China: Stamps

Maybe a typo in the translation of the Ma catalog?

Here is a variety of China - Tsingtau (now called Qīngdǎo) Province, 10 cents (Silver Currency) overprint on the $1000 (Gold Currency) issue, a Scotts #4 var.  The overprinted province name, Tsingtau (青島) Qīngdǎo, appears in parentheses at the bottom of the stamps and is read from right to left.  If you start with the top right character, go down one, then repeat that with the left column, the top four overprinted characters 銀圓 壹角 (Yínyuán yī jiǎo) translate to Silver dollar (currency) 1 jiao (the equivalent of 10 cents). 

In April 1949, the Silver Dollar currency replaced the Gold Dollar one, which had replaced the National Currency in the Fall of 1948.  This 10 cent stamp is the high value of the set of four, which Scotts says was issued in May 1949.  Scotts indicates: "Handstamp Surcharged in Purple (#1-2), Blue (#3) or Red (#4)." The #4s shown below do not appear to be handstamped in red, but in purple.   My 2009 Scotts CD only pictures the #1 stamp and not the rest of the set.  The overprint in that color picture does not look purple to me.  Does anybody have a copy of this China-Tsingtau Province stamp, Scotts #4, so that we can compare the colors of the overprints?  



For a little additional information, at the beginning of 1939, the single letter rate was 25 cents.  By Autumn of 1946, the period of China's post- World War II hyperinflation had already begun to set in with the surface rate for the 1st 20 grams $300.00 in National Currency.  When the Gold Dollar currency replaced the National Currency in the Fall of 1948, the surface rate for the first 20 grams in National Currency had increased to $300,000.00 (a thousand-fold).  The new replacement rate was $3,000,000.00 in National Currency to 1 Gold Dollar,  The surface rate then started at 35 cents of a Gold Dollar (a reduction of nearly ten million to one).  At the end of April 1949, a half a year later, the Silver Dollar currency replaced the Gold Dollar at an exchange rate of $4,000,000.00 Gold Dollars for $1.00 in Silver Dollar currency, with the 20 gram surface rate being set at 10 cents of a Silver Dollar.  The rates only went up from there until the Nationalist government collapsed on Mainland of China. 

The communists also suffered inflation.  Various areas had their own circulating currency or used the People's Currency [Renminbi].  In Central Anhui by March 1949, the local rate was $2 and by the end of August 1950 had increased to $5,000, when the People's Republic reformed them.

I just wrote about "finding" the ABC Library stamp imperforates, and now realize my user name also has "abc" in it. That's not from the stamps and I do not want you to get a wrong impression of me.  Rather in the height of the baseball card collecting craze in the late 1980s, a friend of mine who rented videos and video games wanted to open another location.  I went in with him.  The store name combined his business name and mine into "City Video and baseball cards too." The "abctoo" name got me first listing in the phone book in many collector categories. A little more than six months after we opened, the "Block Buster" chain announced it was opening a large store across the street. We lasted out the year.

Collectors can have many interests over their lifetimes. The Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle cards that a kid would put on the spokes of a bicycle to heard the clatter they made as the wheels went around often sounded so much better in the child's mind than did the cards of less popular players.

If anyone wants to trade old stamps or non-philatelically created covers for collector cards, there will be more than a million available when I qualify to do so on the Forum.  In separate eBay auctions over the past couple of years, I sold two different lots, each weighing over half a ton and containing 750,000 common cards.  Actually it was three lots.  The first one, a buyer located in Kansas bid $200, but the lowest bid a shipping company would give was $768.00 if the shipper only had to come by with a forklift and pick up the 66 boxes already banded to a pallet, plus an additional $950 (including the pallet and wrapping materials) if the shipper palletized them.  We dropped that transaction.  The two lots did sell on eBay, one for $9.99 (66 boxes) and the other for 99 cents (81 boxes), but the buyers had to pick them up and bring their own help to load.  At one time, collector card packs with gum inside qualified as "food products" for mailing at reduced rates, like "live" baby chickens still do today.  That all changed with the trade disputes in the late 1960s between the United States and Canada over where the cards had to be printed and what languages had to be printed on them.  At other times, collector cards could be sent at reduced media mail rates (they have statistics on them). The Postal Reorganization Act of 1971 changed all that.  I think I am rambling, so I better stop.

Here are some booklets that I got in an auction long ago. Does anyone have info or catalog value for these? Inside each book are First Day Covers?, one with each stamp from the set of stamps pictured. I have only taken pics of the first stamp/FDC. They are all from 1979. The flower is dated 11/10, Great Wall sections 6/25 and the Tigers are 7/20.

As mentioned in another thread, here is part of a Postage Due Stamps page from an older Scott Catalog bought in the 60s by my late dad.
Sc J80-86 1944
Sc J87-92 1945
Sc J93-100 (101 missing) 1947
Sc J102-J109 1948

René

Very nice cover. The postmark date is 27Dec1947, less than 2 weeks after Chinese Postal Administration 50th Anniversary stamps were issued (complete set on front of your cover).

