Stamp Auctions

A. KARAMITSOS is holding a general auction of stamp, postal history and Postcards. Starting with stamps & postal history of Greece.

The auction includs Large & Small Hermes Head, Greek Islands and related area with Crete and Dodecanese, Emphasis on Greece issues with Olympics, Greek Ottoman Post, Greek Islands, Territories & related area, Greece in WWII, postmarks & cancellations. Levant, Cyprus And foreign countries.

Foreign countries with mainly Europe and Middel East.

Thematic (Topical) with Olympics games, athletics & football.

Picture postcards from Greece area and various themes.

Auction 339th with more than 8,500 lots of Coins, stamps, postal history, Postcards and Literature is online. Highlights of the auction:

A very unusual offer of 89 lots of the EGEAN ISLANDS, mainly postal history stands at the beginning of our first auction in the New Year. There were Austrian, Italian and Turkish post offices in operation in the Egean before own stamps were issued in 1912. Each island had its own overprints, the archipelago later was under Italian, French and German occupation until finally after WW II it came under Greek governmental rule. This often changing political ups and downs produced a plethora of different cancellations, frankings, registration and censor marks and is a challenging field for an advanced collector.

The depicted cover was sent registered from the isle of Castellorizo under French occupation in the year of 1920. There is only little commercial mail known from this period (est. € 450.-).

AUSTRIA will be another heavyweight in our next catalogue. Not only the good pre-WW II issues such as the WIPA souvernir sheet or the Dollfuss stamp are on offer, the main strength lies in fine classic stamps and covers such as multi-colour frankings or high frankings to foreign destinations. E.g. a yellow-black combination of the second issue starts at € 1200.-, a 1864 three-colour combination from Vienna to Schio opens at € 500.- and a high 71 Kr franking to Paris including the top value of the 1867 issues start with an estimate of € 1250.-.

HUNGARY`s 20th century postal history was affected by two inflations of which the period of 1945-1947 was a so-called hyper inflation with frankings comprising face values of several trilliards (for those who do not know how to write these figures down – a trilliard is a „1“ with 31 zeroes). A big collection detailed into 14 lots will be on offer.

FORWARDING AGENTS were of great importance during the 17th to 19th centuries handling transits from East to West and from North to South, competing with cheaper rates or better services with the state-owned posts. A remarkable transport system was established by Thomas Waghorn in the 1840ies with his Overland Mail through Egypt cutting the transport duration of mails to and from India to the half time. A nice example of the Waghorn mails is shown below. It opens at € 400.-.

Among a couple of rarities in the overseas section is a Mauritius Sherwin stamp, full margined and with deep rich colour, starting at € 2500.-, a complete set of the Diligencias of Uruguay (€ 450.-) and some 40 lots of classic US stamps among which a beautiful 10 Cents (Sc.No.2) on piece should be mentioned (€ 750.-).

A most stunning item is a letter origination from Oldenburg in the year of 1865. Its full content refers to the North Pole expedition of the British captain Sherard Osborn (which failed) and a planned but not realised French expedition at the same time. (€ 2500.-)

An overview of the GERMANY section shows an impressive gallery of rarities, postal history gems and, of course, all the sought-after standard items of all periods. Strenght lies in German States, German Reich and Colonies but there is also a good section of modern postal history. For example a specialised collection of Berlin comprising scarce frankings namely of the first after-WW II years is split by issues and totals to an estimate of approximately 20.000.-€.

Three outstanding items of the German section: German Reich 1923, so-called Hitler provisional (4 stamps on piece), est. € 5000.-, Bavaria Telegraph stamps fine used (est. € 3000.-), Wuerttemberg scarce TÜBRINGEN trial cancellation on cover (est. € 2500.-)

As usual a fine selection of PHILATELIC LITERATURE (c. 220 lots, amongst these some little „rarities“) will be on offer, as well as some lots of THEMATIC COLLECTIONS.

1400 lots of collections, bulk lots and whole estates will complete the offer with an estimate of more than 1 Mio. Euro in total.

“Colección de un Asturiano"

Collection of480 LOTS OF  Spanish Postal History and Stamps that begins with the first black 6 cuartos stamp of isabel II (1850) and ends with his grandson issue Alfonso XIII in 1905. Features extremely rare varietes as 1851 5 reales Brown ERROR OF COLOUR,  1854 2 cs. Green with watermarks, 1867 tete-beche 10 cts and 1874 doble impression of 10 cts blue. Covers very important as 1856 train cancellations of Langreo and 1857 PAID AT TENERIFE SENT TO mONTEVIDEO

Bids will be accepted until Feb. 5th, 2013 at 12:00 (See sale conditions).