating the Centenary of the National Artillery...we have again very poorly printed stamps, with many of the design details lost....the vignettes show us War scenes from Famous Battles of Romanian Artillery and they are identified each one by a label at the top left .

1943 "National Artillery Centenary" (8) [Photo] Sc(B224,...,B231)

I think we've reached the end of this post,but a new one will appear soon...

SeeYou

Distraction

New Entries

I decided last week to do a post about the 1893/1908 series of King Carol I of Romania... I have some stamps to show, some of them new entries, but the most part of them are just new color shades...I have already presented some stamps from this group of series, so I will not enter in great details...

before starting with our main main dish , and because we are still talking of the Classical Period, I will show 7 stamps from the 1890/1894 series...

When we see stamps from this series and want to classify them, we must know:

A) there were 3 issues of the series : 1st in 1890 with Watermark[ The watermark in use is a large coat of Arms (1) ]  , the 2nd in 1891 without watermark..

B) in 1894 there was a 3rd issue with a PR(2)  Watermark instead of  the Coat of Arms (1)

C) for each one of these issues, we could have Perf 11.5, 13.5 or Mixed

D) two papers were used in the printings , differing in the Thickness and opacity ...

In this case the 10b,15b and 25b are new to the collection, but the others are from different color shades or intensities...the stamps are grouped by facial value , but they could be from any of the 3 issues (the lower Sc codes are from the 1st and the higher from the 3rd[ no stamps from this 3rd series..])... The Scott Catalog has one code for 3 possible stamps (with different perforations..)

1890/1891 "King Carol I" [Typo (Government Printing Works, Bucharest)] Sc(101,102a,96,97,105,98,106)

These are stamps from King Carol I series from 1893/1908...In this series there are 6 main designs differing mainly in the frames , ornaments , labels and numerals.. the King's portrait remains the same in all the designs..There are 5 distinct issues of this series... the first in 1893/1898, the 2nd in 1899, the 3rd and 4th in 1900 and the 5th in 1908.. 

1st Issue] with Wmk PR (2)(3) 2nd Issue] New colors : wmk PR (3) 3rd Issue] wmk with large Coat of Arms (25 stamps) : rose tinted paper in the back of the stamps 4th Issue] Without Watermark : rose tinted paper in the back of the stamps 5th Issue] No Watermark : White paper.

All the stamps presented above have wmk PR (2)(3)... again we have 3 possible perforations, 11.5,13.5 and mixed...

the first group of stamps has perf 11.5 and the rest has perf 13.5 ( no mixed perforations, this time..)..I like to highlight the two 3b stamps ,  [Red Brown and chocolate Brown][they share the same Sc code but  SG has one code for each] and the 10b of the 3rd group... if you look carefully to the stamp You will see some green ink dots where they shouldn't be...[at the middle of the right frame..] .. it is no novelty that these stamps use to have many varieties , and in the stamps I present I could focus on other of these 'strange' events, but I think this one is so clear that I must show it...the black 15b is from the 2nd issue ...

"King Carol I" Sc(119,119,122,117,117,120,120,121,124,125,126,126,131)

These are all stamps presenting no watermark... during the classification, I was always having the thought that something was missing me, because the only series with no watermark were from 1900 and 1901 , but with one small detail that continued to worry me... the stamps from that series were printed in the back with a paper rose tinted  (there was another series in 1900, with watermark and printed with this same paper...) ... well, some of these are white paper stamps..! I continued to search the catalogs and finally found in 1908 an issue with white paper... so , 3( the 2nd group)  of these 8 stamps are from this 1908 series and the others from the 1901/1903 series...

"King Carol I"  Sc(139,140,141,143,145,??,225,226) [ The Carmine Rose 10b doesn't appear in the Sc catalog , but in the SG it has the code 535)

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After this brief passage through the classics,I will now show two other series from more recent days...

From 1942,the stamps represent Titu Maiorescu and they belong to a War Fund..

1942 "Prisioners of War Relief Fund" (3) [Photo] Sc(B188,...,B190)

Sorry,but this time I took a pictures of the complete series,with the stamps all together,but the highest values should be below the others...these two last series are [Photo] printed but they present a relatively good level of detail ,so I took scans with 400ppp instead of the usual 300ppp for this type of stamps...

