American Philatelic Society Affiliate No . 52

EDITOR :

Robert C . Ross, 28 Kenmore Place, Glen Rock, New Jersey 07452

DECEMBER, 1977v . 3, no .11, wh . no . 33, p . 237

Page 238 December, 1977

SOCIETY PAGE

Felix Ganz received a silver medal for Swiss airmails from Period III : 1922-1930 atthe Chicago Philatelic Society national show in October . He also won a vermeil in Septemberat Midaphil in Kansas City for his Swiss perfins exhibit.

Major Charles LaBlonde's series on Geneva postal history won a silver at the SanFrancisco meeting . This series appeared first in Tell, and has appeared in somewhat differentform in The American Philatelist over the past several months.

At the CORNPEX exhibition in Bloomington IL, in September, Felix Ganz won a gold medal,and the show's reserve grand award, plus the AHPS medal, for "The Airmail Issue of 1923 andits Uses on Regular and Special Flights" . Robert Zeigler won a silver medal for "Stamps andCovers Illustrating Airmail Service Development in Switzerland" . Walter Abt, showing asa novice, received a bronze medal for "Swiss Military Stamps, World War I : How It Started".There was also an exhibit on preprinted album pages, 4 frames of selected Swiss Stamps, bya Gordon Sprague (who had other exhibits : Netherlands, EUROPA and Religion on Stamps, all onpreprinted album pages).

Collectors interested in exhibiting at MILCOPEX are urged to write to MILCOPEX 78, Box 1980,Milwaukee, WI 53201 for a free copy of the prospectus . Deadline for entries is February 1,1978 . Entry fees are $4 .00 for a twelve page frame for adults and $2 .00 for juniors.

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THE QUESTION BOX

How would you like some help in identifying the color shades of the Swiss postage duestamps? Catalog descriptions of the various shades are frustrating at best, worthless atworst . But take heart, help may be on the way . One of our members has two pages of thesedues from the gold award winning exhibit of George Caldwell . Shown on the pages are examplesof the various printings, shades and issues . Would you be interested in a color photographof these pages? If so please drop me a postcard . After determining the interest we willestablish a price and take firm orders.

Meanwhile, send any and all questions to :Chuck LaBlonde3815 S . Midsummer LaneColorado Springs, CO 80917

December, 1977

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Notes and Comments, ("The New Yorker", September, 1977 .)

Over a bowl of bay scallops at the Oyster Bar in his favorite railway station, GrandCentral Terminal, E.M . Frimbo last week delivered himself of the following:

How to get the people out of the countryside - I guess that's the unwritten federalpolicy today . There are several federal agencies working on the project, but naturally,none of them know what the others are doing, and none of them want to know . We need a

new Cabinet post-Secretary of Depopulation . Remember how easy it was, in the days whenwe were better organized, to get the Seminoles out of Florida and into Oklahoma? Thatwasn't very subtle, though, so the feds are cleverer now . They're using psychology.If life in your home town is made increasingly inconvenient, maybe you can be persuadedto move to the city, where the weight-throwing voters already live . The InterstateCommerce Commission let the railways get rid of their country passenger service, some-times for not the best of reasons . Then the bus companies, which took over from therailways, began to whittle down their service, sometimes to zero . Now the Civil Aero -nautics Board lets some airlines whittle down their service, too, to zero . Suddenly,you're back in Pilgrim days. If you want to go anywhere or get anything, you do ityourself . Congress has passed a bill, called by the trade the 4-R Act, that is socleverly worded that railways have started getting rid of thousands of miles of rail-way lines that still carry freight to small communities . The man who owns the factoryin your little town decides to close down and move out . Your Chamber of Commercecan't find a customer for the factory, because no customer can get the freight servicehe wants . So the people who worked in the factory move to jobs elsewhere . Then yourcommunity decides to raise enough money to take over the branch line that serves it.One way to do this is to float a municipal-bond issue, which traditionally pays tax-exempt interest - a device that makes the issue easier to sell . But the feds have gotnews of this, and the I .R .S . has ruled that an issue for this particular purpose is nottax-exempt . What the government is saying is that small towns no longer pay, so getthe hell out of them.

