The Black 10 Kronen Postage due Provisional

In issue 552 of the Bulletin, we discussed how provisional issues came into being. Among those provisional stamps, overprinted by the Kraków Postal Administration, one can find some of the major rarities of Polish philately. The 1, 5, and 10 kronen postage due stamps were overprinted into Polish stamps by adding “POCZTA POLSKA.” Eighty 1 krone and 5 kronen were overprinted in red, whereas, only forty 10 kronen received the red overprint. One of the rarest, if not the rarest, of Polish stamps is the 10 kronen overprinted in black, illustrated in Figure1. Only fifteen stamps were overprinted in black and less than ten can be accounted for today. The “POCZTA POLSKA” form I overprint cliché, which was designed for the small 30 x 10 sheets of the lower face value postage due, was used to make the black overprint.

Because of the irregular setting that had to be used for the black overprint, positions 16-20 are set higher than positions 1-10.  In a 2009 auction the three value set in red sold for $20,700 and a black 10 kronen sold for $41,000.

(Contributed by Dr. James Mazepa and reprinted from issue 552 of the Polonus Bulletin)