Japan [7th Post] China [9th Post]

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Even now,after many years acting like a avid buyer of stamps, I think that some times we get much more than we have payed or more than we were expecting... it is that stamp in excellent condition, that marvelous postmark, a very well centered stamp , a desired stamp we were looking for many time, or even a rarity..(Yes , it is possible,...) 

A month ago I bought a lot of Iranian stamps, very detailed with a special focus at the early days and at the 60's and 70's...in the last pages of that stock album,there were some Japanese stamps.. at the beginning I didn't pay much attention to them but here I am today showing them ,proud of my stamps... Yes , they are MNH stamps from Japan and I think in this case (and I didn't had realized it..) this detail makes all the difference... Mint stamps from Japan are even more beautiful than the others I'm used to...well , here are some of them from the 70's , a very beautiful group of stamps...

I will start now with something that for sure will be very positive for the thousands of Boat stamp Collectors...Yes, there are many,many stamps dedicated to this thematic,but these are not very easy to get... I personally,never had seen them in my life.. (I wish to say that I'm not a thematic collector.. it is necessary to understand that one of these collectors directs all his/her efforts to know and find these stamps... it is very different..! ).. 

Well, I'm showing them individually for better appreciation... As you can see this is a Engraved series.. the stamps were designed and engraved by a group of very skilled Artists...it is not the first time I talk about the beautiful engravings and printings of Japanese stamps, for National issues or just working for foreign countries (like those beautiful stamps of Philippines..) .. it is without doubts a very good group of stamps...they were issued in 1975/1976, with the curiosity of being 6 series of two stamps each...I have here just stamps from 1976 (3rd, 4th,5th and 6th series..).. another curiosity ,just for the thematic collectors,again, is that these 6 series followed another 5 series of two stamps each (from 1974/1975) , this time dedicated to trains... I don't have those , but I just want here to help Your search giving You a time and a space to look out...these are all prime quality stamps..!
1976 "Japanese Ships (3rd Series)" (2) [Des (R. Murayama)(Y.Sunagawa)][Engr (T. Kesano)(S. Nakada)][Recess] Sc(1223,1224)
1976 "Japanese Ships (4th Series)" (2) [Des (Y.Sagawa)(G. Yamataka)][Engr (S. Okamura)(K. Oshikiri)][Recess] Sc(1225,1226)
1976 "Japanese Ships (5th Series)" (2) [Des (G. Yamataka)(G. Yamataka)][Engr (K. Oshikiri)(S.Okamura)][Recess] Sc(1227,1228)
1976 "Japanese Ships (6th Series)" (2) [Des (K. Hishinuma)(S. Watanabe)][Engr (S.Nakada)(S.Yajima)][Recess] Sc(1229,1230)

Now ,some beautiful individual series of Nature stamps...

each one of these stamps is considered to be ,,for catalog purposes, a series...and We are talking of Nature Conservation series I to XX,starting in 1974 and ending in 1978...beautiful stamps,,! watch specially the bird stamp...what a level of detail ! it has some particularities that makes the engraving identical to that beautiful elephant series from Laos ,work of Jean Pheulpin..very detailed, very soft, very beautiful engraving..!!

1976 "Nature Conservation (8th Series)" (1) [Des ((Y.Higashitsunoi)][Recess] Sc(1202)
1976 "Nature Conservation (9th Series)" (1) [Des ((H. Otsuka)][Recess][Photo] Sc(1203)
1976 "Nature conservation (10th Series)" (1) [Des (W. Emori)][Recess][Photo] Sc(1261)
1976 "Nature Conservation (11th Series)" (1) [Des (H. Otsuka)][Recess][Photo] Sc(1262)
1976 "Nature Conservation (12th Series)" (1) [Des ((T. Yamanouchi)][Recess][Photo] Sc(1263)

This is a strange two stamp series... the first stamp, is a pretty normal Japanese stamp , showing us a Sacred Temple somewhere in Japan... it is a [Photo] stamp , another fact that increases it's normality... at the right , we have the 2nd stamp, a fantastic stamp of the Deva King located in the Todai Temple... the engraving work is Great and the final result is exceptional...Great Stamp!!!
1976 "National Treasures (1st Series)" (2) [Des (S, Watanabe)][Photo 50y][Recess 100y] Sc(1272,1273)

And now just to end this post, a brief look to other MNH stamps I like to enter now in the collection...I already have some of them but as used stamps... now I'm adding them in MNH form...they are very Famous stamps from CHINA.....