And now the Post Office . I just heard that they're starting again to close ruralpost offices . You know the kind of small town that had a fifth-or-sixth-class postoffice . The postmaster set aside a corner of his general store for post-officecustomers, and his income as postmaster was mostly what he got for selling stamps tohis clients - a simple, inexpensive, convenient way of giving service to everyone inthe township . Now we don ' t care about our country cousins anymore . I've lived in alot of little towns . Brandon, Vermont, for instance, where I holed up for a while,some time after - I admit - Thomas Davenport invented the electric motor there . Iwas in the household of one of the mail clerks on the local night mail train that ranbetween Burlington and Rutland . The mail came in from the south early every morningto our little post office, already sorted by the clerks on the train, and ready to besent out instantly from the post office at breakfast time - mail that had been postedas far away as Washington, D .C ., the afternoon before . I was learning to play theorgan in the Congregational church, where the son of the family I was living with wasthe organist . When I was alone in the organ loft, I sometimes got away from thechurchly manuals and started working out my own arrangement of "When It's Night TimeDown In Burgundy" - until I got caught out one evening . As penance, I was requiredfor a few weeks to go down to the railway station at half past nine at night on thedays when Mr . Pollard, the father of the family, was working his way south fromBurlington on the mail train to Rutland . Along with any letters of mine and of thefamily's, I carried a couple of tin buckets of food that Mrs . Pollard had cooked forhim and a little parcel of clean laundry . Today, if I still lived in Brandon, whereon earth could I post a letter at that hour of the evening and know that it would be

Page 240 December, 1977

on someone's desk in New York City before noon next day? In my university years, Icould go down to the railway station in Princeton, New Jersey, at ten-fifteen in theevening, hand letters to the mail clerk, and know that they would be delivered inWashington, D .C ., the next morning.

This was the comfortable, easy pattern of communication - at three cents a throw-all over this country until the accession to the Postmaster Generalship of Arthur E.Summerfield, under Eisenhower . The Pennsylvania Railroad, which was as naive thenabout the facts of life as it was years later about its horrendous merger with theNew York Central, cheerfully named one of its mail cars, in big gilt letters, afterthe new Postmaster, even as he was setting about the dismantlement of this marveloussystem of communication begun even before the Civil War . More and more mail begangoing out to the airports to be flown between the big cities, and that was fine forthe big cities . And more mail went to the highway truckers, and that was fine for(a) the highway truckers and (b) the people who were running the Post Office patron-age system; that is, local contract helps local boy make good . The mail car on theState of Maine Express from New York disappeared, along with the train that carried it,and my correspondent in Blue Hill, Maine, began complaining that it was taking two orthree days longer for a letter to get from me to him. Well, Summerfield and hissuccessors at last boiled the railway mail cars down to just one train - five nightsa week between New York and Washington each way . It wasn't in any public timetable,and under no circumstances was it to carry passengers . But a couple of my old Pennsyl-vania Railroad cronies, now gone to what I hope is an extremely handsome reward, werealways pleased to invite me aboard the nights they were working the train . It was aneasy and early way of getting to Washington, and it cost me just a subway fare toPenn Station in plenty of time before the train departed - especially during badweather, when, a few minutes before the train pushed off, a bunch of bags would comedown the mail chute onto the platform and someone would say, "Well, where the hell doyou want me to put the airmail tonight?" It was easy to spot airmail, because themailbags that contained it were of a color not at all like the dirty gray of thestandard mailbags ; and the time lost while the Post Office was trucking the mail outto the nonexistent flights from Kennedy and LaGuardia and trucking it back to PennStation was compensated for by the nimble fingerwork of the postal clerks on the train,who popped what must have been thousands of letters into this and that pigeonhole alongthe sides of the cars en route . So that when the train reached Baltimore or Washington,between four and five in the morning, the mail was all ready to be carted off direct tothe substations in each city in time for the deliverymen to distribute it on theirmorning strolls . What a way do to it! Of course, it had to go . And it did : thislast mail train made its final run at the end of June . Philatelists arranged to postletters on it, so that they could get the mail-car cancellation on the stamps, andthe letters were posted - twenty five thousand of them . I'm not sure how many of themgot cancelled . I guess it was the first time the train had ever carried legal non-Post Office passengers : Amtrack, which wanted the train to keep running, had a barcar on the final southbound run . But I didn't feel like celebrating . Oh, I forgotone thing . The Post Office used to fine the railways for delivering the mail late.Perhaps we should start fining the Post Office now.

Dr. Ganz is taking the month off, with his RPO series, but this article showsthat closing local post offices and dropping mail trains is not a purely Swiss problem .

