Handwritten Dae han (Tai han) on piece, for discussion

Old Korea

German Auction Galleries Hamburg (Schwanke Auktion) No. 6 (Dec. 1/2, 2017) offered lot 96 described as follows: “1897, attraktive Briefvorderseite mit sechs verschiedenen frühen Korea-Marken, teils mit Aufdruck, leicht stockig, ansonsten gute Erhaltung. 1897, attractive cover front with six different Korean stamps, some with overprint, some stain.” Started at 250.-, realized 310.- euros + %.

However this is not a cover front, but just a piece of paper and the text says: “大韓郵逓司郵票” meaning “Great Korea Post Office Postage Stamps” in hanja (= Chinese characters). The Hangul text “대한우쳬사우표” says the same.

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Florian Eichhorn
Collects Japan, Korea Kingdom/Empire (covers/postmarks only) and ROK (covers only), China postmarks to 1949 and Dutch East Indies covers/postmarks as sideline.

4 thoughts on “Handwritten Dae han (Tai han) on piece, for discussion

  1. Florian, very interesting. Also, if someone did it themselves, why did not do the handwriting overprint on the two stamps, as you noted the 5 p and 10 p. Are the postmarks legitimate for the time? Robert

  2. Legitimate postmark, the standard inland type for the period.
    And as already stated, the pairs “non-handwritten” + “handwritten” are probably of philatelic origin.
    Or somebody wanted to have documented their “non-Dae han” appearance. Who knows.

  3. The 5p & 10p ‘pairs’ are not se-tenant pairs, so they could be from different sheets; one sheet that had the hand written overprint applied, and one older sheet without overprint, or maybe even from the customers ‘stash’.
    I have seen covers with overprinted and non-overprinted stamps used together, as the non-overprinted stamps, in my understanding, were still ‘legal’.
    The cover as a whole does have the look of a philatelic item. But interesting non-the-less, and one I would love to add to my collection. Thanks for the article.

    1. Thanks for the headsup, I adjusted the text. – I have never seen a handwritten Dae han in a philatelic context, and any example of a philatelic usage by a non-westerner of old Korea is noteworthy in itself.

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