1941 "Carol I Endowment Fund" (5) [Photo] Sc(B149,...,B153)

AS You easily noticed , this was a post with less details than the posts I use to make when dealing with these large definitive series...I have talked a little about them in other previous posts ,so this was just an excuse to classify some more ...I have yet a large quantity of Romanian stamps from the 30's and 40's so in the future many more will be shown...

If you are a regular viewer of the Blog,You noticed that  since Christmas I only made one post, and I think I own You all an explanation... I've been somehow distracted and with lack of concentration , mostly due to my new "Photoshop" that I recently bought.. it is keeping me away from the stamps, but I'm sure I will return to my standard levels...

SeeYou

  

a Weak post

New Entries

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

Fairy Tale or Nightmare??

New Entries

Last night I was ending the classification of the stamps for this post when i come about a group of 12 King Ferdinand I 1920/1927 stamps..all the stamps from this post are from the last lot i bought sometime ago.. a very good and large lot, with many more to present...the problem is I remembered that I have some other stamps of this large group of series to classify.. and so, I begin searching for them and I found one entire Album page filled with stamps of these series...The idea of making a post about King Ferdinand's Series immediately cross my mind , so I had to replace those 12 stamps in today's post... No time , I had no time to do that...so today I have a small post and a new one in the future ,about King Ferdinand, is promised , ..

 two stamps representing King Carol I... they are from the series of 1885/1889.. this series was issued with 3 different perforations (11.5,13.5 or combinations of these two...) ,the possibility of having or not  a Beautiful coat of Arms as Watermark ( I must say that the Watermarked series, has also the 3 different perforations...)and 3 different papers (tinted paper, white paper, pale yellow paper) ... the stamp to the [Left] , with a very peculiar color (SG tell us that 3 shades are possible, Pale Red Brown, Red Brown , Red Brown on Buff) has a 11.5 perf ,no Wmk and white paper ...[Right] this stamp has 13.5 perf and Pale yellow paper...this time the catalog present 6 different shades (pale blue, ultramarine blue, blue, Deep blue on Yellow, pale blue on Yellow  and indigo blue on Yellow..) .. as you know colors are for me a very difficult subject, but i think this is the Indigo blue on Yellow (I am not certain of the presence of the Watermark.. I can not see it without instruments or Watermark detectors.. I will leave this stamp open for future appreciation..)
1885/1889 "King Carol I" (19) [Typo (Government Printing works, Bucharest)] Sc(78,93?)

small group of King Carol i stamps..only the 40b is a new entry to the collection, and the others are just  to add originals already presented.. something i noticed when i was taking the scans, is that in the 10b stamp there seems to be a light displacement of the Center image of the king , downward into the rest of the vignette...I saw the other 10b stamp I have already and the same thing happens, so perhaps this is a normal thing and not a "case of study".. but  when i saw the 4 1b stamps I have, I detected that in one of them this event also occurs and i became a little more confused... 

1906 "25th Anniversary of the Kingdom" (10) [Des (Ludovi Bassarab)][Recess (Bradbury Wilkinson & Co.)] Sc(189,186,192)

A very beautiful Fiscal stamp, but I know nothing about it... after a first look i can say it is a [Recess] printed stamp, with the picture of king Carol I in the end of his reign and that the stamp was overprinted with "Timbru de Ajutor"(Help Stamps) ...the last two facts together are building a doubt in my mind...We know that king Carol I reign begins in 1881 and end's in 1914... we also know that it was usual, not  only in Romania, to have the picture of the king in the stamp.. (there could be more than one king in the stamp, but the one that is actually reigning must be there in the picture) so we can conclude that Carol I was still the king of Romania... if we look to the catalogs and to the overprint "Timbru de Ajutor" we can see that the first time it was used was over  the stamps of the King Carol I 1908 series in 1915... the king's picture in this stamp is posterior to the one of 1908 and similar to the picture of King Carol I in 1913 ("Acquisition of Southern Dobrudja" 1913 series, 15b stamp).. so the fiscal stamp should be from 1913, 1914 , later overprinted with "Timbru de Ajutor" from 1915 on ... [ The Universe is a strange thing , always surprising us , and never, never unveiling what is ahead of us... I was writing this when i though that would be better to make a last Net search about "Timbru De ajutor" .. and there it was .. the overprint is from 1916 over a Revenue stamp of 1911... I could delete all that I have written before, but i will  let it stay , because it was my only thought current at the time ] ...OK.. it is a Beautiful stamp!!