December, 1977

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THE EARLIEST POSTAL HISTORY OF SWITZERLAND, By Harlan F . Stone

Although the postal history of Switzerland goes back to the Roman Empire, very scantydocumentation of early postal activities and services exists . Official couriers of theRoman government used the "Cursus Publicus" (state route) to travel over Swiss Alpinepasses to reach the Roman provinces of Helvetia (western Switzerland), Raetia (easternSwitzerland), and Gaul (France) and outposts in Germany . During the medieval agesmonastic messengers traversed the country to deliver correspondence from one ecclesiasti-cal center to another . In the 14th century communal foot messengers in colorful uniformsbegan to provide official service for larger towns, such as Basel, Bern, St . Gallen andZurich.

A merchant in St . Gallen became in 1569 the first of several private operators tomaintain runners, and later mounted messengers using relay stations, to carry mail intoGermany and France . Another prominent service, based in Fussach near Lake Constance, inpresent-day Austria, soon extended from Germany through eastern Switzerland and over theSplugen Pass into Italy . During the 17th century private organizations in Zurich andLuzern established regular postal services over the St . Gotthard Pass to Italy.Manuscript postal markings finally came into use . The earliest known stamped postal markingdates from Geneva in 1695.

In the 18th century Geneva and Basel developed into major forwarding points for inter-national mail destined for France . Because Bern remained outside the major postal net-works, Beat Fischer of that city established there in 1675 a postal service that event-ually connected much of western Switzerland to Italy, France and Germany by way of allfour major Alpine routes, the St . Bernard, Simplon, St . Gotthard and Spulgen Passes.

The French maintained a postal agency in Geneva from 1669 to 1768, switched the agencyup the shore of Lake Geneva to Versoix from 1768 to 1790, and moved it back to Genevafrom 1790 to 1815 . In the agency's later years the French handstamped various types ofa transit mark reading "De Suisse", "Suisse" and "Suisse Par Geneve" on letters boundfrom or through Switzerland into Southern France . These markings did not come intofrequent use until the 1770's.

Because of Switzerland's cross-roads position near the center of western Europe,forwarding agents played an active role in the handling of mail . They forwarded mailmostly from business houses in countries around the Mediterranean who corresponded to homehome offices to the north . For their letters these commercial firms needed fasterdelivery and less costly routes than domestic postal authorities offered to foreigncountries, and detours around blockaded ports during wartime, and safety . from Mediter-ranean pirates . The purpose of the forwarding agents was to receive and transfer theseletters from one postal system to another, always selecting the quickest available routefor the next leg of the journey.

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Letters forwarded by agents sometimes bear manuscript notations on the back to recordthe fact . A typical notation will say "forwarded by Antoine Trembley and Sons at GenevaSept. 20, 1747" and include the abbreviation "VTHS", which stands for the French words"Votre tres humble serviteur" (your very humble servant) .

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The following forwarding agents operated in Switzerland for various periodsbetween 1743 and 1815 . (Others appeared in the 19th century .) This list is basedon The Forwarding Agents by Kenneth Row, published by The Philatelic SpecialistsSociety, Toronto, Canada ; " Forwarding Companies in Switzerland " by Dr . ErnestBissegger, an article in the October, 1951, issue of Helvetia Bulletin ; and coversin my own collection.

Geneva

P .F . AmalricD . Argand & F . MerleAntoine AstrucEtienne BonnetEtienne and Gaspard

Bonnet & Cie.Theophile CoutauMerle D ' AubigneLeon A . Ducloux & CieGalopin FreresBarthelemy GirodzSimon GreffulhAmed MarchandJean Say

Jean SettonTerrot, Thuillier & Fils

Antoine Trembley & Fils

Lausanne

Demolin & Cie.

Basel

Balthasar Bourcard Pere& fils

Jean Rudolph PreisverchR . RitterRoschet & FaeschZeslin et Comp.

In accordance with a 1724 treaty between France and the Swiss town of Basel, all mailin transit to northern France went through Basel and the French town of Huningue . AtBasel the post office applied two types of postmarks to identify a letter's place oforigin . The origin determined the postage due at the destination and the amount ofmoney that France would return to Basel.

A straightlined "Basle" (old French spelling of Basel) denoted letters originatingin the town and canton of Basel . An encircled "BS" (for Basel-Switzerland) marked allletters from the Bishopric of Basel (in the northwest corner of present Switzerland),other Swiss cantons, Germany and Austria.

