As I’ve heard no suggestion one of the “B” cancels from the Kokomo Stamp Club’s Mailers Postmark Permit I’ll re-post the hand colored butterfly as representative of the batch of them that won the “B” week.
Card 21-5.

Jim L.

From left to right - elephant facing left; elephant facing right; back view of elephant.

I don't think L N was amused.

Right, the "E's". You haven't made this easy at all. So many good things. But in a purely subjective, irrational kind of way, I particularly liked, and would want to mention, the following:

Knuden's unique error wrappers
Deh3's remarkable “Escaped” cover
Rclwa's spectacular US perf error & Haiti inverted centre
Claghorn's piratical Epirus cover
Lavart's fine wreck mail from the Eider
Sheryll's amazing Ethiopian errors (whoever owns them ...)
Jaywild's sheer quantity of Expo's.

For a long period, my front runner was horadam's extremely beautiful Tati Concessions revenue elephants, but at the very last moment, lluehhhb has come from nowhere and has burst through the finishing tape with the Chilean earthquake semi-postals on cover, which I declare the winner, simply because I warmly approve of serious modern postal history. Covers like these are the rareties of the future ...

Thanks, everyone. Over to alec.

Richard W.

Ghuchan (Kojan) maybe also spelled Qochan, Iraq

K is also for Kiautschou. Here is a German postal card sent by a member of the crew of the SMS Gefion while the ship was stationed at Kiautschou in July of 1898. What makes this card truly spectacular is the reverse , which has an extremely detailed hand drawn picture of the German fortifications at Kiautschou.

Here is a card sent from Kiautschou on Nov. 23, 1901 to Bucharest, Romania, a very unusual destination.

Here is an incoming card to Kiautschou, sent from Johannesburg, Transvaal, in April of 1902, shortly after Transvaal was occupied by the British. The card, which has a press censor handstamp, has a nice Singapore to Hong Kong Marine Sorter marking and Colombo transit. In Kiautschou, the card was forwarded to Wilhelmshaven, Germany, received there June 11.

Here is the message half of a Kiautschou message-reply card mailed back to Kiautschou from Hong Kong on May 8, 1904. There is a full message on the reverse.

Here is a cover sent from Kiautschou on Feb. 27, 1899 to Guatemala. As can be seen on the reverse , the cover was sent by the Kiautschou government and traveled via San Francisco and New Orleans to its destination.

Here is a card franked with a Kiautschou stamp which was used outside of the political boundaries of Kiautschou. In 1901 and 1902, due to a shortage of German stamps in the German PO's China, stamps of Kiautschou were used in a few German PO's in China. Most of these stamps were used in Peking. A few were used elsewhere, like this usage in Tientsin. Covers with these usages are very difficult to find.

Here is an incoming postal card sent from the Philippines to Kiautschau in 1904.

Here is an incoming postal card sent from the Canary Islands to Kiautschou in June, 1902.

The letter "L" award goes to bwiphilately for the nice Leeward Islands error. Congratulations! Your prize, if you choose to accept it, is to judge the "M" show and tell.

taodave

Notes:

1. This is the earliest I have. The date inside is written “vendredi le 5 Octobre 1635”, and in checking my perpetual calendar, October 5, 1635 was indeed a “vendredi” (Friday).
2. This is a page from a Spanish Empire, colony of Ecuador, transaction book, much like a Deed Register or Will Register from any US county. The squiggle at top left indicates that a tax was paid on this transaction.
3. On the reverse is the notation “repond le 27 8bre”, 8bre being shorthand for October, which is Latin for “the 8th month”. (The old Roman year used to begin March 1st.)
4. The rate, of 18 ¾ cents corresponds to one bit of the Spanish dollar, which was widely used as currency in the US at that time.
5. 50 cents paid from Michigan Territory. Backside states “map of battle ground enclosed”, unfortunately now lost.
6. Neat STEAM BOAT marking, story inside about a wild storm on a sea journey to Brooklyn.
7. Express mail, triple rate, 75 cents to New York. A princely sum in 1837.
8. First Oct. 5 item with a stamp on it, GB penny red.
9. Tiny cross-border cover from Cazenovia NY.
10. This letter was written and posted from Paris while the Great Comet of 1858 was blazing in the nighttime Paris sky, yet the oblivious writer makes no mention of it. Some people never look up at all!
11. This one is for Knud-Erik!
12. Homemade Confederate cover from Toombsboro GA, butcher paper sealed with molasses. The Union blockade of the South was very effective in keeping supplies of paper from reaching the Confederacy.
13. Owen Sound, Ontario features prominently in the fiction of Alice Munro, one of the 20th Century’s most celebrated writers.
14. Address doesn’t look a lot like English, but it is—Lt. Col. Birch, Deputy Commissioner, Sialkot.
15. An engraved invitation to a centennial celebration of Washington’s victory over Cornwallis at Yorktown. It is styled a “reception for the French and other guests”, presumably not including the British, who took a very dim view of what happened at Yorktown in 1781.
16. Wesson Time-on-Bottom hand cancel. First week of the new 2¢ first-class rate.
17. RPO cancel. Backstamp from Delavan, Illinois, Oct 7, 1886, the exact date my grandmother was born.
18. Netherlands Indies revalued card.
19. World’s tallest building in 1902. Pretty shrimpy!
20. For D2.
21. For Anne.
22. For me—this is my hometown, when Arizona was still a Territory.
23. Where (or what) is PONISHTENO?
24. This registered cover certainly went a lot of places on its way to Montgomery Ward in Chicago.
25. One for Iomoon.
26. Someone in Malaya wanted to be a he-man. Charles Atlas advertised in comic books etc. for a mail order body-building program, by means of a cartoon featuring the famous “98-pound weakling” who was powerless to keep a bully from kicking sand in his face at the beach.
27. The day I was born.
     

* Philatelic item.
 

Some of my kind friends from the chatboard will recognize their contributions to this collection—rolyjr, Bob in WA, Jim Lawler, krautinjapan, Roger H., Jim Gaul, nomad55, xzephyr, milenko and others; sincere apologies for all those I have neglected to include.

I have done my best to only keep real commercial or personal mail, however I have not found non-philatelic items for these dates—1972, 1985, 1986, 1996 and 1997. In the last part of the 20th Century mail was generated in such huge volumes that nobody kept run-of-the-mill covers, which are the ones I am after. So actually these recent years have proven extremely hard to find. Actually I did find an October 5, 1972 item on eBay, but it never made it to me from India, where the seller was. Somewhere along the line it was pilfered.

Rats!!

Jim

Jim

The Catalog of United States Perfins, editor John Randall, published by The Perfins Club in 1998 is a must-have for anyone wanting to identify United States Perfins. The catalog organizes perfin patterns by letter (by the first letter in the design), or number (for those starting with a number) or design (where there aren't numbers or letters). Patterns are not priced in the catalog, but are given scarcity ratings of A+, A, B+, B, C+, C, D+, D, E and F. The scarcity and a rough guide as to price for US perfins is:

 

There are many ways to collect perfins - by type (ie, one example of each pattern in the catalog, regardless of what stamp the pattern is in), by issue (ie, one example of each pattern in each stamp in which the pattern is found), synoptic (ie, an example of each different type of stamp with a perfin pattern in the stamp (in this case the pattern doesn't matter)). People collect specific issues: Parcel Post stamps, Black Hardings, Air Mail, etc. Some people collect on cover examples, others stick with just the stamps.

In addition to the commercial patterns rated A+ through F, there are also a number of personal perfin patterns that have been identified in the catalog, with a rating of P. These are patterns that have been made for personal use, not for business use.

One interesting item to try to find is a mirror pair, which is an attached pair of perfins which are mirror images of each other. This is created when the sheet is folded before inserting into the dies.

Now for show-and-tell:
An example page (well, two facing pages) from the Perfins Catalog is here. The information on the left page includes the pattern number and description, the number of holes in each letter/number/symbol of the pattern and the height of them, the date of issue of the stamp series in which the patterns have been recorded, and the primary user (if known).


Here is an example of a personal perfin.

Here is an example of a mirror pair.

Here is an example of a page from a synoptic collection.