These are stamps from the Famous series "Martyrs of the Revolution"... the Original series was issued between 1932 and 1934, with the portraits of important participants in the Chinese Revolution..a simple look to the values and colors and to a Chinese catalog, could tell us that many of these stamps shown are not from the original series..., in fact, none of them is..! if they are not from the first and original issue of this series , there must be at least another issue... Yes, there were two more issues of 19 stamps each in 1940/1941 with  more values and colors, with and without the presence of Wmk... I must say that the original 1932 series is Unwmk. If we have doubts about a stamp,if it belongs to the 1932 or 1940 issues, we must first take not that : 

There is a secret mark that identifies the correct issue date of the stamp...let us look to the first letter of the label immediately below the portrait, and those stamps who presents a letter like a) are from 1940/1941 and those of type b) are from the original 1932 Issue (all of the stamps I present here today are type B stamps,so I had to take a small scan from an old SG catalog....

After make this distinction and if the stamp is a type B, we must now find or not the Wmk, to complete the classification.. now a brief look to the perforations [there could be some differences (12, 12.5 or 13)] and we are done with it..! if the stamp is a type A, than it is unwmk and perforation 14...

I have many more stamps from this period to present , but I think it is better to stop here and now with this small post, richly stuffed with beautiful stamps...

Ok..Next time Iran and Turkey stamps...

SeeYou

An Extra Line?!!

New Entries

I was preparing a new post for My "ArtInStamps" blog about an Italian Designer and Engraver who had a major role in Japan's Philately, when I first thought of doing this post about some of the Japanese classic stamps... I will talk of the "Cherry Blossom" series , of  the "Koban" Series and of the very famous "Chrysanthemum Series" ... in the end , there will be some more recent stamps from the 90's ....

 The first 3 stamps are from the 2nd main series of Japan--- the Cherry Blossom Series----. We can easily identify it by the cherry flowers present in each of the 4 corners of the stamp... the series was first emitted in 1872 with two issues in native paper, differing in the thickness of the paper and in the perforations...in these early issues of Japan , until the Tazawa series there was no use of Watermarks.....1st) the 1st stamp is the 1/2s brown variety printed in a hard native paper...this stamp can only be classified as part of one of the 1872 issues , because of the paper used in the printing and above all,due to the non existence of a small detail.. the designs included in this issues could present us the Imperial Crest and branches of the kiri tree (that's the case of the stamps presented..), imperial crest and dragons, or the Imperial Chrysanthemum...if you see clearly in this 1st stamp, there are something like two swords in the union of the two branches(in the opposite side of the Chrysanthemum).. and in the other stamps there is a small square with a Japanese Syllabic written inside..the syllabic could be presented in other places, but it's presence clearly indicates that the stamp is not from the first 1872 two issues... one point I want to highlight here is  the strange upper "s" that definitively has problems..! in any of the 3 catalogs I used , there is no reference to this small detail, so it must be nothing.. the SAKURA catalog , tell us about the existence of 3 different types for this 1st issues of 1872, and they differ in small details in the way the "N" is printed..(the catalog is Japanese, and unfortunately I don't understand if it talks about the upper labels or down labels, because the N look different in each case...)
1872 "Cherry blossom Series" (6) [Engr (A. Matsuda)][Recess (Matsuda,Tokyo)] Sc(9) SG (34a) SAK(9 ?Type)

These two other stamps were not issued in Native paper , but in foreign paper.. this paper is wove, laid or porous .... my knowledge of papers is not the best ( and strangely , is not getting better...) , but fortunately in both cases , I can get the right classification just by the color of the stamps... the only grey 1/2 s stamp with the 3rd syllabic is from the 1875 issue and also ' from the same harvest ' the violet 30s with the 2nd syllabic... I will show below one picture taken from an old 2006 SAKURA catalog with the 23 syllabics in english ... 

it is interesting to know that not every value have the 23 possibilities, but each value have their own syllabic possibilities, and some of them could reach enormous cv's... of course, as I said in previous posts , the general condition of the stamp is very important , and with stamps like these You cannot wait for something very different from zero, but they are sufficiently good to be the subject of our conversation.. from what has been said we can conclude that the number of possible combinations paper, syllabic and color is very large and this series alone is a good example of how interesting could be this period of Japan's Philately...
1875 "Cherry Blossom Series" (8) Sc(40,49) SG(66,72) SAK(41b,48d)