From time to time, however, the postal clerks incorrectly used the Basle handstampon mail that originated outside the canton . As a result, France finally cancelled thetreaty in 1818 and demanded prepayment of postage on all letters to its border.

Despite this postal activity in 18th century Switzerland, it has been argued that thecountry's true postal history began during the Helvetic Republic of 1798-1803,when the French occupied the country and centralized the postal services . But that'sanother subject .

December, 1977

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INFLATION - A THREAT TO SWISS PHILATELY? By Fred R. Lesser

In 1950, $70 .-- would have bought a mint 25 cts . 'C' plate 1900 UPU, about $8 .-- wouldhave sufficed to acquire a mint Frcs . 3 .-- 1908 'Helvetia with Sword' and only $17 .50 was theScott catalogue price for a mint Frcs . 3 .-- green 'Mythen' - just to quote three stamps.

In 1962, 12 years later, the prices for the first two stamps changed only by fractions.However, the Zumstein catalogue advanced the price for the green 'mythen' to an equivalent ofabout $50 .--.

15 years later, in 1977, these three stamps would require an aggregated investment of about$2,000.-- . Altschweiz material in choice condition always demanded top premiums and the rarestamong Swiss rarities and varieties traditionally remained the exclusive domain of the well-heeled collector . But the phenomenal escalation in the monetary value of Swiss stamps nowalso covers the stamp booklet 'combinations', the Geneva Agency stamps and various pre-1962semi-postals . The result? Their gradual disappearance in dealers' stock books and boursebooks.

A close look at the truly fantastic selection of first-class and utterly reliable Swissstamp material as offered at such international auctions like Rapp or Corinphila (both inZurich) and a study of their yields - ignoring the Swiss auctioneers surcharges now reachingthe 13% level - reveal a very disturbing trend, disturbing to the stamp collector who insistson considering his or her involvement as a hobby-like labour of love.

The clientele at such multi-million dollar auctions consists primarily of dealers andrepresentatives for investment orientated groups . Only a sprinkling of collectors can beobserved at such gatherings . Apart from the fact that Zurich is one of the most expensivecities at the present, the auctions usually take place in the later part of the autumn when'the weather in Central Europe is rarely conducive to combining business with pleasure . Forthe average collector to bid by mail is a very chancey speculation . Obviously, his or herjudgement must lack the 'feel of the floor', i .e ., his or her judgement must lack anypsychological opportunity to drive his bid home . Furthermore, a great deal of the materialoffered has to be viewed in order to be realistically judged or appraised . European auctionhouses usually set the limits or starting prices deliberately low. This is a psychologicalploy . The low starting level generates a certain momentum in the bidding which, in turn,drives up prices more rapidly . A high starting price would cause a certain 'hesitation' inthe bidding climate.

Today, the prices paid for the 'creme de la creme' Swiss stamp material at large Europeanauctions are based on very shrewd and speculatively orientated calculations which, of course,take into account the world's economic, political and social problems . In a way, modernso-called investment orientated stamp buying is not unlike Wall Street arbitrage in stocks.Europeans have become extremely sensitive to political confrontations, economic fluctuationsand social unrest ; all three are interdependently related . Inflation and currency ratechanges are the major forces in driving stamp prices upward . While Switzerland had pract-ically zero inflation for the past 2 years (she is, however, one of the most expensivecountries in the world and her currency is gold-backed), the rest of the world is still verymuch in the grips of a galloping inflationary climate . Inflation has also one side effectwhich adds enormously to the dramatic rise in prices demanded and paid for choice Swissstamp material and that is so-called surplus money . Surplus money is one of the most diffi-cult symptoms of inflation to control Governments try to absorb this money by many differentmeans, from increased taxation to curtailing money flow . In economic terms, both are self-defeating and in fact, the evasion of taxes is another reason for the demand for top qualitySwiss stamp material . Surplus money prefers to seek investments in non-producing areas, i .e .,areas which are solely dependent on demand but not on factors continuously subject to risingcosts . The limitation and cost in works of art (plus the fact that certain countries re-

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December, 1977

strict their export) has driven a great deal of European surplus money into stamps . Naturally,the demand is primarily for absolutely top-class quality material and material of traditionaland genuine philatelic acclaim . Where there is a demand, there is a supply . And the higherthe prices paid, the more exquisite and rare material surfaces.

