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Here's a place for the world of cartoon characters!

...

Stamp: France
Fête du Timbre: Tintin
Issued 2000
3,00F + 0,60F (0,55€)
Y&T 3304
Bloc-feuillet / Souvenir Sheet
Y&T 28

Ah ... The Adventures of Tintin. A series of graphic novels created by Belgium cartoonist Geroges Remi (AKA Hengé). The first one came out in 1929. If it wasn't for Tintin and Snowy (And, Asterix, of course) I don't think I would have passed French at university.

   

Here's a thread to show your join issue stamps. 

...

France and US joint issue stamps ... The Statue of Liberty [La Liberté éclairant le monde] was a gift to the United States from the people of France.

Stamps:
France
100th Anniversary of the erection of the Statue of Liberty in New York
Issued on July 4, 1986
2,20f
Y&T 2421

   

USA
Statue of Liberty, 100th Anniversary
Issued on July 4, 1986
22c
Sc. 2224

   

Printing on tabs or labels is done to ensure that bad actors can't use then to create forgeries. I mean, they're perfect right? Old paper, correct watermark, proper gum and, unless preventative measures are taken, a blank slate to print whatever you want. (smile)

1932 Hindenburg Series

   

1936/7 Hindenburg Series

   

A used example. 

   

Welcome to the Australian Stamp Study Group. Our first meeting will be held Wednesday September 3rd starting at 1pm (ending at 3pm) at Edith Rankin Memorial Church. We are on Bath Road near Collins Bay Road. Main Floor entrance, easy parking and washrooms on the mail floor as well.
All are welcome. This is an open discussion forum.
This first meeting we will be reviewing the History/Philatelic Album Pages for the States. (Everyone will receive a copy of the album pages for each state.) The first colonizers were convicts from GB. The small colonies literally started from scratch.
We then turn to the Commonwealth of Australia (the 7 states join together to form this commonwealth). There is plenty of history and philatelic discussion in the start up. The Kangaroo and Map Series and the King George V Series are large and complex. In order to fully understand these issues I have assembled excel files that provide all the details based on the currency rate of the stamp.
There are stamps for sale and extras the attendees are willing to share.
Fee is $20.00 for this session. 
Hoping to see your comments here. You are most welcome to join with us.

Here's an Army Post Office cover from June 16, 1920.

It was sent by Lance Corporal A. Jeffery (6972), a member of the British Army Occupying the Rhine [BAOR] stationed in Cologne following WW1. There is an A. E. Jeffrey (sic) in the database of the Imperial War Museum. He is listed as a sapper with the Royal Engineers with the same service number, 6972. In fact, the Anglo-Boer War medal roll index also lists A.E. Jeffrey, 6972, also as a sapper with the RE in South Africa. It would appear that L/Cpl Jeffery was a long-service army regular. The variation in the spelling of his name is an administrative error given that his service number is always the same.

He is writing to Mrs. A. Jeffery, probably his wife, at 1 Orchard Terrace, Victoria Road, Dartmouth, Devon, England.

   

Postal Markings on cover:

Manuscript marking on Cover
Rhine Army 

Orderly Room Cachet
Oval hand-stamp, red ink
7th FIELD COMPANY / ROYAL ENGINEERS / 15 JUN 1920

By mid-1920 Britain was scaling down its forces on occupation duty due to postwar budget cuts. The BAOR was reduced to one infantry brigade group with supporting arms such as the Royal Engineers.

   

Double ring CDS
ARMY POST OFFICE / S.40
16 / JU / 20

S40 was the designation PO for the BAOR in 1920 (Whitney, 15/65). In 1922, sub-offices would be added and designated as S40a-h. S = S(tationary Post Office).

One of my favourite diversions is to find a cover or postcard with a missing stamp and try to figure out what stamps is missing. 

Here's another fifty-cent cover I pulled from Roy's box KSC. Who would want it, right? The stamp is missing.

   

Nonetheless, let's see what we can figure out.

