| 1924 UPU And UPU Congress Covers |  Top |
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US$ | ||
401672 "View EXACT ACTUAL Image"){kind=small} |
Scott #197, 198 [1924 5 and 10 öre UPU Congress] (F-VF, VF) on a 9 July 1924 picture post card (real photo: Stockholm City Hall interior, the location for the presentation of the Nobel Prizes), from STOCKHOLM to JAKOBSTAD, FINLAND, with a 12 July receiving postmark (Russian-text-removed type). The 15 öre franking correctly pays the post card rate to Denmark, Norway, and Finland [1 October 1922 thru 31 July 1924]. Though this franking / use looks fairly "ordinary", it is actually "VERY SCARCE": The stamps were issued five days earlier on 4 July 1924 and then the postal rate was lowered to only 10 öre (and expanded to cover all of Scandinavia) on 1 August 1924. Thus a post card to Finland with a 15 öre franking was ONLY POSSIBLE FOR 28 DAYS! Despite the modest catalog value of these UPU Congress stamps on cover, any type of cover bearing any stamps of this set are at least "unusual". To the best of my recollection, I have never before, in 53 years, had any Swedish cover or card bearing stamps of either of the two UPU sets that had such a short period of possible postal rate use. ACTUAL item. |
SOLD |
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401671 "View EXACT ACTUAL Image"){kind=small} |
Scott #200 [1924 20 öre UPU Congress] (VF) on a 24 July 1924 UPU OFFICIAL picture post card with a UPU OFFICIAL "SOLLEFTEÅ / CONGRESS POSTAL UNIVERSEL" cancellation. This picture post card is one of two UPU official cards created for Sollefteå; this card pictures a river and the very large Kramfors sågverk (Kramfors sawmill) operation on both sides of the river. The card is a type of real photo card. The stamp is neatly placed and the cancellation is well struck -- that is not often the case for such cards. On the address side of the card, there is very slight damage in the lower left corner, but it does not affect the printed card text and with other factors of the card being better than normal, the card is still valued in the range of normal quality for such cards. (The UPU catalog, which lists and pictures these cards, describes this card picture as a "Sollefteå, view of town". However, that is not correct. What look like buildings in the picture are actually huge stacks of drying lumber that have temporary roofs placed on top of the stacks to keep the lumber dry. Sweden arranged for the UPU Congress delegates to take tours around Sweden. Official UPU picture post cards were created for each tour stop. Including five post cards for Stockholm, and a few cases of more than one card type per town, there were a total of 23 different cards created. These cards were normally franked with a 20 öre UPU Congress stamp and normally canceled with a special UPU town cancellation. Because there were sometimes multiple cards per town, there was a total of only 12 different cancellations, 9 of which were towns on the tours outside of Stockholm. Each of those 9 tour cancellations were ONLY USED ON ONE DAY and typically only accessible by the UPU delegates and Swedish officials on the tour. Some of the cards / cancellations are scarcer than others. Because the UPU Congress meetings, etc., are philatelically considered to be related to the United Nations -- even though the UPU pre-dates the UN -- these cards and cancellations are also of great interest to United Nations specialists. A very nice example of a scarce item -- the cancellation was only used on that one day and only for the UPU delegates and accompanying officials. ACTUAL item. |
Reference |
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401670 "View EXACT ACTUAL Image"){kind=small} |
Scott #B33, #213 [1928 10 öre King Gustaf V 70th Birthday; Cancer Fund Semi-Postal; 1924 5 öre UPU 50th Anniversary] (F-VF, XF) on 28 June 1936 post card to DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA with RAILWAY CANCELLATION "PKP 131" (the postmark is hard to read, but it looks like a 3). The card is pre-addressed to a stamp dealer in South Africa who had apparently solicited a stamp order from the Swedish sender of the card. In the full message (in English), the Swedish card sender accepts doing an "exchange"; despite the word "exchange", the South African was a well-known stamp dealer. Very unusual STAMP DEALER MAIL. As of July 2026, in the last 53 years, though I have not kept formal records of this, I do not recall having more than two or three coves from Sweden to South Africa dated prior to WWII. At this moment, I cannot find the foreign destinations scarcity rating list that used to be published regularly, but my recollection is that South Africa had an R3 or an R4 scarcity rating in this time period. The 15 öre franking correctly pays the foreign post card rate [1 October 1925 thru 30 June 1936]; the last day of that rate was two days after this card was postmarked. Despite their modest catalog value of this semi-postal stamp on cover, any type of cover bearing any stamps of this set are "quite unusual" on cover. Furthermore, the 5 öre UPU Anniversary stamp was mostly used for the 5 öre printed matter rate (both domestic and foreign) and is "scarce" on covers leaving Sweden, especially on non-printed-matter covers/cards. However, any of the UPU stamps on cover are "quite unusual". Despite the philatelic correspondence, this is a genuine postal use -- to a "RARE" DESTINATION -- of two stamps that are seldom seen on covers! ACTUAL item. |