In view of the high prices now being readily paid for such high quality material (and notforgetting the auctioneers surcharges in excess of 10%) and the fact that even dealers mustmake a profit to cover capital investment, operations and marketing overheads, the temporarywithholding of material from the international market is a direct function of the living costincreases or their rate of increase per year. Therefore, much of the material after purchaseremains 'locked up' for some considerable time . After all, the purchaser wants hisinvestment back eventually and not only his investment but also a sizeable chunk of gain . There-fore, vast amounts of rare Swiss stamp material begins to 'escape' the collector, physicallyas well as fiscally.

The effect of this trend on the traditional stamp collector is dramatic . The averagestamp collector has neither the money nor access to the material referred to above . All hecan concentrate on is peripheral quality . The more knowledgeable stamp collector is veryreluctant to include in his collection material the condition of which is subject to question.Many a collector foregoes the purchase of stamps which do not meet true philatelic standards.Hence, there is a tendency among many ardent collectors to sit tight . This in turn causesa drought in less expensive, yet good quality material . Philately depends on mobility ofstamp material, i .e . the latter's availability to satisfy a collector's acquisitional thirst.Unfortunately, the present climate causes many a collector to become less discriminating . The'trade' is often not slow in taking advantage of this situation and it requires considerableself-discipline on the part of the collector to stand fast and protect his collection's over-all quality.

There is no question that the average stamp collector of Swiss material in particular(because Swiss stamps are particularly favoured by the speculatively orientated investorsin Europe) find himself in the midst of a veritable storm. His or her ability to remainactively involved in the hobby has become a choice of either forking out very substantial sumsor sitting back . The law of nature is rather counterproductive to the latter . As timepasses by, the collector becomes older and usually more cautious in his hobby investments . Onthe other hand, he or she also has the opportunity of participating with an eye on the futureand the likely chance of recouping the cost of the investment . To go this route demandscontinuous study of philatelic publications at home and abroad, close perusal of stamp auctioncatalogues and the yields of material auctioned . All this adds up to a lot of work and time.But as in every other area of professional specialization, there is no gain without hard work.The hobby has become more than an emotional labour of love exactly as the world of philatelyhas become an industry .

December, 1977

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POSTAL CANCELLATIONS AND MARKINGS IN SWITZERLAND AND LIECHTENSTEIN - Anupdate of a few details on railroad-related cancellations, Part 62A . . .F . Ganz

For the listing of RPO runs, with named endpoints (TELL, March and April, 1977) pleasemake the following changes : ADD, on p.60 (March) under Type G1, FURKA-OBERALP*BAHNPOST*.DELETE, on p .73 (April) under Type G2, HAHNPOST*FURKA-OBERALP*, because Mr . Christian ' s

reference has now been proven incorrect . The cancellation exists, but it is Type G1, and notG2, which should also be corrected in the alphabetic table of the May, 1977 TELL on p . 97.

There the two entries for this line should read : FURKABAHN : G2c; H (as is) ; andFtJRKA-OBERALP; Gl.In instalment 59 (June TELL, p . 125-26) three additional train station cancellations of

postal origin have been reported . They are (p.125) : LES HAUTS-GENEVEYS GARE ; (p .126):NEUHAUSEN BAHNHOF; and at bottom, under straight lines (p .126) : INTERLAKEN OSTSTATION. Also,

the first entry of Basel 14 (on p . 125) properly should read BASEL 14 SBBhf.

And finally a completely new item must be reported although yours truly is not yet surewhere it belongs and exactly where it is affixed . It is a red single ring cancellation, stat-ing BAHNPOST/AMBULANT. The date - without hour or train number - is under a semicircular seg-ment that contains the Swiss cross . At the bottom is a red star . Instead of a lower, semi-circular segment there is an open space into which, on this only copy seen so far, someonetyped in (or stamped in) "2547", apparently the number of the postal run or train on whichthis item was carried . Since this single copy is on a piece of paper that has a punchedhole in it, this cancellation most likely is an internal RPO service strike, affixed to-a bag ' s destination tag (which then, in turn, is opened in that RPO and sorted on the way,or whatever) . Puzzling is the typed train number . A ms . marking would be more logical!Anyone knowing anything on similar strikes please contact your editor .

