1941-1945 NDH, Ministerial albums II

Just a few remarks about the status of my NDH Ministerial albums project (please see this post first).

Recently, I met the owner of the complete (?) set of albums. He told me that he is planning to put all information and photographs together in a form of the web site or similar presentation. This is a great news!

I also met Mr. Julie Maras, who handed me copies of the newspaper "Croatia Philately" where he presented quite a few albums. So, another great source for further info.

And just a small correction of my thumbnail list: Red Cross 1943 V2 (Mi 118-127), small edition, is not the ministerial album.

1941 NDH, Red cross sheets with phase shift

1941 NDH, Red cross charity, imperforated sheets with color phase shift are a great rarity of Croatian philately. Only four sets were known and only two remains.

1941 Red cross charity, 1.50 + 1.50 Kn imperforated sheet, main color shifted to the left. Certificate Zrinjšćak.

1941 Red cross charity, 2 + 2 Kn imperforated sheet, background color shifted down. Certificate Zrinjšćak.

1941 Red cross charity, 4 + 4 Kn imperforated sheet, main color shifted to the left. Certificate Zrinjšćak.

1944 SENTA, Proof

Senta overprinting was done row by row in multiple phases. First five-pointed star in red color, then textual inscription in black color. The process for half-sheet of 50 is illustrated below: 

Phase 1, row 1.

Phase 1, completed.

Phase 2, row 1.

Phase 2, completed.

For stamps P1, XIII, XIV, PI, PII and PIII the third overprint phase was applied.

Phase 3 strips.

1944 Senta local provisional issue, proof in block of four, positions B 1,2 / 1,2.

1941-1945 NDH, Ministerial albums

1941-1945 NDH Ministerial albums are philatelic specialties. Apparently, the complete set of albums was recently sold for 200000 USD.

I wanted to educate about those albums, but after some reading and searching I found that there is no source with the complete and consistent information. Because of this, I decided to gather all available information and post them on this blog. So far I have collected photos of pages for most of the albums. The current status is shown on the thumbnail list.

 Update:   2014-08-28 Thanks to Mr. Hughes and Mr. Vilfan feedback.

1941 MEĐIMURJE, Easter card & stationery

I compared overprints and cliché positions of two interesting items. One is the well-known Easter greeting card with the overprint on the previously affixed stamp, second is the Međimurje postal stationery.

1941 Međimurje, unique postal card with the overprint on the previously affixed stamp.

Note that the Easter card was put into the press misplaced vertically, so part of the overprint was applied to the card instead to the stamp.

Misplaced overprint.

The same overprint type, was used for the postal stationery. In this case, the vertical alignment was much better, so overprint fits almost perfect.

1941 Međimurje, unofficial local provisional issue, postal stationery. 

Vertical difference of 6.5 mm between the Easter card and the postal stationery.

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.

1941 MEĐIMURJE, first overprint run - part 2

Scanning with 2400 dpi brings some new findings. Type A overprint can be further divided into three subtypes a, b and c. They differ in alignment of the text and the coat of arms as well as in many other minor differences, some shown below.

Of particular interest is the damage of letter D! How is it possible that the same damaged D occurs at different positions?

Damaged D at positions 2, 4, 6, 7 and 9.

1941 MEĐIMURJE, first overprint run

First overprint run of the 1941 Međimurje unofficial local provisional issue was made with overprints of type A. The largest known overprinted pieces are blocks of ten (5 x 2). 

The first look shows that the overprint plate was not constant. However, a detailed analysis shows that horizontal pairs of positions 2,3 / 4,5 / 7,8 and 9,10 overlap ideally but that distances between those pairs varies greatly. 

In addition to my block I used three other blocks that I got from Mr. Philip Hughes.

Overlap of pairs on position 2,3.

Overlap of pairs on position 4,5.

Overlap of pairs on position 7,8.

Overlap of pairs on position 9,10.

I am pretty sure that the overprint plate was made out from four fixed horizontal pairs and two individual items (at position 1 and 6). The varying distances and angles between pairs can be attributed to the use of manual printing presses and a process of straightening the clichés with different size spacers.

1941 MEĐIMURJE, paper fold

Paper folds are not so common for this issue, especially those on a type A1 overprints (large coat of arms and undercuts of the left leg of "M")

1941 Međimurje, unofficial local provisional issue, 0.25 din with type A1 overprint and paper fold.

Attractive, wavelike, paper fold.