| 1920-1934 Standing Lion Covers |  Top |
| Item # |
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US$ | ||
222014 "View EXACT ACTUAL Image"){kind=small} |
116 Type II, White Paper LINE 4-STRIP [1925 5 öre Lion] (Superb) on very nice 17 July 1937 picture post card (real photo of ocean beach at Tylösand) from TYLÖSAND to HUNGARY. This post office was not started until 1934 and is fairly scarce in this early period. Scarce line pair/strip usage on cover to an unusual destination. ACTUAL item. |
18.00 |
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239534 "View EXACT ACTUAL Image"){kind=small} |
116 Type II, White Paper [1934 (white paper) 5 öre green Lion] (Fine+) on 15 April 1937 printed matter rate cover within STOCKHOLM with machine cancellation. ACTUAL item. |
5.00 |
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239535 "View EXACT ACTUAL Image"){kind=small} |
117 Type I [1921 5 öre orange-brown Lion] (Fine) on 17 October 1922 printed matter rate cover from SÄLDEBRÅTEN (very tiny village) to Huskvarna. This stamp is somewhat scarce on cover. Nice strike of the postmark which is fairly scarce. ACTUAL item. |
15.00 |
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400981 "View EXACT ACTUAL Image"){kind=small} |
Scott #117 Type II [1921 5 öre orange-brown Lion] (F-VF) on 28 June 1928 business post card from ÄLMHULT to W.R. Ricketts of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, USA, correctly paying the outside-Sweden printed matter rate to 50 grams (including printed matter post cards). In multiple respects, this is a "rare and important" piece of PHILATELIC HISTORY and STAMP DEALER HISTORY. The sender was a stamp dealer located in Älmhult, Sweden, by the name of Martensson (no first name given). He was using the card to advertise [translated from Swedish]: The rarest Swedish TETE-BECHE stamps -- type I and type II, uncanceled and fault-free -- offered for sale at ONLY HALF of the catalog value, kr 50 per piece = 2 stamps." Thus the Type I tete-beche pair was 50 kr and Type II tete-beche pair was 50 kr. As a point of reference, the face value of each pair was 20 öre; his selling price was 250 times the face value. The item he is offering is Scott #118a (Scott does not differentiate between the types) with a 2026 Mint HINGED Scott value of US$1,650. It is Facit #144Av2 (head-to-head) and v3 (tail-to-tail), with a 2024 Facit value Mint HINGED of SEK 14,000 per pair and a NH (apparently what he was offering) value of SEK 26,000. The current NH Facit value is 520 times his selling price in 1925. That is great appreciation! This is the only then-current (1920s or 1930s) advertising piece that I have seen for these tete-beche pairs (other than auction listings). The dealer must have been using the Royal Philatelic Society (London) member list for the mailings as this is addressed to F.R.P.S. (F = Fellow) W.R. Ricketts. The addressee is also of great philatelic importance. Ricketts was likely, up to that time and for many decades since, the most prominent collector, researcher, and documenter of early philatelic literature; his foundational work is still referred to today. [It is a very long story, but the Ricketts collection (or a very large part of it) of early philatelic periodicals ended up in a re-purposed storefront building in small rural town in North Carolina where I personally had the pleasure to review around 2010-2015. I like to remember that I touched some of the exact same objects that Ricketts so much treasured. The collection -- a whole building full -- ended up with the APS and is part of the APRL where it should be.] These two tete-beche pairs are, at the same time, line pairs -- which is how they came to exist as tete-beche pairs. Starting in 1920, Swedish stamps were steel-engraved, printed by a recess press -- the Stickney rotary press, the same maker and type of printing press that the U.S. was using at that same time. Just as the U.S. stamps of that era had line pairs, so did the Swedish stamps. The line pairs occur because the printing cylinder was composed of two semi-circular halves; the lines of the line pairs occur because the join of those two halves caught a little bit of ink and thus, just as the engraved stamp designs hold ink, the joins held ink and thus printed as lines. The tete-beche (line) pairs were created when one of the half-cylinders was accidentally mounted flipped around. There are two types (head to head and tail to tail) because that is how they were oriented, at each of the two join-sides on the cylinder, when one half was incorrectly flipped around (or perhaps the stamp images were incorrectly transferred (inverted?) to one of the half-cylinders?? [If the plate system had been better designed, it would not have been possible to mount one half flipped around, but that is easy for me to say 100+ years later.] While this stamp used on a printed matter post card to the U.S. is "nothing special", the total context and purpose of this is tremendously special and rare! ACTUAL item. |