This is a 1873 Revenue stamp... the study of Japanese revenue stamps is somehow difficult , because there is no catalog of these stamps, and the only source of information about them is from the hard work of  a small number of experts that dedicated their time to the study of these stamps , and a large world of information and certainly a large amount of fun is waiting for those who pursue this field of Philatelic knowledge... I will leave here two links for you to see if you're interested or not in continuing with these stamps...
some basic information : pdf file 
More basic information : pdf file

I will now start with the presentation of some new entries to my Koban Series or just spare stamps of those series.. in each case, these are all stamps in much better conditions that the one's I have , so they will replace them in the collection... the perforations and the centering of the stamps is good in general (specially in the New Koban series..) , so I tried to take the scans with a higher resolution , because the stamps seem to me like good examples... in the scans we can see the differences in the backgrounds , frames and ornaments even if the main design (central ) is identical... As we know there are 3 Koban Series : The Old Koban , the UPU Koban and the New Koban ...I will present the stamps in this order...As I said in the beginning there was an Italian Designer that moved to Japan and rapidly gained great importance in the Japan's Printing Office... that Artist was Edoardo Chiossone and he was the designer of the 3 Koban Series...

When we talk about the main design of a Koban stamp, we are referring to the design inside the main oval or circular shape object in the center of the stamp... We can identify six different designs among the 3 Koban series...they are presented above and other values share one of these common designs...
Let us start by the beginning , with the "Old Koban" Series... like in many other Countries, to have a specialized or a less detailed catalog makes all the difference... In a general view the series have 17 stamps, but if We consider a specialized catalog we know that we will find many more....the series was first issued in 1876 , but there are stamps from this series that were issued only in 1886...we have to consider differences in papers and perforations...a difference in perforation could signify a large difference in cv... the color shades have great fluctuations through out the all series

I only have 3 stamps from the "Old Koban" series to present and unfortunately one of them is of dubious origin...Yes, the Brown 5s is almost for sure a fake stamp, because the printing is very bad, the postmark is not like the others, and above all it has a printing error (that I never heard from..!.)..

I have a small scan of this error ([Left]) , where we can see the superposition of another brown line (from another oval) in the main design... it is a stamp with many (too many..!) imperfections , so I decided to keep it as a fake... 
First we have the slate 5r and then the beautiful Prussian Blue 10s..
1872/1886 "Old Koban Series" (17) [Des (Edoardo Chiossone)][Engr (G. Furuya K. Ishii)(T. Saito)][Typo] Sc(55,59,62) SG(76,106g,86d) SAK(61,68,71)

now I have several stamps from the UPU Koban series that has only 3 values (1s,2s,5s) ... we have also to consider many perforation possibilities. The series was issued between 1873 and 1892..

 I have already this complete series in the collection , so the main focus of my attention now were the perforations, to one day reach the final possibilities of the series... the Green 1s is very damaged so I shouldn't 

have shown it , but here it is ; the blue stamps show us that there are several degrees of "dulness" in that Blue.. it is normal ,because the first issues of this series have dull colors and the latest brightest one's...
1873/1892 "UPU Koban" (3) [Des (Edoardo Chiossone)][Engr (G. Furuya K. Ishii)(T. Saito)][Typo] Sc(72,73,74) SG(113g,114h,115g,115,115c) SAK(78,79,80)

For the "New Koban" Series I have more stamps and a few new entries...

This "New Koban" series has 10 stamps, but from these I show , only 3 are new entries, the 8s, the 20s and 1y...in this series we also have to count with perforation varieties...All the 3 Koban Series are without doubts very beautiful... 

1888/1892 "New Koban" (10) [Des (Edoardo Chiossone)][Engr (G. Furuya K. Ishii)(T. Saito)][Typo] Sc(76,77,77,78,79,79,80,81,82,84)

The Imperial Chrysanthemum is the single motif that is common to all the stamps I showed today.. You can see it always at the top of the main central design.. it is a 16 petals Chrysanthemum ...for example in the last series we saw, we have a 1y stamp that presents a large Imperial chrysanthemum as main center design...it is now time to introduce the last series I have to show for now...

issued for the first time in 1899 , the "Chrysanthemum series" has 18 stamps and the Imperial Seal lies in the center of a Circular frame with Japanese characters that unfortunately I could not decipher or find the correct meaning in the Net...another motif I don't know the real purpose appears at each upper corner of the stamp.. I don't need to say that I don't know any of these things because my knowledge of Japan's culture is minimum .. I should know much more about Japan (one of the few places I would like to visit someday...) because it is for me an attractive Culture with many points of interest... if we take a closer view of the designs, we find that there are some subtle differences between the lower values (less than 5s) and the higher values (from 6 to 20s in our case...) both on the circular frame characters and on the external background... these stamps are all spare stamps...