Here is an example of a page from a type collection.

Here is an example of a page from an issues collection.

I picked up an interesting block on eBay a while ago, shown here. This block contains a pair of each of two different perfin patterns: R116 (a B-rated perfin) and R116A (an A-rated perfin). I sent this block to the current editor of the Perfins Catalog, and he confirmed this block does indeed have both patterns (I believe the right two stamps have R116, while the left two stamps have R116A). This block shows these patterns are NOT different, but in fact are variations from within the same device. As such, R116A will be de-listed as a separate pattern in the next catalog.

Last, but not least, my two most interesting (to me) foreign perfins: a French cow and a German swan.

Hopefully there aren't any significant typos in this post ....

Bill D.

William Tecumseh Sherman is one of the true brilliant stars of the American Civil War. He was also entirely indifferent to political office—it was Sherman who said, when people were clamoring to have him run for President, “If nominated I will not run, if elected I will not serve.” Can’t beat that for blunt. It shut everybody up completely.

William Seward engineered the purchase of Alaska in 1867, for approximately 4¢ an acre. It was widely derided as “Seward’s Folly” and “Seward’s Icebox”, but the acquisition has since proved its worth many times over.

Seward had contended with Abraham Lincoln for the Republican nomination in 1860, and of course lost it to him. After his election, Lincoln invited Seward to be his Secretary of State, a job he accepted. At first he was contemptuous of Lincoln, as were almost all the other members of the Cabinet, but he quickly recognized the President’s abilities and his devotion to honesty and the Union, and before the first year was out Seward was Lincoln’s greatest champion.

The assassination of Lincoln was part of a plot to kill not only Lincoln but Vice President Johnson and important members of the Cabinet as well, Seward among them. While John Wilkes Booth was shooting Lincoln at Ford’s Theater, his associate Lewis Powell fought his way into Seward’s home and slashed at him with a Bowie knife. He was in bed, recovering from a carriage accident, and the metal brace he wore on his neck saved him from death, stopping Powell’s knife just short of his jugular vein. While Seward recovered from his injuries, the news of Lincoln’s death was kept from him, but he figured out what had happened nevertheless. From his recovery room he could see all the flags of the capital at half staff, and he knew that Lincoln would have been the first to visit him had he been still alive to do so.

Jim

► How to do a “flip-comparison” test on perforations
► US Stamp Identifiers: | 10c Issue of 1855-57 | First 3¢ Stamped Envelopes | Grilled Stamps | Large “Banknotes” | First Bureau Issues | Abe Lincoln’s “tiny eye”
                                    | Washington-Franklin stamps of 1908-22 | 2nd & 3rd Issue Revenue Designs | Colors, Scott 70/78, 24¢ Washington

This is an uprated postal card from Bavaria, mailed from Munich on July 29, 1914 to Luderiztbucht, German SW Africa. Due to the outbreak of WWI, mail service to German SW Africa was suspended. Thus, the card was marked "Zuruck" and returned to the sender.

This is a cover mailed from Munich, Bavaria on Aug. 1, 1914 to Tsingtau. Mail service to Tsingtau from Germany was also suspended upon the outbreak of the war. Thus, this item was marked "Zuruck" and returned to the sender.

This is a German postal card sent from Oehringen on Aug. 4, 1914 to Edea, Kamerun. Mail service from Germany to Kamerun was also suspended upon the outbreak of the war. This card was marked "Zuruck" and returned to sender.

This registered cover was mailed from Bremerhaven, Germany on July 7, 1914, about 3 weeks before WWI started. It is addressed to Jaluit, Marshall Islands. The cover did not make it to its destination before the Japanese occupied Jaluit in late September, 1914. The cover did make its way to the Japanese PO. It was held somewhere for almost 6 years, was opened by the Japanese PO and then was sealed with an "officially sealed" label. By the time delivery to the addressee was attempted (apparently in 1920), the addressee had left. The cover was marked "inconnu" and "returned to writer", and the cover was returned to Bremerhaven via New York (transit marking March 27, 1920), arriving back in Bremerhaven on May 6, 1920.

Forgot to show the back of the last cover, which can be seen here.