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, 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
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.
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.
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.