I first started studying Chinese history in college before I switched over to Japanese. At that time (not that long after the Great Wall was built!), Wade-Giles was the standard form of Romanization, at least in the academic circles I traveled in then.

(Japanese had its own competing Romanization methods, but they were similar enough that it was easy to learn one and then switch back and forth as needed.  Plus, in general, the pronunciation is more straightforward, except for a few nuances, such as how syllables are divided up and pronounced, and distinguishing the length of vowel sounds.)

The switchover by the PRC to Pinyin Romanization happened after I graduated, and I never actually studied the new system nor adapted to it particularly well. (Took me years to transition to "Beijing".) But here are several references on how they came about, what their differences are, and how to pronounce them.

(Or, pro tip, just ask khj!)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wade%E2%80%93Giles

www.loc.gov/catdir/pinyin/difference.html

libraries.indiana.edu/chinese-studies-pinyin-wade-giles-conversion-table

www.chinasage.info/wade-giles.htm

Kim (khj ), I originally posted the following on my Facebook page in November of 2015 and it was suggested by Dave (Philatarium ) that I follow up with you but I seem to have never done so. I was reminded of this post a week or so ago when someone randomly made a comment on this particular post and I am still curious what your opinion is. Here is what I stated and the scan of the stamps I am referring to:

"Below are three stamps from the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen issues of Central Trust Printing of 1942-43 and the Pacheng Printing of 1944-46. The stamps are, from left to right, Sc. 505, Sc. 550 and Sc. 560. Looking in the Scott Catalog for 2016 that I have home from the library, Sc. 550, the middle stamp below, has a used value of $13.00.

I can tell you that most of these stamps, and I have quite a few, are mint-hinged, and it is rare that you come across a used one so I think the used value is legit due to scarcity. But, I never seem to see sellers, eBay or otherwise, attempting to take advantage of this premium in the catalog and selling stamps that have a higher used value at a higher price....or am I missing something?

My suspicion is that if one tried to sell Sc. 550 on eBay, it would get few if any bids, even if it were highlighted as being used. What do you all think? Does a Chinese specialist really look for the used, more valuable stamps?"

darkormex, if I were going to specifically attempt to acquire a postally used 30c (one that actually went through the mail system), I would probably pass on that one.

The canceller used to make the cancel was likely genuine (somewhat similar but not exactly the same as some Shanghai cancels I have), but everything else about the cancel and the stamp makes me wonder if the stamp actually was used to mail something that went through the postal system.

Keep in mind that I am not a cancel collector, but based on my limited observations of Chinese stamps in my accumulation and also those I've seen posted online:

-- solid double circle cancels with some Roman characters for that era are not common (segmented inner solid circle even less common, the same in only Chinese characters even less common); dotted circle cancel began to dominate as time went on to the eventual Communist takeover
-- very sharp thin line cancels are definitely not the norm, the only ones I have that are genuine postally used all have noticeable drop-outs; most all-Chinese cancels tend to have thick lines/characters, thin line cancels tend to be ones that have some/many Roman letters
-- ink color doesn't look right, specifically it looks too dark (most cancels are grayish with poor coverage making them appear washed-out)
-- for such a sharp cancel, the year and place are noticeably/conveniently off the stamp
-- the stamp itself doesn't look postally used from the front (best to look at the back; many issues were no gum, so you had to apply glue; combined with poor envelope paper quality, affixed stamps that went through the postal system tend to have a "rough" appearance on the back unless they've been pressed)

I can't say the stamp isn't genuine postally used. It is either a remarkably excellent postally used stamp (possibly favor-cancelled), or somebody applied the cancel to make it look used.

I would suggest looking at the backs of those 3 stamps and comparing. The $5 stamp is almost certainly genuine postally used. The $20 stamp is very likely genuine postally used. If the back of the 30c stamp doesn't look at least as rough as the back of the $20 stamp, I would have doubts about whether the 30c stamp is genuine postally used.

As Salentin pointed out, some of the German hyper-inflation stamps have the same issue of genuinely "postally used" or not. Hence, in Scott you will sometimes see the used price italicized. Genuine cancellers were used to fake cancels, but on many of the fake cancels the general ink type for that era is noticeably incorrect.

Unfortunately, for the stamps where postally used are in much greater demand, the number of forgeries are just ridiculous, often far exceeding the number of legitimately used examples by a fair margin. That's why you see such a massive markup because there are so many decent forgeries out there. I was talking to a forgery expert a while back and he said he regularly pulled forged cancels out of dealer stocks, not because they were trying to defraud people but because they were understandably unaware that the cancels were illegitimate.

Although IRC is quoted in the Shanghai Telephone Directory, as "International Relief Committee" (IRC)
I can find little further evidence.
I am wondering if it is one of the same, as "International Rescue Committee" (IRC) founded by Albert Einstein in 1933  ?