Reference |
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239531 "View EXACT ACTUAL Image"){kind=small} |
118 (or 124?) x5 and 182 [1921 10 öre green Lion and 1921 40 öre Gustaf V Left Profile] (VF/F-VF and Ave) on 17 June 1923 EXPRESS mail cover to Prag, CZECHOSLOVAKIA, with backstamp. PLK 137 RAILWAY cancellations. Express label #3:1 per Facit Postal listing. Trimmed at top, but indicates sender was in Landskrona, which matches the route of the railway line/cancel. Attractive and colorful. Express covers to other countries (especially other than Germany) are quite unusual. ACTUAL item. |
45.00 |
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239532 "View EXACT ACTUAL Image"){kind=small} |
118 (or 124?) x2 and 175 [1921 10 öre green Lion and 1925 25 öre blue Gustaf V Left Profile] (VF and F-VF) on 16 June 1927 REGISTERED (with town label) cover to Austria, from LINKÖPING. The two 10 öre Lion stamps are distinctly different colors (dark green vs light green). Very neat and attractive with monogram red wax seal. ACTUAL item. |
30.00 |
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239544 "View EXACT ACTUAL Image"){kind=small} |
118 (or 124?) and 150 (or 162) [1921 10 öre green Lion and 1920 80 öre Crown and Posthorn] (VF and F-VF) on 29 September 1923 parcel card, COMPLETE with receipt coupon still attached, to Finland. With "STOCKHOLM 3 / VÄRDE" (valuable mail, even though this parcel was not insured and did not contain money) cancellations, numbered Stockholm 3 parcel label, and a separate "Stockholm" label (not sure of purpose). Reverse bears large, red Finnish customs handstamp and HELSINKI receiving postmark. This international (includes French text) parcel card has a February 1911 printing date -- this is remarkably late use. Excellent condition with typical wear. ACTUAL item. |
17.00 |
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239545 "View EXACT ACTUAL Image"){kind=small} |
118 (or 124?) pair and 153 Non-White Paper 3-strip [1921 10 öre green Lion and 1921 1 kr Crown and Posthorn] (VF and Fine) on 18 December 1923 parcel card, COMPLETE with receipt coupon still attached, to Finland. With "STOCKHOLM / PAK AVG" cancellations, numbered Stockholm 1 parcel label. Reverse bears large, red Finnish customs handstamp and HELSINKI receiving postmark. This international (includes French text) parcel card has a April 1922 printing date. Very colorful. ACTUAL item. |
12.00 |
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249089 "View EXACT ACTUAL Image"){kind=small} |
J4 [1921 10 øre PORTO Postage Due Overprint on 10 øre Christian X] (F-VF) tied by 19 December 1921 "KJØBENHAVN Ø." cancellation on 17 December underpaid picture (advertising) post card franked with a 10 öre Swedish 10 öre green Lion coil stamp (Scott #118 or 124), with XF centering. There is a Swedish boxed "T" handstamp is under the Danish postage due stamp, and a pencil manuscript Danish "10" due, and the Danish postage due stamp. This is an excellent example of the correct application of postal rates and regulations: This card started out with an impressed (looks typed, but was mass produced, such as by addresssograph plate type of printing) message on the address side, and as such it would still have qualified for the 10 öre printed matter rate to Denmark (and everywhere outside of Sweden). However, to that mass-produced message, the sender added an additional handwritten message, requiring 15 öre postage for the regular post card rate (to Denmark and Norway). This was noticed by the Swedish post office and marked for postage due (of double the 5 öre shortage). There was a return address on the card, and could have been returned to the sender (advertizer) to collect the shortage, but this was probably one card out of a bundle of many other (correctly paid printed matter) cards; the Swedish postal clerk probably thought it would be easier to send it on as postage due and make it the problem of the Danish post office. The 1921 overprinted postage due stamps, which started to be replaced in 1922!!) are hard to find on cover -- especially with unusual due situations such as this (instead of just ordinary underpaid postage). The AFA 2023 catalog values ordinary on-cover use of this stamp as DKK 350 ($53) -- this is more unusual. ACTUAL item. |
45.00 |
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239533 "View EXACT ACTUAL Image"){kind=small} |
126 Type II, Non-White Paper and 191 Type II Non-White Paper x2 [1927 5 öre green Lion and 1928 15 öre Perf-4-side Gustaf V Left Profile] (Ave and VF / F-VF) on 22 November 1932 REGISTERED (with town label, torn) cover to from FLEN to BLOMSTERMÅLA (with receiver cancel). Nice small town use. Neat and attractive with monogram red wax seal. ACTUAL item. |
8.00 |