Austria: Classic Stamps 1850-1940

How to Soak Early Austrian Stamps

I should add this to the thread.  Old Austrian stamps are famous for having gum that transforms into some sort of indestructible cement after enough years, and these old designs are often impossible to remove from backing paper regardless of how many hours you let them soak in water.  I've often thought that this type of gum was animal-based, rather than the plant-based stuff common later on (e.g. dextrose) or the synthetics that were in use at the end of the water-activated gum era (e.g. polyvinyl alcohol).  I was digging through some old perfin journals trying to solve a Yugoslavian perfin and I came across this article with a hint on how we might be able to soak these old stamps successfully.



Ryan

I haven't tried the pancreatin yet - I was in a store with lots of supplements & vitamins a couple of months ago but couldn't find it, and then I came home to look up this article snip and found out I was remembering the product name incorrectly. No wonder I couldn't find any ....

Hopefully this will help jog my memory to look under "P" for "pancreatin", not under "C" ....

Ryan

Coat of Arms

1920 - Scott #202 #209 out of set



1920 - Scott # 228 out of imperf set

I am cross-posting these Austrian stamps I believe may be reprints.  My notations on the album page from some time back mention that Michel lists them as issued in 1870 and the catalogue value in 1989 was DM 168.00 (about US$80):



Although they are not marked NACHDRUCK or NEUDRUCK (Reprint or New Printing) as some classic Austrian stamps which have been reprinted are, the fact that Scott catalogue values them for over $10,000 (in 2017 Scott's) leads me to believe I have not hit the jackpot!  I received them in a collection from a friend of a friend, and there were a lot of nice items in the album!  They look pretty real to me, anyway.  Wondering if anyone has information on how to tell them apart.....

Stan (stainlessb ), it looks to me like Austria, Sc 85, 4k gray green, design type A18.  Used CV is $15, in my 2008 Scott Classic Specialized Catalogue, so a very nice stamp.  I don't have it in my Austria collection, that's for sure.

and one more  One Guilden

Hello Stan, it is a revenue and here is a webpage covering the bare essentials:-

austrianphilately.com/itsarevenue/index.htm

Hope it helps.

(edit) I have just emailed you a word doc that might be of use with the early issues.

More interesting (at least to me) finds in the envelope of early Austria
Scott #63 Perfin is MT & Co  Vienna, 1-25,year unknown


A very early Newspaper stamp, Mercury,  I believe P10, 1880 this one has a nice  postmark Oct 5, 1885  1/2 kr


 A  2 Kreutzer Newspaper stamp - maybe Sc # PR3 (unsure whether a or b)  1858-59


A 1 Kreutzer Newspaper stamp  PR 2 or PR5


Austria Sc # 6 Type II (I think,,,) thick paper


and  here's one I have not found yet...  Looks to be Aug 24, 1897. perfs top and right  ( a corner  location on the sheet?)


OK, here's another...   1873 (??) cancel  no denomination.... a cinderella???


that's all i got!

Stay healthy!

Thanks for your interesting posts, as always, Stan!  You do get some cool material in these lots you are buying.

Just wanted to comment on this postmark; I think you have misread it.  The "5-10 V" portion of the CDS is probably a time indicator, not the date.  I think that the date is 22-8-85, so 22-Aug-1885 and not 05-Oct.  If you look at the formatting compared to some of your others, I think you can see which portion is the date.  Sometimes they insert the time indicator in between the day/month and the year.  I am not fond of that format myself, but there you have it.

Additionally, I wanted to point out that this is an interesting postmark in another way.  The town BRNO MESTO is located in southern Moravia in the Czech Republic, which I guess must have been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire back in the day.  We need to consult one of our postmark guys like Jon (blaamand ) or Jens (barbu ) or tobben63 , but this may be considered as a Czechoslovakia or Czech Republic forerunner.

Anyway, thanks again for keeping the juices flowing around here! 


Edit:  It looks like Jon wrote his post more quickly and beat me to the punch.  He already spotted the BRNO MESTO location!!

Additional Edit:  The last stamp shown in the post is inscribed OT KRAJCZAR, which is written in Hungarian, not German.  A very quick web search shows this to be a revenue stamp of some kind, but it is not clear to me if it is considered as Austria-Hungary or just Hungary.  There seemed to be web listings for both, and I do not have a catalogue to check.

I am finding references to "varnish bars" with little explanation. Was ist das?

stainlessb, here is the page from my collection. The bottom 3 rows show some of the 1901 Franz Josef stamps with varnish bars, or, at least the ones that I have. I scanned the 10 heller which is below but it is hard to see the bars from a scan, but one way of telling is that the stamp will have a bit of a rumpled appearance. Ultimately it is easier to see them in the oblique photo I took bottom-most. This shows the varnish bars clearly going up at an angle from lower right to upper left.

I saw that post earlier in the thread regarding the enzyme for removing those early Austrian stubborn soakers and may give that a whirl but it occurred to me that I would not want to use something like Pure Citrus on these stamps because I wonder if it might dissolve the varnish bars. I experimented with trying to remove some of those Austrian stamps on card stock with Pure Citrus at one point without success but, at the time, it didn't occur to me that it might also damage early Austrian stamps with varnish bars. Anyway, just something to think about.

I don't remember there are variations on the number of varnish bars these stamps. The bars, however, are on the face of the stamp rather than the back.

The varnish bars are quite peculiar. Michel Spezial differentiate between 3-4 different styles of varnish bars, depending on the width of each bar and distance between them. Experts further classify different types of varnish as well. 

Need to consider this before making my DIY pages for Austria, haven't yet decided on if I will include the different types for these varnish stripes, but surely I will skip different types of varnish.