Page 3 - LP1478

The London Philatelist

100 Years of Slovenia’s First Issues - The Chainbreakers.

Part 2. The ‘Maribor’ 20 vinar.

BoŠtjan Petauer.
Continued from The London Philatelist, July-August 2020, pp262-269

ew Chainbreakers discoveries continue to be made a century or more after they were in use.
NOne example of new research concerns the rarest colour shades of the 20 vinar lithographic
printing. The rarest Chainbreaker stamp, printed in lithography is the 5 vinar stamp on cardboard.
This stamp is quite rare (and consequently expensive) and has acquired the name ‘Maribor’ since
the majority of known copies are cancelled with the double-circle German-language postmark of
Maribor (Marburg an der Drau). This stamp was first used in several post offices in the Slovenian
territory within the SHS Kingdom but there are no known examples recorded of its use in other
parts of the Kingdom (Croatia, Bosnia, Dalmatia, Vojvodina) where Chainbreakers were also used
concurrently with their provincial issues. Usage of the stamp in this colour is not known during
either the first or the second occupations of Carinthia in 1919 and 1920.
This stamp is surrounded by a veil of mystery, partly because its existence was only discovered
some ten years after it was printed and used. It is listed by Priručnik (p301) as 5Bj, in the 1991
Jugomarka catalogue (p60) as 5Bj and by the Petauer catalogue (p91) as 5BI, but is not mentioned
in the German-language typescript produced by August Jug (1950). The reason is quite simple: no
colours are mentioned there. In other recent catalogues (Michel, Yvert, Stanley Gibbons, Scott) it
is not mentioned at all, although none of them deal with the first Slovenian stamps in detail. Nor
has it been dealt with much in literature. Only a single article by Fritz Hammer of Prague (Hammer,
1934, pp40-42), published in the Filatelista magazine, has been found.
The intention here is to remove the veil of secrecy, through the use of Hammer’s article and my
own research. The latter would, however, not have been possible without help from fellow philatelists
both at home and abroad, that placed copies of this stamp at my disposal. The number of specimens
examined, including loose stamps, stamps on piece and examples from my own collection, totals
44. For this I would like to thank the following collectors: Thomas Artel, Dr Helmut Kobelbauer,
Dr Ivan Turk, Saša France, Henk Buitenkamp, Andrej Potočnik, Vid Žiberna and Bojan Kranjc.

Plate composition of the 20 vinar stamp lithographic printing.
Of the small number of single used stamps known to exist, many are
damaged with partially or totally illegible cancels, or both. There are also
cut-outs from packet cards, where the quality of stamps and cancels is better.
The stamp is not known in mint condition, though it is possible that an
example will turn up at some time. I have not seen any cover bearing this
stamp, although the possibility of such a find can, of course, not be ruled
out.
Drawing on the above, it seems that no sale sheet (a sheet taken directly
from the press and cut into suitably sized sections), let alone a printing sheet
(the full sheet taken from the press), has survived intact. The largest known
unit is a pair, so the composition of the sheet can only be arrived at by
deduction.

Figure 1. A pair of the Maribor 20 vinar, the largest known multiple.

September 2020 129 – 315