You will most probably guess what we are talking about: The German Occupation issues of WW II and the German Field Post stamps.

It is a tremendous collection we can offer in our 5th auction, broken up into more than 500 individual single lots.

The air mail set of the Bohemia and Moravian local issue of Maehrisch Ostrau is the scarcest set of the whole collecting area. These stamps were already issued four months prior to the regular issues of the protectorate. We have on offer a mint never hinged set from the sheet margin, the top value comes in a better perforation gauge (13 3/4).

In 1944 another stamp issue was planned for the occupied Albania. The design depicted the famous „Skanderbeg“ helmet but is was never realised. Only some proofs coming from the Vienna Staatsdruckerei survived. The presentation carton shown here is of the greatest rarity.

There are „lots“ of horizontal pairs of the Dunkerque issue, all of those were printed in very little quantities of 80-100 copies each.

And to continue with the „French“ area of occupation issues: One of the top items is an imperforate „Polar bear“ souvenir sheet of which only a mere 100 items were printed.

It is impossible to mention all highlights in this little preview. The range of scarce overprint issues begins with local issues of Lithuania up to expensive stamps of Zara.

Imperforate items feature the Channel Islands, namely the landscape set of Jersey or the auxiliary stamps of Ukraine, like those of Wladimir-Wolynsk.

A short look onto the Field Post stamps:

Certainly the „Torpedo“ on the submarine stamp shows its full impact but there are also nearly all „Inselpost“ overprint issues in the sale. Finally there are some war-propaganda stamps among which the famous „Frank“ stamp of the General Gouvernment should be mentioned.

The German „KgU“ (an abbreviation for „Kampfgruppe gegen Unmenschlichkeit“, meaning „task force against inhumanness“) was operating in the early 1950ies from Western Berlin to infiltrate and agitate against the former GDR.

The insciption of such stamps reads „Undeutsche Undemokratische Republik“ („Un-German Un-democratic Republic“ instead of „German Democratic Republic“) and the „Berlin Stalinallee“ got an addition of „Strasse des 17.Juni“ (the day when the uprising in 1953 was brought to a halt by Russian tanks in Eastern Berlin).

It was very dangerous to put these „stamps“ on a letter and if the sender would have been caught the punishment could have been death penalty in der GDR.

There are five copies of the said propaganda issue franked on this letter and – together with some regular postage - it was sent „Express“ as it is also documented on the backside of the letter.

Fortunately nobody in the postal service discovered these faked stamps and the letter survived as a document of German early post-war history.

This stamp comes imperforate at left and as well halfway imperforate at top and at bottom. The stamp was commercially used on a parcel card.

Every collector`s dream would be to find such an item in the „kiloware“...!

A very stunning and decorative variety of which only 3 copies are known until today.

shows high-value items of Italy. We are talking about the Social Republic era of 1943-1945. The CLN (which was the National Liberation Committée) had induced a couple of local issues.

At Mantova old Italian stamps got the „P.S.I. Mantova“ overprint which meant „full sovereignty for Italy“ and this, of course, was intended to be also a sort of propaganda. There were only 150 sets overprinted and we are offering the only set of blocks of four which has survived.

Swiss classic stamps and issues of China are price „robust“ areas in these times and such items also highlight our September sale. Among many other desirable lots we have a copy of the famous „actor souvenir sheet“ on offer. Of this souvenir sheet only 20.000 copies were printed and taking into consideration how big the collectors` market of this area is, we truly can speak of a „mini-edition“.

is a phrase you often hear in these days and there are many people forecasting that this will be the future of collecting philatelic items. The depicted letter of the year of 1836 is truely fascinating. It was written by a whaler`s captain, a George Allyn, at the isle of „Tahita“ (Tahiti) and he is reporting to his employers at New England, Connecticut about the conditon of the ship and his crew (one of them deserted) and about his plans for the further journey. We can read in old seafaring related documents that he returned one year later to New England having on board 2900 barrels of sperm oil.

depicts a letter from the United States. We have to go back to the year of 1862. The portrait of Georg Washington is depicted on the blue 90c stamp (Scott No. 72) and this stamp is – like all 90c values of that time – of the utmost rarity.

Here it comes together with a 24c and a 30c stamp of the same issue on a 6-fold letter to England thus making the correct 1$44c postage.

Imagine that the postage for a regular inland letter was 3c at that time and you immediately know that the 90c value could only be used on commercial overweight letters or for letters to abroad.

The „Siegel“ census lists only 51 letters with this value in total. Hence letters with the most famous German stamp, the Bavarian „1 Kreuzer Black“ are by far easier to find!

The auction offer in total comprises about 4200 lots among which are nearly 1300 collections, bulk lots, postal pictorial cards, coins and banknotes as well as autographs and varia.

The catalogue will be sent out from our printers in the first week of August. The online version is available here by the 1th of August.