Netherlands East Indies - unrecorded variations

[Rein]

Definitives of the Dutch Overseas Colonies have had a lot of variations that were never allowed to enter a catalogue - not even a Dutch one!

The Netherlands East Indies 1 guilder value of the 1913-1931 series is a good example:



and details of various printings (including some with overprints)





1921 60c overprint:



airmail 75c overprint:

[OttawaMike]

Could be plate wear. If so, those types of things seldom get listed in catalogues, you would have to refer to specialized literature.

[Rein]

Could be plate wear. If so, those types of things seldom get listed in catalogues, you would have to refer to specialized literature.

You must be kidding

Haven't you seen the horizontal and vertical lines on one stamp and the diagonal lines on the other???

Different engravings no doubt about it!

Where nowadays will we find specialized literature? Wasn't that a thing from the 19th century? Or the early 20th maybe???

In what philatelic world do you live?

[iomoon]

Rein,

perhaps if you could include a description of what we are supposed to be looking at rather than just posting images with details of what type of overprint, we might better know what we are looking for.

This board is meant to help people, not to make them rack their brains for 5 minutes.

[GUTTERS]

You must be kidding

Haven't you seen the horizontal and vertical lines on one stamp and the diagonal lines on the other???

Different engravings no doubt about it!

Where nowadays will we find specialized literature? Wasn't that a thing from the 19th century? Or the early 20th maybe???

In what philatelic world do you live?

RUDE

[OttawaMike]

Could be a re-entry. If so, those types of things seldom get listed in catalogues, you would have to refer to specialized literature.

[Rein]

You must be kidding

Haven't you seen the horizontal and vertical lines on one stamp and the diagonal lines on the other???

Different engravings no doubt about it!

Where nowadays will we find specialized literature? Wasn't that a thing from the 19th century? Or the early 20th maybe???

In what philatelic world do you live?

Rein,

perhaps if you could include a description of what we are supposed to be looking at rather than just posting images with details of what type of overprint, we might better know what we are looking for.

You are awfully right! My serious mistake! Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

But as to my remarks on literature I am afraid to be still right. There is hardly any literature on modern - that is 20th century and later - postage stamps that I can refer to.

And as to my final remark, that was an unnecesary piece though not meant to be rude...

[OttawaMike]

All is forgiven.

[yannis]

But as to my remarks on literature I am afraid to be still right. There is hardly any literature on modern - that is 20th century and later - postage stamps that I can refer to.

Rein

This is a great opportunity in a way! You could study them and come up with a paper!

To my eye in looks like a repaired plate (i.e re-entry). This was very common approach to plate wear in those days. They would change a bit of the hatching or shading, remove frames and the like. I am sure that if you can get hold of a batch of these stamps from 1913 to 1920 you can observe both the wear as well as the repair! Just studying the perforation varieties for the 'Palm Issues', forget about plates would probably fill a few good chapters of a book!

Yannis

[fromdownunder]

Rein

This is a great opportunity in a way! You could study them and come up with a paper!

Yannis

This is actually an excellent and sometimes misunderstood point (no Rein, I am not referring to you here - this is just a general observation)

There is a feeling I get that some collectors, especially new collectors, have the impression that there is a nebulous group of "they" out there who study and report all the varieties on every stamp that was ever produced.

The truth is as most of us know, that specialised literature is produced by specialist collectors who spend years studying particular stamps and issues, and become the sole or primary source of all things relating to these particular stamps.

Many thousands, if not tens of thousands of stamps would not have been studied in much detail at all, hense, no literature.

Norm

[crosscrescent]

Norm,

This means that if there are members willing to really go study and research as our dear Roly has done on the Penny Universal, there are probably a lot of varieties out there just dying to be noticed and studied.

Cheers
Andrew

[Rein]

In 1916 - probably there is no date in that book - the Dutch Philatelic Association had a Handbook on the Dutch East Indies published. That book is the only specialized printed in book-form literature about the Dutch East Indies stamps. It was a bit too early for the stamps dealt above to give enlugh details other than that steel plates were involved and that mr. D. Harting was the engraver.

There is ony other source in book--form that got published in May 1940 in New York bij Arthur Schiller and Johan de Kruyff of the New York Netherlands and Colonies Philatelists It deals with all the Dutch and Colonies stamps.

I passed rather unnoticed as it was published at a time that the Netherlands were invaded by the German troops....

I will return to pasages in that book that are great!

[Rein]

The Manual proves that my assumption of these variations not being recorded before was wrong!

But on the other hand it shows that whatever great philatelists have once researched and published AND what wasn't picked up by the catalogue makers out of mainly commercial reasons - they didn't have the material and/or were too lazy to dig into the matter - gets lost!! Or forgotten for 70 years and accidentally discovered again....

