10-08-2025, 12:31 PM
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?
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?
Hugh MacDonald, Wolfe Island
Member: BNAPS. PHSC, Auxiliary Markings Club, Postal Stationary Society, British Postmark Society,
AMG Collectors Club, China Stamp Society, France and Colonies Philatelic Socoety
ArGe Deutsche Feldpost: 1914-1918 e.V.