Gems of Polish Philately:
Poland #1 Block of Four
Poland #1 Block of Four
Multiples of Poland #1 are considered rarities. One unused block of six is known. Of the multiples that had been used, two strips of five are recorded. One strip of five is on piece and the other is on a letter in the Polish Postal Museum. Two used strips of four are recorded, both on piece.
A unique block of four is recorded. It is on a letter sent from Warsaw July 6th with the year uncertain, but probably 1863. It is addressed to the “Sugar Factory in Elżbietów near Sokołów.” Many of the known Poland #1 covers were sent to this address. This letter is certainly in the top three of greatest Polish rarities. The most recent sale of this letter was in 2010 where it sold for approximately $56,000, a bargain for a world-class rarity.
The provenance for this letter is very interesting. In the period between the World Wars one of the most famous collectors and writers of Polish philately was Włodzimierz (Wladimir) Rachmanow. Mr. Rachmanow amassed one of the finest, if not THE finest collections of Poland #1s and Russian stamps used in Poland. He witnessed the terrible events of the German occupation and managed to escape with his family just before the 1944 Uprising in Warsaw. This proved to be a timely decision because his home, just opposite the Polish Parliament, was leveled by the Germans. Each of his family members carried just one suitcase out of Poland and Mr. Rachmanow filled his with his stamp collection. He settled in New York after the war. Of interest, after he moved to New York, he used another form of his name, Vladimir von Rachmanoff.
Following Rachmanow’s death in 1968, his family placed his collection in a bank vault where it lay untouched for over 40 years. Unfortunately, it was not available to students of Polish philately, and one had only vague references to what was in the collection. Thus, even the great monograph by Mirosław Bojanowicz (1979) did not include valuable information from the Rachmanow collection. His family sold the collection in 2010 through Warwick & Warwick, an auction house in England.