A wonderful letter with the rare dove stamps from the days of Hungarian hyperinflation, the inflation was just a bad memory when the letter reached its target.
The biggest inflation in the history was in Hungary, the monthly inflation rate was close to 41.900 trillion percent, more simply put, prices doubled in every 15th hours. The philatelic aspects of this period are also a particularly fascinating and interesting area of collecting. At the Hunfilex 2022 stamp exhibition we were able to admire several outstanding collections from this period, from Robert Morgan, Ito Fumihisa and last but not least from Florent Tricot.
The other day, I came across a very interesting, but definitely philatelic object from the hyperinflation period. The letter was sent from Pestszentlőrinc to the Saint Lucia island. Interesting fact, that the name of the island was given by Columbus, because he discovered the island in 1502, on Saint Lucia’s day. The addressee of the letter was Colonel Hector Gowans Reid, known as an illustrious philatelist of the British West Indies, who by his own admission was involved in the Manhattan Project too.
The date of dispatch was 11 July 1945, which was in the 24th tariff period of the hyperinflation era, when the tariff for foreign mail was 400,000 Bpengő (i.e. 400,000 trillion Pengő which is 400,000,000,000,000,000,000 Pengő). We can see several stamps on the letter which had been withdrawn from circulation at the time of the dispatch. Altogether 31 400 Milpengő stamps were still in circulation, but this amount had no practical value due to the money deterioration, the total value in Bpengő was only 0.0314. As well as the first two values (the 1 and 2 trillion stamps) from the trillion series (known as the “dove” stamps). So only the two dove stamps can be counted in the 400.000 Bpengő fee, but whether they are counted or not, will never be known. All (400,000 Bpengő) or at least a large part (399,997 Bpengő) of the fee was paid in cash. The “dove” stamps are common as unused stamps, but on ordinary letters, they are one of the greatest rarities of the era, because their validity period was only a few days. So the letter with the dove stamps began its 42-days journey to the Caribbean, and reached its addressee on 22 August. Which time the Pengő and hyperinflation were a bad memory, because the Forint had been in use for 22 days.
The original article appeared in the June 2022 issue of Bélyegvilág magazine.
