1 9 5 0 / B U L G A R I A
Dear friends !
During the twelve months of 2006 I will present interesting items of the
twelve oldest Volleyball stamps. I hope you will be
interested in them. Today we continue with the third part (March), a stamp
(or, correctly spoken, two stamps) from
Bulgaria. If you have any interesting covers or other material to
enrich this site, please let me know.
Gunter
The third Volleyball stamp issued worldwide comes from BULGARIA. Actually, it was issued in two perforation versions on August 21st, 1950, three years after the second Volleyball stamp from JAPAN and five years after the first on from ROMANIA. This Bulgarian stamp was a general sport issue and it was issued together with three other stamps (depicting two running, cycling and shot put). The Volleyball stamp was designed by L. Kjuleliev, it was printed in photogravure and has a face value of 40 Lew. 150.000 stamps were printed in two different perforations: Version A is in line perforation 11 ½, verson D in line perforation 10 ¾.
Cover 1:
This cover was cancelled on the first day of issue (Aug 21st, 1950). It was registered and sent express from Sofia to a Mr Radanov in Plovdiv, a city in the southern / central part of Bulgaria. It is the second largest city in Bulgaria. Postage used was 40 Lew. I am not 100 % sure if it was not produced at a later date, because every detail seems to be perfect. The two cancels from Sophia are very suspicious, too; one of them is not killing any stamp. What is your opinion ?
Piet van den Berg (Holland) sent the following commentary regarding this cover: I think this cover was made for philatelic friends.
Cover 2:
In this example we have another cover, this time it is difficult to read the date of the cancel. It was sent to Belgium in an airmail registered letter (postage used was 60 Lew). It seems to have been sent from the same post office as our first example (check the registration label).
Cover 3:
Another example, this time
definitely influenced by a collector, who sent the full set of four sports
stamps on a registered cover (again from the same post office in Sofia ?).
It was sent to Mr Sarzin in New York. Mr Sarzin was a well known stamp
collector and dealer.
Although the black rubber cancel says "First Day" it is not a first day
cover, since the stamps were issued one day earlier.
The arrival cancel proofs that the letter arrived in New York on the 6th
of September, which means that it took 15 days to reach its destination.
There is another cancel on the reverse side, in violett colour, with the
date of Sept 7th, 1950. Maybe this was the post office from where the
letter was distributed.
The cancel on the front side indicates that it was sent through
airmail (Poste aerienne). The postage used was 73 Lew.
Piet van den Berg (Holland)
sent the following commentary regarding this cover: I think the FIRST DAY
is really a FDC with a second day cancel unfortunately.
My point of view was and still is that the cover was delivered too late to
the post office desk (or the plane to USA had already left Sofia) and that
the postman decided to cancel and send the covers the next day.
WHY ?? I am very sure that the way on which the addressee is put on the
cover must be from a company. I think in this case the Bulgarian Post.
They used an address plate which was quite usual in that time (and also in
the sixties) to put a nice address on a cover. For using that plate you
needed a "machine" and I am convinced that private persons did not have
that kind of material. For sure not in Bulgaria as it was/is a poor
country.
Your cover has the registered number 69201. My cover (which is
exactly the same) and addressee has the number 69181, so IT SEEMS that
there are 21 covers at least.
Cover 4:
Our next example shows a
registered cover sent from Stalin to Aurora, Illionois, USA. Postage
used on this airmail letter was 115 Lew.
The letter was sent on Oct 30th, 1951, passed through Sofia on the same
day and arrived on Nov 6th in Aurora, which means that it took seven days
to get there.
One interesting detail: The letter was not only sent from the city of
Stalin, this Russian politician also appears on the blue stamp on the left
hand side.
Cover 5:
The next cover was sent from
Sofia to St. Gallen in Switzreland (by airmail). The stamp was cancelled
on April 13th, 1952. It seems to have been a business letter, since the
sender is a company sepcialized in import of metals and machines.
Postage used was 40 Lew.
Our next example is another
airmail letter, registered in Sofia C (yes, we had that post office
before) on April 29th, 1952 and sent to Berne in Switzerland. This time
the postage used was Lew 45 (maybe because of the registration fee).
It arrived in Berne on May 6th and ate the distribution post office (Berne
Mattenhof) one day later.
Considering that our fourth example took only seven days to cross the
Atlantic it seems that postal services inside Europe were much slower,
because it also took also seven days to get from Bulgaria to Switzerland.
Another cover from Sofia to Covina, USA, sent by airmail on Aug 28th, 1950. The postage was 55 Lew.
This letter was sent from Kazanlak to Brussels in Belgium on Sep 23, 1950. It was registered but itr does not indicate if it was sent by airmail or not. The postage used was 40 Lew.
Another cover from Sofia to New York, USA, sent by airmail on Jan 10th, 1951. The postage was 90 Lew.
This letter seems to be
specially interesting. It was sent from Sofia C in as a registered airmail
letter to Budapest in Hungary on Sep 16th, 1950. The postage used was 55
Lew.
In the lower left corner there is a "cancel" which shows some kind of
registration number and the date. The letter might have had a declared
value as the actual letter inside the cover has the same "cancel" (see
third scan)
Another "special" cancel appears on the reverse side. I cannot explain
this cancel.
Another registered cover from Sofia to Columbia, Lousiana, USA, sent by airmail on Aug 22nd, 1950. The postage was 73 Lew. It is a similar phlatelic product as cover number 003.
Another registered cover from Sofia, this time to Paris sent by airmail on Aug 25nd, 1950. The postage was 73 Lew. It has a reception cancel on the reverse side from "Paris XVII Distriubtion", dated Sep 1, 1950. So the letter took six days for its journey.
Overview os pastage rates used on the different covers:
cover number
I hope you enjoyed this little selection of covers with the third Volleyball stamp.