See another thread of mine:

https://www.stampboards.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=11135

I know out of first hand that the editors of the Dutch Stamp Dealers Association issued Dutch and Colonies Stamp Catalogue don't really bother to read the monthly columns in the only Dutch nation-wide stamp magazine "Filatelie" and pick up for their Specialists Catalogue what is there on a silver tray!

But getting back to the Indies:





It was all there - the information about the 1 Guilder Dutch East Indies of the 1913 Queen and Palm tree series. Almost 70 years ago!

[Rein]

The article in the Nederlandsch Maandblad voor Philatelie Arthur Schiller and Johannes de Kruyff are referring to is on page 90:








and is not quite in line with what is stated in the Manual.

I'll come back to that later....

[yannis]

Rein

That is a good discovery, finding the right literature. I have some stamps from the Netherlands East Indies and made me look into them differently after your post! Do you know of any publication for the Netherlands VOC handstamps?

Yannis

[Rein]

@Yannis

My main specialization is modern printing technics and by applying my methods of research to older issues I got in to this Dutch East Indies subject....

So really, the VOC is too far back...

[Greg Ioannou]

This first one you showed us is different from the ones illustrated in the literature. The lines radiating away from the central shaded portion are much shorter.

Greg

[Rein]

@Greg

I noticed that as well but my other copies of that variation do have longer rays... This could be what OttawaMike suggested "wear" !?

On the other hand the original die was steel engraved and if you like at the delicate lines of the design, you may just wonder why that hadn't been affected?

[Rein]

To my eye in looks like a repaired plate (i.e re-entry). This was very common approach to plate wear in those days. They would change a bit of the hatching or shading, remove frames and the like. I am sure that if you can get hold of a batch of these stamps from 1913 to 1920 you can observe both the wear as well as the repair! Just studying the perforation varieties for the 'Palm Issues', forget about plates would probably fill a few good chapters of a book!

Yannis

I'm just a student of modern stamp printing techniques and early recess-intaglio hadn't been my field yet.

The original die had been engraved in steel by mr. D. Harting - that is the frame, the Queen, the palms, but the name of the country, the value ciphers and the "cent"and "gulden" had been done separately in a later stages.

This design had been used for not just the Dutch East Indies but also for Curacao and Suriname. The design is identical for all! During the whole period!

The added parts were made when and on what???

The original engraving must have been multiply into several dies that could be modified and the extras added for the various values and regions. Each of these dies then transferred to a molette-cylinder [transfer-roll] from which the separate entries in the plates would be made.

Still, assuming that no electro-chemical transfer [galvano] was involved.

The term "re-entry" only refers to a second attempt to improve a particular stamp-position on the plates where the transfer-roll hadn't done its work right in the first place. Judging by the completely different lines in the cipher-frame this is certainly not the case.

From what I can read in the literature so far found is that the diagonal lines cipher-frame only occurs in certain stamps - the 1928 75c on 1 guilder Airmail and printings of the 1 guilders from 1933 [?] onwards.

And that is where another problem arises.

That fact that stamps had been printed in the Netherlands, were shipped to the Dutch East Indies , were stored in the Post Office store-houses in Batavia and were distributed to the local post offices all over the archipelago.....

From official sources I have, the 50c and 2gld50, were last printed in 1932 and most of the stamp sheets printed in that year had been delivered to the Dutch Post Office AND shipped to the Dutch East Indies as well. No 1 guilder stamps were shipped to the Dutch East Indies in 1932 or later!

Whatever was reported by philatelists of variations / printings having been issued of the 1 guilders after 1931 is not correct, that is nothing printed after 1931 and any reported changes come from an earlier period or are due to climatical changes....

[Rein]

The Manual proves that my assumption of these variations not being recorded before was wrong!

But on the other hand it shows that whatever great philatelists have once researched and published AND what wasn't picked up by the catalogue makers out of mainly commercial reasons - they didn't have the material and/or were too lazy to dig into the matter - gets lost!! Or forgotten for 70 years and accidentally discovered again....

See another thread of mine:

https://www.stampboards.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=11135

I know out of first hand that the editors of the Dutch Stamp Dealers Association issued Dutch and Colonies Stamp Catalogue don't really bother to read the monthly columns in the only Dutch nation-wide stamp magazine "Filatelie" and pick up for their Specialists Catalogue what is there on a silver tray!

But getting back to the Indies:





It was all there - the information about the 1 Guilder Dutch East Indies of the 1913 Queen and Palm tree series. Almost 70 years ago!

[PBR]

Rein,

thanks for posting this information. I have just located a copy of this manual and bought instantly.

Cheers,

pbr