In a future post I will return to the Japanese stamps of 1970 , 80 and 1990 because I have many still to classify... for now it is all I've got of new stamps from the Classic days of Japan's Philately..

SeeYou

  

Three Women...

New Entries

This will be a post different from the last ones, with  stamps of 4 countries...today I will not present many technical data about the stamps, some because I don't have it  but other because I am currently with a little time problem...

let's begin with a series we all know...

Continuing the effort to have all the Commemorative's from the beginning until 1945, I bought this 1937 famous series..it is a beautiful series representing famous Generals of the Army and Navy, several famous boats and the US Army Academy at West Point..I will not present here the designers and engraver's data , as stated above..

USA 1937 "Army and Navy Heroes Series" (10) [Recess] Sc(785,...,794)

now for something Completely different , some stamps I bought recently... 

I was wandering through the Net , when I saw this little group of Japanese Telegraph stamps.. I had for a long time a 15s stamp like the one presented here, but in lousy conditions... When I saw it, I immediately want to buy it.. so ,I bought them ,even with a repetition and an invalid imperforated stamp in the group... it was just to have that stamp... they are beautiful stamps with the usual beautiful cancel, and strangely ,after a quick look , I didn't find the codes in Scott catalog..

Japan 1895 "Telegraph Stamps" (10)[Typo] SAK(3TE,5TE,5TE,6TE,7TE,8TE)

in the same day , when I was visiting the seller's online shop,I found 3 more stamps of the "Men of culture Series"..as we know it is not a frequent series to see complete, and it is expensive , even when we are talking about used stamps..so I always buy those stamps I find occasionally...they are beautifully engraved and certainly good additions to any collection..

Japan 1949/1952 "Men of culture Series" (18) [Des (M. Kimura)][Engr (F. Watabe)][Recess] Sc(480,482,483)

some Classic stamps from Iran with a new "Lion and Sword" design , very usual in these early issues...I think these are the first classical stamps from Iran , that I show here in the blog..I must , when I have the money, invest a little more in these stamps because they are really beautiful.. the lion and the sword are together with a shining Sun in the Center, topped by a beautiful Crown and Arabic Labels...There are two series that share this same design, one from 1894 (1st group) and other from 1898 (2nd group)...same values have different colors in each of these two series , and this is an aspect that facilitates the classification... 

1st Group) Iran 1894 "Lion and Sword" (11) [Typo] Sc(90,91,92)

2nd Group) Iran 1898 " (16) [Typo] Sc(105,108,110,111)

These are stamps from the first commemorative Series from Iraq.. it is a very beautiful series with designs of Iraq Culture, monuments and Landscapes...

As you know , I have another blog about stamp Designers..during the research for Biographical data from the Designers of this series , Miss Edith Cheesman and Mrs. C.C. Garbett, I found several aspects I think I should focus here...we are talking about a series from 1923 , and the first aspect that troubled me is why and how two British Women Designers could exist at the same time in Iraq and what was the relation between them..first I found some data about Miss Edith Chessman through the life of her brother Major Robert Cheesman..I found out that she traveled with her brother to Iraq and other places in the Middle East..He was already a famous Ornithologist, and made significant discoveries in the Arabian Peninsula.. about Mrs. C.C. Garbett I found nothing , except the fact that she was married to Mr. C. C. Garbett..this was the Central point to discover the relation between these two women..Both ,Mr. C.C. Garbet and Major Cheesman, were chosen by Sir Percy Cox, to help him in the establishment of the British Secretariat in Iraq..so there they were , with our two Designers in 1923, Iraq.. 

another aspect I like to emphasize is the fact that at the same time , another British woman was playing an important role in Iraq's History.. i'm talking about Gertrude Bell ... after reading her letters , I realized she was indeed a women ahead of her time , perhaps one of the most Powerful women of her days...

And now a challenge to Hollywood Producers...How about a movie about the life of Gertrude Bell.!??!.

Sorry for this long talk about my research , but I feel it was adequate..

Iraq 1923 "Various Designs" (13) [Des (Miss Edith Cheesman 0.5A,1A,4A,6A,8A)(Mrs. C.C. Garbett 2A,3A,1R)][Typo(Bradbury Wilkinson)1R][Recess (Bradbury wilkinson) others] Sc(1,...,9)

This post was a little shorter , but as I said before I was with a 'time' problem during the preparation of the post..

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