Last night I finished sorting the Czechoslovakian stamp horde I had been working for nearly 2 months. As a result, my humble collection of Czechoslovakian stamps grew from 40 pages to over 80 pages. I managed to fill a huge number of blank spaces for regular stamps, and also found several interesting varieties to include into my collection. One of the most interesting items IMHO were various private perforations on newspaper stamps.

The Sokol / Flying Falcon design (1918-1934)

The first newspaper stamp desing for the new Republic was The Flying Falcon (aka. Sokol) by Alphonse Mucha. The series was issued between 1918-1920 in various colors and values.

All the Sokol design stamps are officially imperf, but the stamps have been privately perforated in large numbers by companies, individuals and even local postmasters. The below image shows some private perforations (both fully and partially perforated) from my collection:

Even the later overprints of 1925/26 and 1934 exist in various private perforations:

The Carrier Pigeon (1937)

The 1937 series featured a much more simpler design by Jaroslav Benda (same man who designed the famous 1920/25 Dove-series).

The Newspaper Delivery Boy (1945/47)

The Newspaper delivery boy (by A Erhardt) continues the theme of small and simple stamp designs. This was the last newspaper stamp design to appear, as in 1948 Czechoslovakian Republic turned into People’s Republic, and newspaper stamps were invalidated on end of the same year.

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