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A BIT OF FUNNY BUSINESS, or "WHERE WAS WHAT CANCELLED?" By Felix Ganz

From August 1 through September 11, 1976 there circulated in French Switzerland anold-fashioned postal coach, horse-drawn, as sort of a gimmick to call attention tosome radio program of the French Swiss broadcasting station near Lausanne . The actionwas called "faites diligence" and in part was a play on words . The PTT acceded to therequest 'of providing a special cachet that was affixed to a special envelope at everyone of the 36 towns at which the caravan stopped -- with the stamps cancelled by thetown's regular postmark . At least that is what one surmised . One could either pre-orderall 36 envelopes (a bit dull because they all looked identical except for the town mark):or if one was a regular subscriber of the PTT's "New and Special Cancellations" serviceone received the covers from the starting and end points : BONFOL in the Bernese Ajoie(soon to be part of the new Canton Jura, and LAUSANNE where the caravan ended at that city'sannual Comptoir, the fall fair for Swiss industrial products.

Having subscribed to the lesser offer, your reporter received the two covers and then wasduly surprised by funny incident No . 1 in relation to these issues : a few weeks laterthe PTT sent out another BONFOL cover, this time dated August 1 instead of August 2, butotherwise identical, and enclosing a note asking its subscribers to "destroy the previouslysent cover with August 2 date because unfortunately a mishap had occured when setting thecancellation's date ." The second envelope was sent free of charge . . . .and no collectorin his right mind of course will ever destroy the faulty cover:

While the PEN catalogue of special cancellations lists all 36 cancellations, he does notlist the erroneous date yet . And while all this is reported one should also observe thatthe town cancellations all were of meticulous beauty -- quite rare for some of the tinytowns where the caravan stopped.

Funny incident No 2 occurred when collectors noted that on covers supposedly posted inMartigny 2 on August 28 two different date strikes had been in use : one a regular cds .,and the other that town's propaganda cancel . That started rumors, later confirmed, thatonly part of the caravan cancellations had been affixed in the respective towns . Ofcourse, one of the two Martigny cancels is much scarcer than the other, and collectorsnow are running around seeking to find the scarce one.

Funny incident No . 3 consists of the fact that on September 1 the supposedly closed anddiscontinued post office atop the Great St . Bernard Pass was reopened for the specificpurpose of cancelling "diligence" mail.

Funny incident four, the big one, only recently emerged, thanks to a report by Swissexpert Guinand, in a letter to AHPS member Tillen in England . Collectors of cancellationshad observed that for a few days in July and early August -- long before the caravanpassed -- nine tiny towns along the route had been using emergency date strikes (normallyissued only when a canceler is damaged) . This led to speculation and finally to dis-covery that ALL cancellations ordered prior to passing of the caravan in any town hadbeen applied weeks ahead of the event, in Lausanne, at the district headquarters towhich each town had to mail in one of its cds . Those that had only one received, forthe time that their cds was in Lausanne creating those meticulous strikes, an emergencystrike device . All of these are rare because of the short use and because of the tinymail volume from these towns.

Funny business indeed from staid, conservative, proper Switzerland :!

WHAT IS QUALITY?

December, 1977 Page 247

What is Quality? Reprinted fromS .B.Z .#8 1976, by B . Albiez,

translated by Werner Vogel.

In Tell for Ju/Aug 1976, quoting the

JUPHI-supplement of the SBZ #44/1976 under the headline "Qualityof Stamps" appeared a short article,which was to have informed young

collectors about the condition ofstamps and the cancellations to becalled fine . The subject of "con-dition" cannot be treated with a few

words, but the article has neverthe-less a few points worth considering.

The legends under the pictures of the8 cancelled 20RP stamps, once moreillustrated, are not at all convinc-ing. The collector with some exper-ience should know that the lower

stamps are not worth considering.If this kind of rubbish is calledfirst, second or third quality, thebeginner will think that in case of

emergency he could buy Such materialand still could sleep well:

I believe it is wrong to consider or

speak of fine or lower quality ofmost of the stamps after 1907 . Thisdifference results only in confusionand wipes out all quality definitions.The rule should be that of all stampswhich cannot be classified as classicsand have a catalog value less than

SFr 5 .-, only the best are good enoughfor your collection . Clean materialof the cheaper material can be got-ten in most cases at reasonable prices,

only you have to put a little effortto find them. It is also to the ad-vantage of the beginner that he doesnot invest his good money in philatel-ic playthings and that he looks onlyfor clean and collectable material.

Only the first stamp on the topleft can under certain conditionsmake that claim . Therefore it should

not and cannot be called " LUXUS " . The

rest of the remaining 7 of our samplecollection should be put in the waste-paper basket .

