Poland 1950 Rebuilding of Warsaw Stamps
After World War II, Poland issued several stamps commemorating rebuilding of Warsaw. After the currency reform of 1950, the “Bricklayers by King Sigismund’s column” stamp was re-issued in new color & face value. Though Michel states this stamp exists in varying perforations and two color varieties, it never goes into more detail about these. Thus I was first quite amazed when I saw examples of both color varieties side by side. They appear somewhat different on parts of printing.
The blue-green stamp has a solid colored background fill, whereas the (yellow) green stamp doesn’t have any kind of fill. At first I thought I had stumbled upon some sort of print freak, but a bit of Googling showed that this is the way these stamps should look.
1950 Poland. Rebuilding of Warsaw. Bricklayers by King Sigismund's column.
The specialized Polish catalog (Fischer) lists the above as 541b & 541a. The yellow green (a) has been printed in number of 195 million copies, the blue green(b) only about 10 million copies… I’m a bit surprised that the major catalogs don’t mention anything about the existence of shaded background fill on blue green stamp. But I guess communist-era Poland is simply “popular enough” to justify some additional level of details.
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They seem identical in design to me. I think the change in color might make it seem they are different when they are not. Come to think of it, it is hard to think of any great rarities outside China. If they accomplished little else, the iron curtain regimes were quite good at getting stamps into the hands of foreign collectors in order to gain foreign exchange. Even in the case of China, there was a great reserve of collections of PRC in East Germany which took a long time to clear the market. Here is a rarity:
http://www.interasia-auctions.com/cgi-bin/lot_auc.php?site=1&lang=1&sale=9&lot=1173
and not even a whole stamp!
@Fred… The design is identical, but the lower stamp has a shaded background fill. That’s a major difference! Below is a digitally modified image that enhances the background fill (with red outline):
Re, PRC stamp… And somebody paid that sum
Why not?…stamps make some people nuts!!!
I agree with Fred Bauder. I can’t see any difference except the small difference in shade.
Keijo, I do not have this stamp but I think it is printed by photogravure. Thus the design is printed from a plate of images which are inked and the printed images reflect the depths of ink held on that plate. Just as any intaglio [so-called ‘engraved’ or ‘recess’] stamp is inked where the ink was deep in the engraved lines of the design on the plate. The blue-green stamp shows inked areas, outside the design frame, that the yellow-green does not. I am guessing but I think that the printer went back to the original, master, negative, and used it again to make a new plate. He was advised to expect the design to have a long life. He could expect the plate to wear down. With wear, detail would be lost in shadows in the design. So he tried to make a plate in which the shadows would keep detail, even after wear. He did this by reducing the contrast of the image. Compare the two stamps on any image editing software and you will see: the histogram of the yellow green stamp has clear ‘shoulders’ green to the right, red and blue to the left, as it is a much more contrasty image. But in reducing the contrast he reduced the exposure, and rendered the borders and highlights, which should show no colour at all, as coloured. So we see a new coloured ‘frame’. In the event, the blue-green stamp, you tell us, is the scarcer and short-lived. But he wasn’t to know that. Have a look at Bulgarian Tractors of 1951 if you are interested.
perhaps a bit off topic but i notice that both stamps retain the “warrior mermaid” logo in the lower right of the design … any idea what it represents? i admit to not being very familiar with it … i have recently gotten interested in logos that appear on stamps and am seeking info about them, how they figure into the stamp designs, and in cases where countries transition through such sweeping changes which logos remain on stamp reprints and which do not … just a curious collector.
@Fred….
@Peter… According to catalog, this was printed in rotogravure. But if I’m not totally mistaken, these two methods are very alike. So your theory could potentially be very acceptable…
@Mike… I noticed this one too while scanning the stamp. It’s “syrenka” (mermaid in polish), the symbol of Warsaw.
When I saw the bluegreen stamp, the first thing that came to my mind was, that it looks like a wet-printing. The shade background fill could be found on other issues,used by this kind of printing stamps. And indeed it is a photogravure/rotogravure (flatplate/rotary).
Keijo, thanks for pointing out the green outside the borders. My eyes did not appreciate that subtlety the first time.
@Peter… Very impressive explanation. Are you a printer?