Manchurian Local Overprints 1945 - 1947

Modern

 Hsin-King

Xinjing

Changchun First Issue

According to Chiu, the narrow spacing was only on sale for 2 hours before stocks were recalled, making this issue very scarce. Published price lists do not seem to reflect this but perhaps the fact I have yet to run across a copy does.

Changchun Second Issue

Issued from 18th September 1945. Overprinted by the Northeast Printing Press.

- This is a set of two stamps as shown. These stamps were distributed to other towns local to Chang Chun and could be found in use as far away as Harbin. See Chung Chan postmark on cover below. The top four characters read 中華郵政 Chinese Post, left 暫用Temporary Use, right 北東 North East.

NOTE - Examples of these stamps overprinted with "SPECIMEN" in English are fakes. These usually appear on fake specimen sheets.

Varieties

Block of 4 with double 華華 "Hua" error, see duplicated characters in the top row of the top right-hand stamp.

                Duplicated 華 "Hua" Character,     occurs on stamp #8 on each sheet

Duplicated 政 "Zheng" Character
occurs on stamp #15 on each sheet                      

Misplaced (upwards) Overprint

Overprint Misplaced and Inverted

Missing 政 "Zheng" stamp #95          Broken 暫 "Zan" stamp #87   

Double Overprint

Covers, such as this, were very important when it came to tracing the towns represented by these chops. Many of the unidentified chops will remain that way unless a cover or stamp is found with a readable postmark of origin.

This is one of several examples all identical and addressed to Wah Ching Ling in Hang Chow all cancelled on the same day. The envelopes are all sealed and it is fairly obvious that these were prepared by a dealer for sale to customers in the West. Similar examples were posed in Mukden (Shen Yang) probably by the same dealer.

Changchun Third Issue

The above are a Nationalist issue. Overprinted by the Kuo-Feng Printing Press and issued during January and February 1946 (Chiu.)

 This is a typeset (Sung No 4. Lead Typeface) machine printed overprint in black on sheets of 100 stamps. The four characters read 中華民國 Chinese Republic. This set of six stamps has many known variations, all can be found inverted or misplaced, some with characters missing or repeated, etc.,

(Inverted)

(Inverted)

(Inverted)

(Misplaced)

This cover appears to have been cancelled at 哈爾濱道裡 Harbin Daoli Post Office and this is perfectly possible as these stamps were distributed to, and used by many different Post Offices as the Nationalist Army Progressed. The value of Y1.20 is typical of the cost of an airmail letter to Japan at this time, however the cover is unaddressed.

Harbin stamp dealers made a lot of money at this time by having Manchurian Local Overprints cancelled to order. They bought MLO's from all over Manchuria and had them cancelled by compliant Harbin postal staff, officially or unofficially. They may have even have obtained stolen cancel hand-stamps for this purpose. This cover is an example of this.

 Such covers may be interesting but this completely misses the point of the stamps being local - as such, to have any value, covers need to represent legitimate postal use from the local post office with a local cancel.

Image courtesy of Steve Jensen.

All of the overprints known for Chang Chun are shown above.

These stamps have been identified by using Volume II of the Stamp Catalogue of China by Shui-Hon Chan and the four booklet guide The Local Overprinted Stamps of Manchuria 1945-7 by Allen D Kerr (published 1978 and now out of print). Both works are essential for anyone delving seriously into this subject.