Germany: Allied & Soviet Zone Berlin Issues 1948-1990

Hi Chris, cannot help with the overprints but have to agree that where genuine used are  scarce and opportunity exists to confuse the potential buyer one is advised to  seek out stamps with complete dates rather than corner strikes. 

The 15pf brown at least has the correct year slug “7 . 49”

I,’m inclined to give the 80pf the benefit of the doubt also. it does look like the date is 49 and the cancel is fuzzy enough to indicate regular rather than “special” treatment 

These are nice Chris. I don't have a complete set myself, I only have a few of the Red Overprints so far. You never know what you will find in a Frog box. Mike.

Xavier (hrdoktorx), the mint set is excellent.... thanks for posting it!

Lots of CV there, as I recall, so really great stuff.  I figured you must have some of these already! 

By the way, any idea how to tell forged overprints from genuine ones?  I would still like to understand that, if someone can fill me in.

A couple of years later, three of these stamps were re-issued with a green overprint and a price change:

Before the "Soviet Occupation Zone" standardized overprints, there were local overprints (where I'm missing that rare shade of the 60pfg issue):

Another variant of this series used in the Western Occupation Zone has the postal horn overprint in a matrix pattern covering the whole stamps (again having the two 60pfg color shades):

To mirror the Soviet-provided series of worker images, the Western powers went with a minimalist "numbers" design, although the colour code for each value is pretty much the same:

As far as the horn matrix overprint issues go, however, I only have managed to find two so far:

I can maybe shed some light here. The Allied Military (AM) Post issues of Germany from 1945-46 exist in three sets. The first one is the German (or Braunschweig) printing, the second one is the American (or Washington) printing, and the third one is the English (or London) printing.

The German printing is nominally 11 perf., but varieties exist (11x11-1/2, 11-1/2x11, and 11-1/2). It is the most extensive in terms of number of denominations:



The American printing is perf. 11, with only some of the smaller format stamps (not all shown in the image below):



It is recognizable from the German printing by looking at the curlicues in the bottom right corner, where the space between the curlicues and the frame is filled in the American (and English) printing, while it is left empty in the German printing. See here from my AFA catalog (in Danish: Tyske=German, trykplader=printing plate):



The English printing is much easier to identify as it is perf. 14x14-1/2 (according to Yvert & Tellier) or 14-1/4x14-3/4 (according to AFA):



Of course, most albums do not make such distinctions, and you end up with pages like the one from my grandfather's Harris album:



where the issues are mixed (also partly my doing). But he was there at the time so I like to think some issues in there are true originals!

I was very happy when I finally completed all three sets!

Following are the 1948 posthorn overprint issues of the American and British zones on the 1946 Germany numeral stamps.  The band posthorn overprints are listed as Scott #585A-593 and the carpet posthorn overprints are listed as Scott #593A-599.

I have a question for the group regarding the expertizing marks on the band overprint issues.  There is a tiny "Sb" at the lower right corner on most of these stamps.  I was told long ago that if these stamps had "Sb" or just "b" stamped on the back then the overprint was definitely genuine.  Can anyone confirm this?  I would appreciate your replies and comments.

The carpet overprint issues are all marked GPSY for the Germany Philatelic Society in the United States and have additional stamped or manuscript expertizing marks, which was typical for the way GPSY expertized stamps, so I am confident the overprints on these issues are genuine.

Thank you cara for your response and advice.  I am aware of the BPP expertizing standards but, as you mentioned, not all expertizing services adhere to these standards.  The standards used by various agencies have also changed over time, so the marks are dependent on when the stamp was expertized.  For example, on the stamps shown, I believe the experts for GPSY signed upside-down at the top of a stamp to signify gum disturbances or partial gum.  The good aspect of GPSY expertizing is that its marks are not known to be forged.  Nowadays, the Germany Philatelic Society of the US does not officially expertize stamps, but its opinions are recognized as being "as good as" an expert's opinion.

For the benefit of English-speaking members of TSF, following is an excerpt from the English version of BPP standards:











I have also found the following site to be tremendously helpful on identifying experts' marks: www.filatelia.fi/experts .