New member Introduction

Welcome abctoo (may I actually be the firsto ) welcome you to the best forum around!

abctoo, 

greeting from Canada and a hearty welcome to the forum. Unfortunately, I cannot contribute anything to your quest. I am looking forward to learning from those that can and from what you can share.

David

Hi abctoo


 to a great Forum.

Jerry B

Welcome!!

Welcome abctoo ! 
René
Canada - East

I am trying to post images, but keep getting "wrong user/e-mail combination" and "user doesn't have an e-mail" messages. I was able to attach to a direct message (conversation) to another user, and hope the images attached here.  If not I hope you can access the images through the previous message (and I think the link to that message is at the end of this reply).  That message read: "Attached is a simple cover that expresses the Bangladesh provisional overprints on Pakistani stamps in use from 1971-1974. The total postage is 80 Paisa (20 Paisa for the single letter plus 60 Paisa registration). From the face you can see the same two line purple overprint on a commemorative stamp, a definitive stamp and postage stationery. This overprint is in purple, with its first line a single word in Bengali translating as "Bangladesh," and the second the single word "Bangladesh" in italics in English. The cancels on the face read: " BASAIL / 15 FEB 72 / MYMENSINGH " for mailing on February 15, 1972 at the Basail Post Office in Mymensingh. Also on the front are registration markings: (1) a hand-stamp "BASAIL" in black, and (2) hand-written (partially in Bengali) "R 115 / 72 15/2" (for Registered item #115, 1972 15 February). On the back is the receiving stamp: "DACCA G.P.O. / REG. / 17 FEB. 72." These provisional overprints come in a variety of colors, including black, purple, red, blue and green, though over the years many have disputed the authenticity of various overprints because of the colors used. Overprints can contain one, two or more lines of text in Bengali, English and/or some more local languages. The text can stand alone, be boxed, circled or otherwise enclosed or made a part of an overprint containing some image (like a map). There are thousands of combinations of different overprints on Pakistani stamps. Over the years, many people have declared all of the overprints to be fakes because of practices around the time of issue of: Bangladeshi collectors taking genuine, unused Pakistani stamps from their collections to local Bangladeshi post offices to obtain examples of a genuine overprint used at that local post office, but while both the stamps and overprint are genuine, that local post office did not have the specific stamp being overprinted in stock at the time it was overprinted. What fueled the fire was the demand of the international philatelic market for new and unusual issues. Ultimately, outright fakes were produced to satisfy the international demand for the "first" usage of overprints, and the "Mukti Fouze (Force)," carried by "Boy Scouts," and other "liberation force" processing markings came into being, and at a price that disillusioned anyone who came near them. In a country of 30 million people, over one hundred thousand pieces of mail was handled every day from late 1971 through April 1974 with such overprinted stamps."

Read more: thestampforum.boards.net/conversation/4626#ixzz5lkvz5Hb0

Welcome abctoo  
Sorry I cannot help on the 'Bangladesh' overprint covers, I would wish I had one! Good luck on an interesting project!

Thank you for that useful references on faked Bangladesh overprints 

Welcome to our Forum.
Have fun, post often and Happy Collecting !

To Beryllium Guy:

I was in San Leandro in the 1970s & 80s. Like Berkeley, San Leandro is adjacent to Oakland, but only on the opposite side. If the San Leandro stamp club is the one that met in the San Leandro Public Library, our paths almost crossed. Unfortunately, I never got a Bangladish cover there. I wish I had. A little more related history follows.

Does anyone know the worst job a stamp collector can have? In Spring of 1970, I started work at the Berkeley post office as a carrier. The trainer who took me out my first day on a route bought with him a satchel full of mail. When we arrived at the beginning of the route, less than 4 blocks from the University, he showed me how to carry the satchel and take the sorted mail out of it in sequence. During the first one or two addresses we delivered, he demonstrated all sorts of postal "tricks" to ease the process. When I got to the mail for the third address, I saw the most beautiful cover from Cambodia with large, colorful stamps affixed. I asked the trainer if it was okay if I knocked on the door and asked if they wanted the stamps on the envelope. He replied, definitely not, and that people rely on the post office to deliver their mail unimpeded and that to even suggest a recipient give you stamps while you are delivering mail damages the trust the public has that the post office will carry out what it promises to do. Several exciting covers later, the satchel was empty.

Later that year I transferred to the San Leandro post office as a clerk and worked parcel post, which job included receiving bulk mail and periodic mail using a complicated process to determine the rates to charge the bulk mailer for each piece. I worked "swing" shift which normally ended at 11 p.m. On New Year's Eve, the supervisor of the next shift (the "night" shift) who routinely started working at 10 p.m., told several of us that we had to work mandatory overtime "shaking sacks" out on the dock. "Shaking sacks" is taking each of the empty (and very dusty) mail sacks that had accumulated, and consolidating groups of them inside other sacks so they could be sent to storage. The "shaking" process checks to see all mail have been removed. [Another time while there, I actually found a letter mailed in 1944 inside an "empty" sack.] Dust flies all over when you "shake" them. I asked if I could go get my jacket out of my locker because we were going to be outside. He said, "No, there isn't enough time." Several of us were off sick the next couple of days. Shortly thereafter, I thought about returning to school and asked the postmaster if I could work part-time so I could work out a schedule to do that. "No, it was either full-time or nothing at all." I decided to go back to school.

In 1972, the daily newspaper in San Leandro ceased publication. I started publishing a weekly newspaper there with my dad. I opened a post office box at a San Leandro substation where I received not only the newspaper's mail but all of my stamp correspondence. The window clerks knew my collecting well.  I routinely picked up packages of stamps being sent to me from around the world, as well as sending my packages out (by insured, registered or certified mail) through them. And, of course Lynn's was being delivered to the box.  In 1982, a clerk said an interesting item came in the new stamp stocks. I was told that the stamps could not be separated to sell individually because there were no holes between them and if I did not want them, they would go back as damaged. Ultimately, three imperforate sheets of the 1982 20 cents ABC Library stamp were produced. The bulk of these went to the Weill Bros at Westpex. They are the largest holder of the 24 cents inverted airmail stamp. I shared the profits of the sale with the postal clerk.