When I wrote shortly about these stamps last week, I had no idea what kind of thrilling research adventure I’d be taken into. I thought I had picked a somewhat simple series to play with for upcoming weekend (as well as for blog topic), but boy I was wrong. I did have a superb weekend when digging up resources and researching stamps from the series. This post contains updated bits and pieces, as well as more detailed information about the series. And then there are plenty of scans from my collection.

Essential basics

The series contains 15 different values from 2ft up to 100ft.

Perforations

All values except 3 and 12ft can be found in perforations A (12¼:11½), B (imperf), C (11½:12¼) or D (12¾:12½ ); the 3 and 12ft exist only in A, B or D.

The most complete listing of perforation variants can be found on Hungarian specialized stamp catalog (my compliments to Jay and Tamas for giving me access to this).

Michel does lists mosts perforation variants, but it does omit some. Scott does list even fewer varieties than Michel… Interestingly, all the catalogs give/use slightly different figures/accuracy for perforations.

Papers

Hungarian specialized catalog scans I have, don’t mention about fluorescent fibers, but split the A and C perforated stamps to 3 differently coated papers: glossy, semi-glossy and matt. D stamps exist only in matt coated paper.

Michel does not list paper types specifically, but mentions that stamps from the series are known with normal paper (x) and paper with fluorescent fibers (y). Under UV-lamp the paper with fluorescent fibers looks heavily brownish compared to normal paper (in addition of which it has the glowing fibers scattered all around).

Size

The Hungarian specialized catalogue mentions that future listings may include size variants. Other catalogs don’t mention about these.

Summary table

For my personal record I’ve created (and updated time and again) following summary table which uses Michel numbers, but accumulates pieces of information from other sources as well:

Based on my findings and information so far, I have several open questions relating to paper type. Do C perforated stamp exist other than normal paper? And do D perforated stamps exist only on paper with fluorescent fibers? And do all the values of A perf stamps exist in paper with fluorescent fibers?

Show me some stamps and variants!

Here’s a short photo gallery of items in my current collection. These are all low-resolution scans (to save money and resources with hosting). If anybody wants to have access to high-resolution (600 dpi) scans, please drop in a comment and ask; they are about 36MB of jpg-images.

2ft

3ft

4ft

5ft

6ft

7ft

8ft

10ft

12ft

20ft

30ft

40ft

50ft

70ft

100ft

Closing words

Any comments about the subject are wellcome…Though my weekend (and part of the following week) went quickly with these stamps, I did learn a lot about them. But I’m sure out there are several collectors who have studied these even more; please educate me.

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