1941 MEĐIMURJE, fingerprints and smudges

The overprinting was done in letterpress technique with a small, manually operated, printing machine. On the first printing a setting with horizontal pair was used, so multiple passes through the press machine were required for larger pieces.

Due to the intensive hand manipulation with inserting, moving and touching stamps between each passes a lot of these stamps exist with the fingerprints and other smudges.

Fingerprint of one of the workers in "Kraljek & Vezić" printing house.

1948 DERVENTA, Parcel receipt notice

Derventa parcel receipt notice from 15.III.1948, send to the nearby village Žeravac. After 10 days (25.III.1948) resend in Derventa post office with manipulation notice: "Please, deliver by courier" and with rare cancellation "National Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina / Žarevac".

Front side

Back side.

Note that the Derventa parcel receipt is also known as Banja Luka postal stationery. 

1945 SARAJEVO, Postal stationery

I have two new Sarajevo postal stationery in my collection. First, with the express delivery and second with the railway post office cancellation. Both very rare and probably unique.

1945 Sarajevo local provisional issue, postal stationery, type Ib, sent express from Tuzla (15.XII.1945) to Zemun. Correctly franked with an additional 4 din "Tito" stamp for express delivery.

1945 Sarajevo local provisional issue, postal stationery, type Ib, sent from Tuzla (6.III.1946) to Zemun. Correctly franked with an additional 0.50 din "Partisan" stamp cancelled with rare railway post office TUZLA-DOBOJ 108 cancellation.

1943 NDH, Labor service, two sided printings

I got some nice pieces where I first thought that someone has wrongly cut them off. But then I realized that I was looking at the back side...

Back side

Front side

I am not sure, but according to the statement made by Mr. Ercegović, who wrote that he never saw proofs printed on both sides, I believe that they should be very rare.

 Update:  Thanks to Mr. Hughes and Mr. Bokić I learned that these are not as rare as I thought.

1945 SPLIT, Postal stationery

There is a large range of different types and subtypes of the 1945 Split postal stationeries - three main groups, several types and subtypes exists. Below are two of the most common: 2/IIa (group 2, type II, subtype a).

For details I recommend a book by Mladen Vilfan "1945 Provisional Issues" and its supplement edition. 

1945 Split local provisional issue, postal stationery, type 2/IIa, sent from ISLAND Korčula (25.V.1945) to Dubrovnik. Rare censorship stamp "CENZURIRANO Br. 16".

1945 Split local provisional issue, postal stationery, type 2/IIa, sent from Kaštel Stari (21.VIII.1945) to Hreljin.

HOWTO, Extracting the overprints

Recently, I was asked what is the best procedure for extracting the overprints. I don't know what is the best one, but I can show you how I do it...

The theory is pretty straightforward: find all pixels within a specified tolerance around the overprint color. For stamps with the high difference between the base and the overprint color this will work just fine. However, in practice you will get stamps where the base and the overprint color overlaps to a certain extent.

The base stamp with black overprint and its extraction with 50% and a 20% tolerances.

In the case above, you can see that the black color is contained in the base stamp too, so the difference between the colors is not sufficiently large to extract the overprint easily. At 50% tolerance a lot of the base stamp remains while at 20% tolerance (where the base stamp disappears) a lot of the overprint is missing.

The solution is therefore in finding ways how we can increase the color difference. One way is to experiment with the hue and saturation.

The base stamp with different hue and saturation changes. The last one is the most suitable.

Thus, we can get an image with greater color contrast and the extraction of the overprint becomes relatively trivial.

Extraction of black overprint with 20% tolerance.

1945 SARAJEVO, Postal stationery

Recently I was at the Pula flea market where I found nice Sarajevo postal stationery.

1945 Sarajevo local provisional issue, postal stationery, type IIb, sent from Bosanski Šamac (12.IX.1945) to Gradačac.

1945 Sarajevo local provisional issue, postal stationery, type Ia, sent from Teslić (15.III.1946) to Gradačac. Correctly franked with an additional 0.50 din "Partisan" stamp affixed upside down.

The difference between the Type I and II and between their subtypes a and b.