One of my ‘liebling’ is the decorative envelopes from the XIX. century. This swan was hiding on the back of a perfectly ordinary envelope.
Frankly, the engravers were not drunks, but in many cases they did the repairs with low-skilled printers to save time and/or money. The most exciting corrections of the Hungarian stamp issue of 1874 are the so-called “botch” corrections.
It is well known that the first stamp depicting swimming was also issued as part of the 1925 Hungarian Sports Series, but fewer people notice the rowing athlete hidden in the background. For this reason, the 1.5 cent value of the 1928 Dutch Olympic series is mistakenly regarded as the first rowing stamp.
Hurdling is not the most popular sport, so it is less often seen on stamps. It was first shown on stamps, also in the 1925 Sport series.
The aforementioned sports series was ahead of its time in its choice of themes. As a result, it boasts many firsts, including the world’s first fencing motif stamp.
I’m back from holiday, and so unfortunately I missed the Football final with this post. Let’s see some motif philately:
Although Uruguay issued a stamp in 1924 in honor of the football gold medal at the Olympics, the sport itself does not appear on the stamp’s image.
The first stamp with a real footbal motif is thus to be found in the Hungarian Sport set, published in 1925.
This stamp series was ahead of its time in showing sport, as it was not common to show such subjects on stamps at that time, so I will post about more of its value soon.
A friend of mine was generous enough to take a picture of one of the jewels in his collection, so I can now present the reverse Madonna, one of the greatest Hungarian stamp rarities.
Less than 20 copies are known to exist of this very spectacular misprint. It is therefore one of the rarest and most spectacular misprints of philately in the world. In my opinion, its true rarity is not reflected in its current market price of a few tens of thousands of euros.
1874 / 1881 Hungary: scratches and plate repairs are the most exciting features of this copperplate edition. These repairs exist in many variations, a very exciting area of collecting and very popular in Hungarian philately. These corrections may be professional as in the accompanying illustration, but I will soon present some that are very unprofessional…
The postal service in Hungary also suffered a period of scarcity after the second world war, and cash payment of postage became more common due to the shortage of paper/stamps. In such cases, the postmark with the postal control number (in our case 𝟔𝟐𝟗𝟕) always had to be printed on the mail to make fraud more difficult.
This control postmark clearly identified not only the postal office but also the identity of the postman or postwoman.
Hungary’s 1954 FIFA World Cup winning stamp was a failure, as the Hungarian team also failed to win. The Hungarians were certain to win (depending on their previous results against the Germans), so 2 million stamps were produced to celebrate the victory. On the night of 4 July 1954, all hope was lost and the government ordered all 2 million stamps destroyed. Some sheets were stolen that night, so the issue survived the devastation and was reborn as a rarity of European philately. The price of a single stamp is now around EUR 2000.
