Approvals, Bundleware, Packets - Salvaging from the Past of Stamp Collecting

I am a sucker for Old Hoards - what in Germany is described in auction catalogues as "Uralt Bestand". From time to time I buy them, the bigger the better, and then try to think of a way to re-organise them which does not have me spending weeks breaking Minimum Wage legislation (as Leon Finik recently put it in an article arising from sorting old bundleware).

This last week I bought a couple of thousand old envelopes which housed the basically pre-1939 Latin America stock of a London dealer, Oswald Marsh, who had incorporated into his own stock the earlier stock of another London firm, Errington and Martin.

It made me think about how stamps were assembled in the past (and to some degree, still are).

First, someone had to find an office, preferably one receiving a large volume of mail, willing to sell its incoming envelopes or, at least, to allow the stamps to be removed from them.

Then, the stamps had to be removed. In order to economise on weight, stamps were often cut very close thus damaging perforations or they were even peeled off which created other kinds of damage. So very early on the stamps which collectors wanted were damaged.

Next - as part of the service - the stamps had to be washed off paper. It is important to realise that for maybe a century this was done on an industrial scale, with billions of stamps being soaked off paper to supply dealers. At this stage, if the stamps were stuck onto any kind of coloured envelope or wrapper, then they would emerge from washing discoloured from that paper. More damage. If the washing was well-done, then the stamp backs would be clean but sometimes some gum would remain.

To me the most mind-numbing procedure comes next: the packaging of washed stamps into bundles of 100 of the same type, the bundles held together with a paper banderole or cotton thread. Imagine spending your working day doing that! If the stamps had been properly washed and dried, then bundling would not cause any difficulty when the time came to unbundle them. But the business of shuffling the stamps into a neat bundle would sometimes damage perforations as would the cotton thread.

Billions of stamps ended up in bundleware, some of them scarce stamps. Not so long ago, when I bought the Schmidt collection of Ukraine I was surprised to find used Trident overprinted stamps in bundles - made in the 1920s or 1930s and never unbundled. That implies access to considerable quantities of mail.

Eventually, a dealer would unbundle stamps and put them into retail packets or hinge them and put them into approval books (Auswahlheften, Carnets a Choix ) and after that what happened would depend on what the collector did with them. Errington and Martin kept their stock in envelopes with detailed stock control notes.

My most recent purchase includes clean stamps from bundleware and also multiply hinged stamps recycled from even more ancient collections. I am looking at how to encourage someone to salvage and recycle the material I now hold. Here, for example, is a page I have created with Brazilian stamps of the 1880s. You can see damage everywhere and you would see more if I turned over the stamps. The first thing these stamps need is a wash. But some have faded and only with difficulty can their catalogue status sub-types be distinguished. The only obvious things here which might interest a collector are the postmarks, clear against the pale backgrounds. With thousands of stamps from the same issue, you could hope to establish early and late dates of use, places of use and so on. Alternatively, you could pick out the better items from this page - row 2, position 5, for example, has no faults and looks good - and throw away the rest

Click on Image to Magnify

The Joy of Bundleware

Kiloware, Bundleware, Used Off paper, Packet Making - these are things which only exist because of philately. From the very beginning, the hobby was dominated - and still is dominated - by stamp collecting. To service that hobby, a labour-intensive  industry developed which took archives and correspondences - not by the kilo but by the tonne - and turned them into saleable individual stamps. In the process, of course, irreplaceable postal history and historically valuable documents - once the stamps were removed - were turned into waste paper.

Sometimes the workshops were amateur and careless. At other times, material was more carefully graded. For example, clean covers with good cancellations on the stamps might be taken out and only covers with poor cancellations cut up and the stamps washed off the paper. I have been told that in some cases, workers were paid a bonus if they found errors or varieties - probably they were told what to look for.

Yesterday, I was looking through old Bundleware and "Used Off Paper" from the Philipp Schmidt collection - recently sold as the "Krim Sammlung" by the Bamberg auction house Arbeiter. This has been locked away for decades and was collected beginning in the 1930s - when an old glassine gives a dealer's address as "Adolf - Hitler - Str" it helps date the collection !  (Click on Image to Magnify)

I was looking through Russian  Civil War material.

