League of Nations: Stamps & Postmarks

Thanks. If you can transfer to here the posts I made on the new acquisitions thread, as well as the responses to them from other members, then I'll continue posting.

Swiss stamps with patriotic armor were introduced for League use in 1925 with, for the micro philatelist, a host of color and plate variations.

St Germaine en Laye Peace Congress   1918

Cinderella (possible Delandres) with CDS postmark 6th July 1919       (Cannot vouch for the genuineness of the Pmk)

wiki
The Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, was signed on 10 September 1919 by the victorious Allies of World War I on the one hand and by the Republic of German-Austria on the other.
Like the Treaty of Trianon with Hungary and the Treaty of Versailles with Germany, it contained the Covenant of the League of Nations
and as a result was not ratified by the United States but was followed by the US–Austrian Peace Treaty of 1921.

The treaty signing ceremony took place at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

Bud:   If this is any way helpful for your exhibit,    please advise and I'll send it over to you. You are most welcome to it.

More League of Nations, these having to do with the new (1936) Palace of the Nations. For some reason, my scanner lops off the text here and there. Sorry. I've inserted the missing text.









Text: Architectural details.



Photo/drawings of what the new Palace might look like.



Full text reads:Ariana Park was bequeathed to the City of Geneva by Gustave de Revilliod de la Rive (1817-1890). A collector and patron of the arts, Revilloid was also an editor and translator of ancient texts. The Ariana Museum, also located in the Park, houses some of his collections.

League of Nations Collection: An Outline


I thought, before matters get completely out of hand, that I’d sketch an outline for my League of Nations collection so I’d have some idea of where I’m going with it. I’ve already posted several pages on the Forum, but they are not arranged in any coherent order. So here’s an effort to bring a little sanity to what already has been posted as well as to upcoming posts. So far, I’ve completed 25 pages and have posted most of these. When I’m finished, there will be something over 100 pages.

I rely on two sources for this outline: Scott’s catalog and the description provided by the UN for their League of Nations collection in Geneva. Luckily two copies of this description came with the collection I bought, one in English and the other in French. Your comments and suggestions are most welcome.


League of Nations (SdN)

1. Industrielle Kriegswirtschaft (Swiss War Board of Trade). Precursor of SdN and BIT overprints. Stamps and covers.

2. Congres de la Paix. Versailles cancellations and covers. End of war postcards.

3. Congres de la Paix. St. Germain-en-Laye cancellations and covers.

4. Ordinary Swiss stamps and covers used provisionally for the SdN before the SdN overprints became available.

5. First issues of SdN stamps and covers. William Tell and son of Tell, seated Helvetia, and high denomination landscape stamps.

6. Shield motif stamps and covers, with smooth and grilled gum. Plate flaws.

7. Disarmament Conference (1932). First commemorative series. Covers and postcards.

8. Landscape series, typographed, 1934-35.

9. Landscape series, engraved (1937)

10. League of Nations and International Labor Office buildings, commemoratives. Linear and circular overprints.

11. High denomination symbolic subjects, stamps and covers.

12. Re-engraved landscape stamps. 1942-43.

13. Overprints reading “Courrier de la Society des Nations. (1944).

14. The end of SdN philately, historical series, wartime and censored covers.

15. A variety of SdN cancellations. Cancellations used during various SdN conferences and sessions.

16. SdN stamps with “Specimen” overprints.

17. Oddities and freaks. Legitimate variations, overprinting slippage, die re-entries, printing errors. Fakes.

19. Stamps issued by countries other than Switzerland regarding the SdN and its meetings.

20. Stamps issued by nations under SdN sponsored plebiscites (Allenstein, Saar, Upper Silesia, etc.)

21. SdN Cinderellas.


International Labor Office (BIT)


1. Ordinary Swiss stamps and covers used provisionally for the BIT before the BIT overprints became available.

2. First stamps issued for the BIT, covers.

3. Shield motifs, covers.

4. Disarmament conference stamps and covers.

5. Landscape series topography.

6. Landscape series engraved, covers.

7. BIT and SdN buildings, commemoratives, covers. Linear and circular overprints reading “Service du Bureau International du Travail” and covers.