It looks like it was an Italian picture postcard provided to guests at the Grand Hôtel in Menaggio on Lake Como. There is a big friendly handstamp in purple that confirms this and adds that the proprietor of the hotel was L. Martinelli.

There are (or were) two CDS receiving cancels from Menaggio. One is still visible, the other has mostly vanished with the stamp - which either fell off or was stamp-napped by a collector sometime in the last 125 years. It is a circular, single ring cancel with MENAGGIO under the ring and 25 / LUG / 99 in the centre - suggesting it was mailed on July 25, 1899.

It was sent to a Miss Kathleen Walker in Budapest in the care of [bei] Frau v[on] Miklós. The street address is a bit of a challenge. It looks like a mix of Hungarian and German, perhaps Délidő?‑gasse , 33. Perhaps not that surprising for a cosmopolitan city like Budapest in fin-de-siècle Europe. One assumes that Frau von Miklós is a friend or landlady.

Getting back to the missing stamp. The UPU foreign postcard rate from Italy to Hungary in 1899 would have been 10 centesimi. This suggests that the missing stamp may have been the 10c King Umberto 1 carmine definitive issued in 1896 (Sc. 68). It's size and shape also nicely matches the rectangular space and residue still visible on the card.

If so, this is the missing stamp:

   

But wait, there's more.

There seems to be a small circle arrival cancel on the bottom left dated 99 / JUL / 27 [July 27, 1899]. The location is only partially visible but, it is reasonable to conclude its from Budapest. A two-day trip by rail is very possible. Here, delivery was attempted but the original Budapest address was crossed out. The card appears to have been redirected within the Empire of Austria-Hungary to Kaltenleutgeben - a spa near Vienna  in the district of Mödling in Austria (see, the town name on the lower left of the card - written in a different hand). It arrived the next day.

There is a single ring CDS from KALTENLEUTGEBEN. In the centire, it reads BESTELLT / 28.7.99 / 8-9V. [July 28, 1899, time-stamp 8-9 in the morning]

However, it appears that Miss Walker was not there either. Kaltenleutgeben was struck out and the card was redirected again to Szt.  Kereszt [Holy Cross]. That may or may not have been the end of the matter. However, it is interesting that Szt. Kereszt was, in the end, also crossed out.

There is evidence that some information was erased ... probably information about the sender. Otherwise, there is no message. It's a postcard from the undivided back era and the picture side of the card, had blank space for messages. It shows an image of a foot path in Menaggio. It appears to have been published by Edizioni  Vierbücher who owned  a postcard printing house in Milan. He specialised in view‑cards of northern‑Italian resorts around  1898 – 1906. The card is number 280 in a series. I understand that his cards with numbers less than 300 are monochrome collotypes.

That was a lot of fun for fifty cents. I may have the order wrong. Perhaps it went to Szt. Kereszt before it ended up at the Spa in Austria. I'll keep looking. 

   

Update:

OK ... I've done a bit more research. I now think the card was initially redirected from Budapest to Ladomér-Szentkerest a spa town on the river Garam about 160Km north-east of Budapest (now in Slovakia) where it was again, and quickly, redirected  to another spa town, this time care of Frau von Miklós, in Kaltenleutgeben. Presumably that was where it was finaly delivered to Miss Walker on July 28.

This appears to be confirmed by the BESTELLT on the Kaltenleutgeben cancel which I now undertand indicates delivery.

On Card ... Ladomier [Hungarian Ladomér]
On Card ... Szt. Kereszt [Hungarian Szent Kereszt
That is, 'Holy Cross' a spa / market town in the Old Kingdom of Hungary.

Today ... Žiar nad Hronom, Slovakia [German, Heiligenkreuz, Hungarian, Ladomér‑Szentkereszt]

I think I've now wrung every historical drop out of this I can find. Did I miss anything?

Interesting bit of soldiers' mail from the US during the final year of WW1. A picture postcard sent from Camp Merrit in NJ by Tommie Rhoades to his brother Edgar back in Arkansas.

