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Cross-writing is when a writer gets to the bottom of a page, or the space available for writing on a postcard, and has more to say. So, he or she turns the page ninety degrees and keeps writing over what has already been written. It one of my collecting interests ... and I'm always looking for new examples. 

Here's one I found recently. 

It was sent from Hardwick, Vermont to Laconia, New Hampshire on July 16 probably in 1908.

The date is not clear on the duplex cancel .. it looks to me like it's either 1903 or 1908. However, this is a divided back postcard and that format was not allowed in the United States until March 1, 1907. So, I'm going to go with 1908.

   

Hardwick was a small granite-quarry town on the Boston and Maine railway line. The card was addressed to Mrs. Harry Holbrook. 'Cuz' in the salutation confirms a family connection.

Laconia was about 115 miles south of Hardwick.

Stamp:
US - Benjamin Franklin
Issued on February 3, 1903
1c, green
Sc. 300

The then current domestic postcard rate was 1c.

Cancel: Single Ring Duplex
Outer ring - HARDWICK / VT
Inner - JUL / 13 / 8 PM / 190[8]

Postcard:
A privately published Real Photo Postcard (RPPC) showing a well-dressed couple in a four-wheeled open runabout (buggy). [Sophie and Leroy? See below]
Written on the photo, is the word 'Kernal' ... probably the name of the horse. The man is wearing a straw hat, a sack suit and a bow-tie. The woman is wearing a 'merry-widow' hat with a plume. Kodak introduced the 'Brownie' camera around 1900 and US postal regulations allowed privately printed RPPCs by 1904.

   

Message:
The message is cross written to add more content but, to make it easier to read, the horizontal portion of the message was written in pen with a dark ink and the vertical portion was written in pencil.

The message reads:

[vertical]
Hardwick Vt.
Dear Coz,
We got home safely. The folks met us at the depot.
Am not feeling very good yet - tired from walking home today.
Went up to the pasture and got my horse this afternoon;
He came right up to me.
Leroy said his boss told him that he thought he had got killed somewhere

[horizontal]
Will write soon.
Love to you both.
From Sophie and Leroy.

Cheers, Hugh

If you're looking for German album pages ... here is a truly amazing resource. 

Absolutely stunning pages for Imperial Germany, its colonies, its offices abroad, the Weimar Republic and the period from 1933 to 1945. Official stamps, military .. it's all there. New additional pages on speciality topics (e.g. cancellations) are added frequently and you can download all of it for free. The PDF files come in several types ... with and without photos of the stamps, 8.5x11 as well as several popular album sizes. 

I use them myself and I've corresponded with the person who created them. It's his passion ... and it's a fantastic contribution to philately. 

Check them out:

https://www.germanstamps.net/germanstamp...bum-pages/

On a March 26, 1948 cover from the Soviet Occupation Zone, I came across this interesting CDS. Never having seen one before, I was smitten by the clock dial in the centre. I wondered if it was a new way of time stamping the cancel?

   

Yes and No. Time stamp, yes. New, no.

In researching the cancel on Philastempel-Datenbank, I found many similar versions going back to the late 1920s from the same town [EKU 1922]. It was in use during the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich and during the post-war occupation. So, while it was new to me, it seems to have been in use for a long time in Glashütte -- a relatively small town in Saxony (pop. 7,000). 

Glashütte is known as the birthplace of the German watchmaking industry. And, that's what this longstanding 'fancy' version of the usual German double ring and bar cancel is all about.

Cancel:
Wide double rings, bar, and 24-hour clockface (35mm / black ink)
Between the rings, Upper -- (10a) GLASHÜTTE / (SACHS) [10 is the two-character German postal routing code for Saxony introduced on July 25, 1941 and retained, for a time, after the war.
Between the rings, Lower -- Feinmechanik / Uhren, Rechenmaschinen [Precision mechanics, watches, calculating machines]
Central bar -- 26.3.48, -17 [March 26, 1948, ~5PM]
Clockface [dial with with hours from 13 to 24. This version of the stamp was used for the afternoon post. Before stamping the dial was moved to the current time. In this case 16:30h]

In short, this is a Orts Werbestemple [local advertising hand-stamp] with a clock motif .. with a three-word resume of the town's expertise.

There are two strikes of this cancel on the follwoing cover. It was sent by Werner Linke to Schaubek-Verlag in Leipzig (Soviet Occupation Zone). Schaubek-Verlag, known for producing the first German Stamp Album in 1862, was re-establishing itself as a printer and publisher of stamp albums after shutting down production during the war due to lack of paper.