First I looked through hundreds of used Shahiv stamps - the first general issue stamps of Ukraine, in use from mid-1918. Here I was looking at postmarks but I was really hoping to find local perforations. I found one, shown below, with a place name cancellation which is not familiar to me. (Click on Image to Magnify)

Then I looked at hundreds of used Denikins - all values. Here it was very noticeable that there were only a few copies of the 5 kopeck stamp. In periods of inflation,the lowest value is always hardest to find used. This is also true of the 10 Shahiv Ukraine stamp (and in another region, the Far East Republic definitives). 

Among the Denikins, I was hoping to find local perforations but did not. I did find a few examples of stamps printed on white paper - these are from a small printing and can also occasionally  be found mint with white gum, quite different from the thick brown gum and brown paper used for most of the issue.

And, I did find one rare item - a 70 kopeck block of four, cut into two pairs, with a central gutter. Now normally the printer's sheets were cut before use and it is really very unusual to find a used gutter pair. 

It is not much of a reward for a lot of work but I am pleased with these items. And, of course,there are also the postmarks ...

Philately on $1 a day: Collecting in Hard Times

Collectors with little money to spend can build very interesting collections. You can buy some things ridiculously cheap and you can add value to them by doing some work.

For example, 19th century definitives are often very cheap - buy them in bulk (by the 100 or 1000) and you pay maybe a couple of cents each. But for many countries there are watermark, perforation and shade varieties, some highly catalogued. There are also plate varieties and postmark interest. Finland, Hungary, Romania, Serbia are examples of countries where, with patience, you can turn 1 cent stamps into an interesting collection.

Two suggestions:

If there is a specialist Handbook or catalogue, buy it!
And if the stamps are from old collections, wash them and get rid of the old hinges and the dust and dirt!

If I see big lots of old stamps in an auction - sometimes they are bundleware - then I will bid the lowest possible price and quite often I get them. It's really surprising how few people take an interest. I think the least I paid for a big lot of old stamps was US$ 0.005 per stamp when I bought 500 000 Turkish stamps from an old packet maker's stock. But I don't really recommend buying quite so many stamps - they weighed 45 kilos and took over my flat completely for a week.

Another interesting way to build a collection with little money is to buy damaged copies of scarce and rare stamps for maybe a couple of % of catalogue. Then make yourself an expert on paper, shades, perforations, cancellations and - especially - overprints. This is what the experts often do - after all, what you need is simply a stamp or a block of stamps which shows you all the essential characteristics of the genuine item. You are not looking for something which will get you a Gold Medal.

Finally, just find something no one seems to be interested in, like Zemstvos before 1999 ....

Bundleware

There should be an International Convention outlawing Bundleware.

A few years ago, I bought in America (unseen and for very little) a vast (45 kilo!) packet maker's stock of Turkey.

The previous owner, during his lifetime, had acquired tens of thousands of mint stamps in sheets and had simply broken them up into singles and bundled them up into hundreds. By the time I got them, the edges were curled, the perforations blunted and many of the stamps stuck together. That's what bundles do.

This dealer obviously wanted to reduce the value of his stock: when I bought it I paid about 0.0001 of a cent per stamp (or less). If he had wanted to preserve the value of his stock - he had some nice stamps - he would have kept the sheets in folders or, at worst, in small piles, only breaking up the sheets as and when needed for his packet making. Instead, he had created thousands of bundles - and there were thousands more which looked as if they were made for him.

As for used stamps, some low paid worker takes thousands of covers, cuts off the stamps, washes them off paper, dries them and then bundles them into 100s. Once again, corners and perforations get damaged. If the bundles are made before the stamps are completely dry, then rust spots (foxing) appears.

Since only single stamps can be bundled, multiples are broken up and postmarks lost.

This is another reason why bundleware in auctions sells very cheaply. So cheaply it's sometimes hard to say NO to it.

Not so long ago, in an English auction, I had the chance to buy bundles of 19th century used Romania - maybe 50 000 catalogue value for 250 auction payment. Really that cheap, but of course, hard to sell without a lot of work and hard to sell with a lot of work.

Luckily, I was able to sell part of the lot to a specialist just as I had bought it. The remainder went into a box. I pulled the box out today and thought, time to do something. I thought that I would open some of the bundles and transfer the stamps to stockbooks ...

Imagine my surprise when I opened a bundle of the 10 Bani blue of 1876 and out drops a clean used copy of the cliché error which produces a 5 Bani blue (Michel 44F, 450€ in the catalogue). It looks fine, but I will send it off for expertising.

The problem is this: next time I see really, really cheap Bundleware in an auction, I will want to buy it!