ITEM OF THE MONTH

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1 9 5 0 / H U N G A R Y

 

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 fourth part (April), a stamp (and its different versions) from Hungary. If you have any interesting covers or other material to enrich this site, please let me know.
Gunter

 

 

The fourth Volleyball stamp issued worldwide comes from Hungary. It was issued on December 2nd, 1950 as a general sports issue together with nine other values. This Volleyball stamp was designed by S. Legrady, it was printed in photogravure and has a face value of 30 filler. 175.456 stamps were printed of the perforated version (12 : 12 1/2). There exists also an imperforated version. Both have watermark number 12.

 
Michel 1134 A; Scott C82; Yvert Tellier PA 106; Stanley Gibbons 1149; Domfil 950.14 Michel 1134 B; Scott C82 imp; Yvert Tellier PA 106 imp; Stanley Gibbons 1149 imp; Domfil 950.14 ND
This stamp exists also with e perforation mistake. In this case the printing was transferred to the reverse side.
watermark 12
Unfortunately I can only present one philatelically influenced cover with this stamp.

This cover definitely was produced by a collector. It bears five of the ten sports stamps issued on Dec 2nd, 1950. The cover is a registered first day cover and it was sent by airmail from the Hungarian capital Budapest to Saint Louis, Missouri, USA. It took three days to reach Saint Louis (with an Air Mail Field cancel from New York dated Dec 5th, 1950) and another day to get to its destination post office Saint Louis, MO, Jennings Bridge.

My friend Piet van den Berg from Holand sent me another (similar) cover with the following remarks:

It is a first day cover BUT cancelled at the philatelic department in Budapest and sent to the UK. I think in that time it was the same procedure as in Holland. In Holland you bought the blanc FDC at a philatelic shop and on the first day you went to the post office to buy the stamps. From there on they were sent to the philatelic department of the Dutch Post and the cover got the FD cancel. Then the cover was sent back to you or to any given address. So there are NO FDC's in Holland from that period without address.
The set of Hungary are 9 stamps but the airmail stamps (5) are on one cover and the normal stamps on the other cover. LEGIPOSTA means airmail.
So, as you can see, it is a registered airmail ("legiposta") cover sent on the first day of issue from Budapest (Hungary) to London (England).
The registration is shown through the registration labels, but also through the blue cross on the front and reverse side. The crosses were applied by the UK Post to check if the rate was correct and that in this case the receiver did not have to pay extra for it.

 

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