8. High denomination symbolical subjects, covers.

9. Landscape series, engraved.

10. Stamps overprinted “courier du Bureau International du Travail” (1944).

11. Symbolical subject series.

12. “Specimen” overprints for the BIT.

13. Technical motifs and landscapes (1950).

14. Allegorical subjects (1956 and 1960).

15. Overprints for the visit of Pope Paul VI to the BIT (1960).

16. More recent BIT stamps.


International Court of Justice.


1. First issues, overprinted on stamps of The Netherlands. (1934-38)

2. Later issues and covers.


International Bureau of Education.


World Health Organization

The wartime issues. Next I'll create posts for some of the gaps I've left in the League of Nations issues before turning to the International Labor Office stamps.

Two more pages of the League of Nations collection I recently acquired. There will be many more postings. These are related covers that preceded the issue of League overprinted Swiss stamps. My scanner truncated the second scan (why?), so I've put the snipped off text at the bottom of this post.




Here are the snipped off bits:

During the period between the initiation of the first League of Nations postmark on 8 November 1920 and the introduction of Swiss stamps with League overprints on 3 October 1922, the Secretariat used regular Swiss stamps. This cover coincidentally bears both “Geneva 1” and “Geneva 10” cancellations.

A registered cover from the League, 2 June 1921, probably philatelically inspired. It bears two fairly uncommon se-tenant pairs from booklets issued in 1921, possibly posted on their first day. (300,000 pairs of the 2½c and 120,000 of the 20c were issued).

I found that with the Epson software (and so maybe it's true for other makers as well), when I had the setting on "photo" rather than "document" (or "office"? -- can't remember, and can't connect my scanner right now to check), it would not scan even a full 8-1/2x11 area, much less anything larger. But when I switched to "document" (or "office" -- not sure why I'm thinking that was the option) then it would scan the whole area.

Perhaps there's a similar option on your software?

Thanks, Rodney! Just got a chance to do this, and the scans turned out well! (There are too many settings in this software that I've never taken the time to explore.)

Many thanks!

Enjoying your display of League of Nations material. Have you finished any additional pages.

Yes, I've finished several. Thanks for asking. I've not posted them yet and am thinking to start a blog with them. Any suggestions?  Welcome to the Forum.

You are obviously very senior in your experience with SdN and ILO issues, so I covet your advice. I'm working at the moment mainly on getting pages made for the ILO collection and some of the plebiscite issues. You are certainly right about the difficulty in collecting the scarcer items. Fortunately some but by no means all of these were included in the collection I purchased. I've added only a handful since making that purchase. I doubt that I'll exhibit at a show, having never done that before, but may create a web-site or blog, or maybe arrange the Forum postings according to the outline I posted earlier. Are any of your exhibits online? Might you post some of them on this Forum?

Moving some older posts for Bud
I just copied and paste your posts, this way they will remain in the original thread as well.


I sometimes get seduced away from my main collecting interest, which is the general world-wide classic era, into tempting specializations. I’ve lapsed again. This time I fell for a large, attractive collection of League of Nations stamps, covers, post cards, photographs and even first printings of the Versailles documents that brought the League into being.

I’ll be sorting it for some time, but early on I decided to take a cue from Rod and Firstfrog and make my own album. No album exists, on-line or otherwise, that can do justice to the collection. It will require well over a hundred pages, all told. So, as I go along, I’ll post the album pages I make on a League of Nations thread, which I have already requested but, apparently, is not yet up on the Forum. And I ask that this post be transferred to that thread when it does become available.

As a start, here are four pages I’ve finished. They should be self-explanatory. Comments and suggestions are welcome.
I left out some of the stamps on the first page so you can see the format better.

Oops. I see I've lopped of part of the text on the second page. I'll correct  that tomorrow,

Thanks, Jack, for moving the above posts. I'll not attempt a reorganization of the League of Nations thread until I've finished posting. Then maybe a more coherent arrangement would be welcomed.