Stamps:
1st Control Commission Joint Occupation Issue: Germany
Numeral
Issued on April 19, 1946
2Pf, Black (x2)
Mi.Nr. 912

2nd Control Commission Joint Occupation Issue: Germany
The Sower
Issued on February 1, 1948
10Pf, Yellow-green (x2)
Mi.Nr. 946

The total postage paid was 24Pf. In the Soviet Zone, 24Pf was the rate for a regional letter less than 100g. 

   

Another fifty-cent card purchased at a club meeting. 

It was posted in France and has a single ring CDS that reads CRÉCY EN PONTHIEU / SOMME inside the ring and 8. -8 in the centre. Contextual evidence suggests the year was 1915.

   

As near as I can make out it was addressed in French as follows ...

Correspondance des prisonniers de Guerre
[Correspondence for Prisoners of War]
au Soldat de Neuil Henri [To Solider Henri de Neuil]
sapeur du 3ème Génie, Cie 4/4
[Sapper, 3rd Engineer Corps, Company 4/4]
Interné au Camp de
[Interned at the Camp at]
Friedrichsfeld, Baraque 5
[Friedrichsfeld, Barrack 5]
Wesel, N° 2208 [Wesel, No. 2208]
(Prusse Rhénane) via Pontarlier [Rhenish Prussie, via Pontarlier]

There is a lot to unpack here. A woman named Catherine is writing to Henri, her younger brother, a French soldier who is interned at Friedrichsfeld POW camp in Germany during World War I.  She writes,

Mareesquelt, le 8 août 1915
Cher petit frère,
Sommes heureux d’avoir reçu ta carte de bonne santé.
C’est nous souhaitons qu’elle te trouve de même.
Je t'envoie un mandat ce Mardi.
Notre frère Charles et
notre Grand père, grand’mère, tantes, les cousins ainsi
que ta sœur Marcelle t’embrassent.
Je termine en t’embrassant bien fort.
Ta sœur qui pense à toi,
Catherine

[Maresquel, August 8, 1915
Dear little brother,
We were happy to receive your card letting us know you're in good health.
We hope this one finds you in the same condition.
I’m sending you a money order this Tuesday.
Our brother Charles, our grandfather, grandmother, aunts, cousins, and your sister Marcelle all send their love.
I’ll close now, embracing you warmly.
Your sister who is always thinking of you,
Catherine]

Maresquel was about 25 kilometers from where the card was postmarked.

The letter is being sent to the German POW camp via Switerzland. As can be seen, it is being routed to the French town of Pontarlier. From there, it will be moved across to the border to the International Committee of the Red Cross in Switzerland (ICRC) who as a neutral party, will facilitate the POW mail exchange between France and Germany. In August 1914, the ICRC established l'Agence Internationale des Prisonniers de Guerre [International Agency for Prisoners of War] in Geneva. Each side maintained the right to inspect and censor mail.

On the message side we can see on the lower right a blue hand-stamp. This is a censor mark from the authorities at the Friedrichsfeld Camp. I can make out part of the printed text (Friedrichsfeld) confirming it was applied to the card at the camp.

Kriegsgefangenenlager Friedrichsfeld was a significant German POW camp during WW1. It was one of the larger camps and was located near the town of Wesel, in the Rhineland region (then known as Prussian Rhineland or "Prusse Rhénane"), close to the Rhine River. This area is in present-day North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.

There is a handwritten 5B at the upper right in the same ink colour as the rest of the message. Catherine was probably numbering her messages.

The picture side of the card shows a photo titled: MARCHEVILLE (Somme). — Entrée de Marcheville sur Danvast.
The Publisher appears to be Lèon Cueillez of Marcheville.

   

It's truly amazing what you can squeeze out of an old postally-used postcard.

Great Britain Seahorse issues: A Brief tutorial

This very popular issue causes a quite a bit of confusion, but it's really quite simple to identify one from another. There are four different issues (except there is only one £1 green)

Here's a way to tell one from another!

First of all, neither perforation gauge nor watermark detector will help. All the issues are perf 11 x 12, and all are watermarked Crown and GvR (Scott wmk #34). So where to start?

The easiest path is to start with the latest issue and work backwards.



The last issue (Scott #222-24) is the easiest to tell. It is called the "Waterlow re-engraved issue". Look at this picture:

The Waterlow re-engraved issue of 1934 (Scott 222-4) has a cross-hatched background behind the king's head. All the others have only horizontal lines. If your's is cross hatched, you've identified it! If it has horizontal lines, more investigation is necessary.

Ok, so you have horizontal lines -- could still be one of three issues. Look at this picture.



See the dot in the top center of the stamp in back? If your stamp has one, you have identified it. Only the Bradbury Wilkinson (BW) printing of 1919 has the dot (Scott #179-181). If the dot is there, it's definite, but not all the BW stamps have the dot! so the absence of the dot proves nothing!