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December, 1977

ON THE EDITORS DESK

Frank Geiger (and Henry Gitner) have published a 68 page 1977-1978 Price List coveringSwitzerland, Liechtenstein, Benelux, Europa, Austria and U .N . $2 .00, refundable, fromForty-Nine Woods Avenue, Bergenfield, New Jersey 07621 (201) 387-1355.

Felix Ganz has published a lengthy, two part article on Swiss military postal stationsin nos . 4 and 5, 1977 issues of "Postal Stationery Magazine " . Many illustrations.

"A timely update on item in the October 'Editor's Desk' . There are also philatelicoffices (since 1968) in Lugano and St . Gallen. Also, in my 'beginners article', theGD PTT Philatelic Office in Bern now uses postal directory number 3030 (not 3000 or3001) " . Felix Ganz.

Becks Stamp AuctionP.O. Box 2216Mesa, Arizona 85204

Dear Sirs:

I am the editor of "Tell " , the official publicationof the American Helvetia Philatelic Society . One of ourmembers has brought to our attention Lot 10098 in one ofyour current auctions which purports to be a "copy " ofSwitzerland #1, Sold as is . This member informs me thatthe photographed stamp is clearly a forgery because ofthe size of the cross.

We are bringing this to your attention to avoid anypossibility that one of your purchasers might believe thatthis was a true copy of Switzerland #1 . As you are nodoubt aware, most examples of early Swiss stamps on themarket are forgeries, and AHPS has an important interestin protecting Swiss collectors from those forgeries.

*

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*Dear Sir:

Thank you for the above, we will contact the bidderand have him return said stamp and send it back to theowner of the lot .

Yours,

Sam F . Beck(Thanks to an alert member and an honest dealer .)

POSTAL COACH SERVICES

The Swiss postal coach undertaking has launched a new season ticket for holidaymakers -one that can be used on 600 postal coach services . It was introduced to supplement theseason tickets offered by the railways and to enable motorists on holiday to get aroundwithout their cars.Valid for one month, it gives entitlement to completely free travel on any three days and

to half fares on the other days on all scheduled postal coach services, including those inValais, Ticino, Graubunden and the Principality of Liechtenstein which cross the frontierinto other countries.The new ticket costs Fr . 40 for adults and Fr . 20 for children and holders of holiday

tickets, half-price and full season tickets . Explanatory leaflets in German, Frenchand Italian can be obtained free at many post offices, the larger railway stations andthe coach division publicity service, CH-3030 Berne .

December, 1977

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INCONGRUITIES OF PRICES OF SWISS PHILATELIC MATERIALS

A recent visit to a stamp store in Chicago (nationally known dealer and columnist onphilatelic tips) provided a few surprises . Once again it showed that if one knows one'sspecialty one can find true bargains because not everybody can know everything aboutevery stamp, cover, or plate flaw, etc . One nice surprise, in a book apparently notopened for several years was an unaddressed, meticulously clean and beautifully cancelledfirst day cover, with Italian postmark, of the 1949 Pro Patria set . Zumstein SFr .120;recent auction prices ABOVE that sum, especially if one counts the 12% surcharge on allsuccessful lots ; Chicago dealer's price : $6. Immediate resale value : $35 ., to a dealer(which paid for all other purchases of that day!).

The same visit also yielded a few mint never hinged early Swiss tete-beches, and thisis where the incongruity bit comes in : K4, the 10 cts . Helvetia of 1909, (with a totalissue of maximum 45,000) was available for $1 .50 . Zumstein prices it at SFr . 5 . Incomparison, the grilled paper League of Nations 30 cts . Tell bust stamp of 1932 (ZV3 20z),with a known issue of 65,000, catalogues at SFr . 650 ., used, and SFr. 3,500, mint. -- Also

available was a perfectly minted copy of KB, Tell bust 10 & 10 cts ., red, of 1912.Price : $1 .60 . Zumstein's catalog price, for a stamp with a total issue of 20,000 maximum,prices this item at SFr. 5 .50 . ANY stamp with an issue of only 20,000 MUST be betterproperty than that -- or does nobody in Switzerland collect tete-beches? When you thinkthat every Pro Juventute stamp of the 30 and 40 cts . denominations of the years 1950-55, withissues far above one million each, catalogue at over ten francs each, mint or used, then onejust wonders . A bit of sound advice might be : try to find some of these tete-beches,happily pay full catalog, and wait for their climbing out of sight, sooner or later .

F. Ganz