All the stamps I will present until the end of the post are from 1940/1941... first we need to center our attention in the social Background of that time and mainly in the characteristic individuality of King Carol II ... As a Prince , Carol II had a life full of Romantic affairs and scandals.. as a result of one of them , Carol II abdicated to his right's to the Romania Throne for his son Michael I in 1925... Carol II returned to the Country in 1930 , overtaking the Power of his son Michel I (Michael I never again saw his father or talked with him..)... In the next ten years his personality and image was massively imposed to the kingdom and in 1938 the "Sentinels of the Motherland" was created as a Dictatorial Youth Movement (like others in Germany,and Portugal for example..) , and the king  has taken Full Dictatorial power over the country...in terms of Philately , we can say that many series were issued with the image of the King, a Fund for his Youth was created and his accession to the Crown was commemorated with new stamps every year...so , it is not surprising that from these days many Carol II series were born and some of them became marks of Romania Philately... 

A series with Carol II wearing the Air force Uniform...for me it is a good series , with good overall aspect, but I continue to say that there is nothing better than an Engraved stamp... this [Photo] printed stamps always seem to me poor than they could be...another thing I want to highlight is that when you use a scanner, do not use resolutions above 400ppp with these [Photo] printed stamps, because of their lack of  detail and general blurriness  .. the final result can be very bad...with [Recess] printed stamps you can use very high resolutions...This is the first of 3 series commemorating the 10th anniversary of the kings Accession...

1940 "10th Anniversary of Carol's II Accession to the Thrown/ Aviation Fund" (8) [Photo] Sc(B119,...,B126)

In this series Carol II appear as a man , as the ruler of the Romanian Army and as Military.. it is a wonderful thing for us collectors, to read someone's biography and to understand what was happening in that person's mind .. it is easy to see that this was a dictatorial regime mostly publicized with an emphases in the image, like in other of  such regime's (Hitler and Franco  , for example , used also the image in a powerful way, not only his own image but also all the symbols of the Ideology and the Regime-in Hitler's case-...) .. Strangely, we find in the same time frame other dictators who don't used their own image as a weapon of mass publicity..Salazar and Mussolini were two good examples of this fact.. 

1940 "10th Anniversary of Carol's II Accession to the Thrown" (6) [Photo] Sc(B113,...,B118)

This is the third 1940 series commemorating the accession to the throne , and this time it was a series dedicated to the new youth movement 'Straja Tarii' Fund..the creation of these movements with high military Ideology in it's source it is common to almost all XX Century Dictatorial regime's .. in the Portuguese example it was accompanied by though and strict rules of Education with emphasis's in the "God, Nation, Family" Ideology...

1940 "10th Anniversary of Carol's II Accession to the Thrown (Straja Tarii Fund)" (8) [Photo] Sc(B127,...,B134)

In 1940 Carol II was overthrown by the Pró German and Anti Bolshevist Government of  Prime minister Ion Antonescu who returned the ruling Power to Michael I, who again became King in September 1940..but those were difficult times to King Michael I who act only as the Official Power , but the Power was effectively in the Hands of the Prime Minister...the Constitution was suspended and the Parliament was dissolved..

This series of stamps show us quite clearly this Difficult times with both the Nazi and Anti Bolshevist Ideologies well present... 

It is interesting to see that some Kings and Queens of the XX Century lived almost  "Fairy tale" life's while others do not succeed with their "Nightmare" Life's ..  The Universe is indeed a Strange thing.!..

1941 "Anti-Bolshevik Crusade" (4) [Photo] Sc(B170,...,B173)

well, it's the end of this small post with many words...

SeeYou

[Update] All the stamps from 1940 and 1941 that i have presented show a small sign on the DownRifght Corner..
I leave here two images of this small sign.. Could be the sign of "Fabrica de Timbre" ... I don't know..

Regards

Updated 22/06/2015 19:13