No dot? Check the vertical dimension, from outer frame-line to outer frame line. The BW stamps are 22 3/4mm. If that's yours, you have Scott #179-81 -- dot or no dot! The remaining two possibilities are only 22mm. The difference doesn't sound like much, but if you have a good perf gauge, it should have a precise millimeter scale, and the difference is obvious. These pictures are not to scale!!

So your stamp is 22mm high! (It had better be at this point, or you missed something!) Still two choices -- the two earliest printings. Scott #173-176 was printed by Waterlow Brothers & Layton Printing in 1913. Scott #173a-75a was printed by De La Rue & Co.

Look at this picture:



Now you look at the perfs. De La Rue (#173a-75a) has two big teeth top right and top left, plus smaller perf holes. This is the trickiest step and a reference copy would help a lot. But look at a few and you will soon see the difference.

Roy

I've been playing around lately with some of the data matrix stamps from the UK. 

Here's a stamp I got recently on a package from the UK. It had no cancellations or postmarks of any kind. What's a postal historian to do? In the absence of other information, I wanted to look at what the stamp itself had to say.

   

Using a barcode reader, I got the following readout. 

JGB S199 4 1017031 01107873 00020 080223 01 E11E7843FEB9611E01

A friend started me on the path to trying to understand these codes. Here's what I've found out (or think I have)

Tthe three digit prefix is the standard UPU code for the UK (Great Britain)

After that is the main data block followed by the security / checksum block.

Within the data block ... the part in blue, beginning with the S is the product code, series or rate

the light blue digit indicates the source ...e.g. a counter sheet

the seven-digit rose coloured series of numbers is an untranslated internal reference number. Some sort of proprietary number that very probably refers to the printing process or design.

the orange series of numbers would be the unique stamp number within its production batch

the green series would be the face value ... in the case of my sample, 20p

the grey series of six numbers is a date field. The question is what date? It's not the date of issue (that wouldn't necessarily known when the stamp was printed) it's probably the printing date or some other key production date.

the final two brown coloured numbers are the stamp indicator 01 for definitive (probably)

As for the security block ... E11 E7843FEB 9611 E01 ... this 18 character block would be used by Royal Mail to verify (if necessary) the authenticity of the stamp to prevent forgery. I assume the algorithm to do this is proprietary (if it's not secret it woldn't be of much use would it? - smile).

Having said that ...

the initial E11 is probably the type of security algorithm being used.
the E7843FEB is probably a digital signature generated by the main data block. A sort of checksum.
the four digit black 9611 is interesting - perhaps another kind of check linked to the print or production batch? Who knows.
the final three characters, I'm guessing, is a final version or integrity indicator?

This is fun and in a way, one aspect of the future of philately. We're still figuring things out ... and that's part of the fun too ... until the details become public and documented. 

If you hold the stamp on an angle you can see another security feature. Holographic characters on the stamp. Notice that it says M23L instead of MAIL above the King's forehead. 

I don't really collect modern stamps. But these digital ones are, I have to admit, rather cool. Lot's more to discover.

Anyway, I could be wrong on all this ... so, corrections and feedback are more than welcome. 

Cheers, Hugh

   

The British Postal Museum website has an interesting blog post explaining the changes in the postal system that led to the closing of the Mail Rail system - an underground railway introduced in 1927 to move mail across London.

You can read it here:

https://www.postalmuseum.org/blog/why-di...ail-close/

If you are trying to trace postal history on covers from France or areas ruled by France sent between 1793 and 1805, the dates may not make sense. Instead of the Gregorian calendar, France created a new calendar that was stripped of religious references. 

You can read about it under the Wikipedia heading “French Republican calendar”. The following link will take you to a nifty site with a conversion tool:

https://www.napoleon-empire.org/en/repub...lendar.php

If you were born in early April, like me, you are a child of Germinal, a name that evokes sap.

This was an idea that didn’t last …

Here are some useful links to downloadable PDFs relating to WW2 US Army Mail:

US Army Postal Service / Field Manual FM 12-105

https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/ref...12-105.PDF

US APO Numbers

https://armypostoffices.org/database/

For the interest of club members, I'm always interested in old specialized catalogues from any country in any language. Also, monographs on postal history or stamp issues prior to 1950 - especially related to Scotland, Great Britain, France, Germany, Hungary, Eastern Europe, the USSR, China, Korea or Japan. Also, books and other printed items related to governments-in-exile, provisional or local issues, machine cancellations or military mail. 

See me at any club meeting and we can negotiate. 

Cheers, Hugh