SOLD |
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401673 "View EXACT ACTUAL Image"){kind=small} |
Scott #214 STRIP OF THREE [1924 10 öre UPU Anniversary] (F-VF, VF) on a 27 December 1924 cover from "STOCKHOLM 5" (machine repeating cancellation) to St. Gallen, SWITZERLAND. The center stamp has a tear at top, but it is not very noticeable. The envelope was roughly opened on the back, but it still looks very nice. The three strip shows a "plate join line" stamp on the right side. The 30 öre franking correctly pays the letter rate to foreign countries [1 Oct 1922 thru 30 Sep 1925]. There are no markings on the reverse, but none are expected. Plate join lines on the UPU Congress and UPU Anniversary issues are quite interesting. They were printed on the rotary Stickney printing press -- the same type of printing press that was used in the USA during that time period. The printing cylinder for the UPU stamps consisted of two half-cylinder 40-stamp printing plates; The plate join lines occur in the two locations where those two plates meet. Though remnants of the plate join line can appear on the perforation tips of both previously-joined stamps, often, because of poor placement of the perforations (poor centering), the plate join line is only visible on the perforations of one of the two previously-joined stamps. This fact, combined with reperforating to remove remnants of the line, or collectors having used up such plate join stamps for postage instead of collecting them, has resulted in the plate join line examples now being somewhat hard to find. In the definitive work "Postage Stamps of Sweden 1920-1945" by Menzinsky (1946), published by the Swedish Post Office, the author states that only one (half-cylinder) plate was made for each stamp, respectively in the Congress issue and the Anniversary issue, and that, for each denomination (thus each color), those two half-cylinder plates (of the two different stamp issues) were mounted on the ONE printing cylinder, thus each full revolution of the printing cylinder produced only 40 of each of the two different stamps of a particular color / denomination. The web containing the sheets of the two different stamps was then manually separated, along the perforations at the plate join line, into the two different panes of the two stamp issues (UPU Congress vs UPU Anniversary). That manual separating often resulted in slightly blunted perforation tips along the plate join line. Thus, while there maybe combination pairs existing in the Swedish Postal Museum, no such combination pairs are available to collectors. Because of this printing / plate layout, the horizontal-format stamps (öre denominations) can only have plate join lines on the left or right and they cannot exist with sheet margin selvage on the left or right sides. Likewise, the vertical-format stamps (kroner denominations) can only have plate join lines on the left or right and they cannot exist with sheet margin selvage at the top or bottom. A comprehensive specialized collection could thus include examples of both sides of the plate join line for each stamp. [A MYSTERY YET TO BE ADDRESSED IS: Since each half of the printing cylinder resulted in printing stamps of the two different issues, Congress and Anniversary, WHY ARE THE ISSUE QUANTITIES SOMETIMES SIGNIFICANTLY DIFFERENT for the two same-denomination stamps of the two different issues? Were both printed in the same quantities but many stamps were later destroyed?] Despite the modest catalog value of this UPU Anniversary stamp on cover, any type of cover bearing any stamps of this set are at least "unusual". However, use of UPU stamps on covers to other countries than Germany is "particularly unusual". ACTUAL item. |
13.00 |
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401674 "View EXACT ACTUAL Image"){kind=small} |
Scott #215 [1924 15 öre UPU Anniversary] (Superb) on a 12 October 1924 cover with RAILWAY CANCELLATION, "PLK 267..." to Stockholm with "STOCKHOLM 6 / TUR / 1 / VA" (machine text repeating receiving postmark on reverse). The envelope is an official mail envelope from a hospital in Uppsala, but the "Tj.- Brev" notation in the lower left corner has been marked out, thus the envelope was personally used. (The "103" written in that spot may be the hospital room number of the sender.) The 15 öre franking correctly pays the domestic letter rate [1 Oct 1922 thru 31 Mar 1942]. Despite the modest catalog value of this UPU Anniversary stamp on cover, any type of cover bearing any stamps of this set are at least "unusual". This is a particularly attractive example. ACTUAL item. |
10.00 |
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401675 "View EXACT ACTUAL Image"){kind=small} |
Scott #218 [1924 30 öre UPU Anniversary] (VF) on a 2 January 1925 cover from "MALMÖ 1 / Lbr." (machine repeating cancellation?? or two strikes?) to St. Gallen, SWITZERLAND. There are a few spots on the cover, but it is still quite attractive (and unusual). The 30 öre franking correctly pays the letter rate to foreign countries [1 Oct 1922 thru 30 Sep 1925]. There are no markings on the reverse, but none are expected. Despite the fairly modest catalog value (Facit 2024 value SEK 500) of this UPU Anniversary stamp on cover, any type of cover bearing any stamps of this set are at least "unusual". However, use of UPU stamps on covers to other countries than Germany is "particularly unusual". ACTUAL item. |
SOLD |