The Bavarian Palatinate is always good for (philatelic) surprises

The Bavarian territories on the left bank of the Rhine – also known as the Rhine district – are today the southern part of Rhineland-Palatinate. Bavaria belongs to Palatinate at least since the days of Liselotte of the Palatinate, a Wittelsbach woman who was the sister-in-law of the Sun King. The Palatinates tend to overlook the few years when the Palatinate was French under Napoleon and then Austrian.

During entire period the Kingdom of Bavaria issued stamps, from the start with the “Schwarze Einser” until the end of World War I, the Palatinate was an integral part of the Kingdom. This means that postmarks from Kaiserslautern or Ludwigshafen, from Speyer or Pirmasens appear on these stamps just like Nuremberg or Munich.

In Bavarian times, there was a district court in Otterberg, a few kilometers north of Kaiserslautern, whose building today houses the elementary school. Perhaps this district court was the origin of the letter – more concretely: “an official matter subject to postage due” – which originally was bearing the pair shown here.

To a collector not familiar with Bavaria, this looks like a “normal” 20 – Pfg franking – domestic letter rate over 15 gr. or single rate for foreign letter, but nothing unusual. Shouldn’t the 10 Pfg stamp (the rate for a simple domestic letter) be red according to UPU rules? This puts us on the right track: we do not have the regular definitive here, which are actually red for the 10 Pf value, but a postage due, which lacks the red overprint “payable by the recipient”.

It is highly probable that this pair was used as postage dues despite the lack of overprint. The gray color of the stamps signaled postage due to postal officials just as it did to the knowledgeable philatelist. The overprint is quite small and can be easily overlooked or it can be overlooked that it is not present.

The only known uses of Michel number 9 (watermark vertical waves) without the overprint are from Otterberg. This pair is the largest know unit of this variety. It was first offered by Gilbert & Köhler 1908 in Paris. The CG October auction will be the next possibility to buy this rarity.