There is a machine cancel with a single ring die and six wavy lines. Inside the ring it reads, JERSEY CITY, N.J. / MERRITT BRANCH. Inside, JUL 30 / 8AM / 1918. The wavy lines obliterated two 1c Washington stamps.

Writing the day before, he says:

Dear Brother.
We are at Camp Merritt.
Am feeling good. Have an
outfit of O.D. clothes. We
may stay here several days
and hoping this will all
be over soon.
Tommie

1st Co: July Auto: Repl. Draft
Around Camp Pike
Camp Merritt

It's an interesting point in time. According to his return address, he is in the 1st company of the July Auto Replacement Draft from Camp Pike. In the Spring of 1918, when US AEF casualty rates increased following the German Spring Offensive, divisions could no longer keep up their own replacement pools. Army camps across the US - Camp Pike in Arkansas, Camp Jakobson in South Carolina, Camp Hancock in George and others organized replacement drafts. Men moved through the pipeline on a preset schedule without waiting for a specific unit vacancy. These drafts were named after the month they were organized and broken into numbered companies. Hence, 1st company, July automatic replacement draft from Camp Pike (Little Rock, Arkansas).

It is, therefore, reasonable to conclude that Tommie was from Arkansas which is supported by his writing 'home' to his brother.

It would appear that he had just arrived at Camp Merritt, one of the embarkation camps, for processing and staging for overseas deployment. He mentions getting an outfit of OD clothes. That would be, Olive Drab (similar in concept to the Field Grey of German troops). In a few days, his unit would probably have been marched or sent by rail to Hoboken and then shipped to France.

About four million US troops were sent to the Western Front in WW1, one million of them passed through Camp Merritt. The camp was decommissioned after the war.

The picture side of the card is of a Church in Illinois. My guess is that soldiers at the camp were provided time and random or donated cards to write home. This was one.

PS ... another find from one of Roy's fifty-cent boxes on club night. 

   

   

Here is a cover with a cancel from the Great Western Railway from February 20, 1867. It's on a cover that was travelling west to Windsor, Canada West [CW]. Canada West was created in 1840 following the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837. Together with Canada East, it formed the Province of Canada -- a British Colony. The GWR was the first railway chartered in Canada West and operated between 1853 and 1882 when it became part of the Grand Trunk Railway.

Four months after this cover was mailed, on July 1, 1867, Canada West would become the Province of Ontario in the new Confederation of Canada.

Stamp:
Province of Canada
First Cents Issue - Beaver
Issued in July 1859
5c, Carmine
Unitrade 15

Sadly, the stamp was obliterated with a pen cancel. However, it's still a very nice, bright stamp. According to the dealer the cover was "found in Norway in May 2012 and had never been exposed to sunlight".  Such are the legends of provenance (smile).

Cancels:

Receiving
Great Western Railway
Partial Ring - Outside: G.W.R. / 6[7 - VERY faint]
Centre: WEST / FEB 20
Type  1606 (Jarett, p. 567)

Arrival
Single Ring - FEB 20 / 1867

   

   

   

   

I have been taking an interest in our local postal infrastructure because of Graham (Exploring Stamps) Beck’s new PixPost app. A few days ago the quest led me to the post office on CFB Kingston. I was delighted to find it was more than a retail post office - it was also the distribution point for Military Post Office 305 Vimy. An MPO, a postmaster in camo and great cancels - well worth the time invested in the ferry line!

   
   

When I dreamed of living in a house down a peaceful country road, I imagined my mailbox. It was going to be a miniature version of my house at the end of my long driveway. The reality is a group of four community mailboxes on a busy corner almost 2 km away. And so I get both envious and very happy when I come across a great mailbox. These two on Wolfe Island are old favourites:

       

This one is just up the road from the Harrowsmith post office:

My latest find is on Highway 2 between Kingston and Gananoque:

   

We used to get the Kingston Whig delivered, but that luxury ended during the pandemic. I am thinking of decorating the “Whig tube” at the end of my driving and using it for local mail …