Remember the Year of the Monkey

The red hand stamp on this 1969 cover ominously warns, NHO TET MAU THAN / DE PHONG XUAN KY DAU - "Remember the Year of the Monkey / Take precautions for the spring holiday" (year of the Rooster) .

The Year of the Monkey, of course, was 1968, and Tet was when the Vietnamese Communist forces launched a full-scale offensive against the Republic of Vietnam.

A smaller version of this hand stamp exists with the same text and there is a third version that specifically recommends uniting against the Communist enemy. They are all illustrated in Richard Aspnes' excellent Commemorative Postal Markings catalog.

The rectangluar KBC 4416 cachet is also interesting. I haven't seen one quite like that and I didn't previously have a record of this KBC number.

Update June 8:

I received a response from knowledgeable collector/dealer, Anh-Tuan Tran, who specializes in cachets and markings on Vietnamese covers. He believes both cachets on this cover are fake. There is not a lot of fake KBC material on the market, so I admit I did not consider this possibility.

The back-stamp postmark in Vinh Long looks good - the March 2 1969 date is late for Tet, but it's logical this marking may have been used for a couple of months to keep people alert. The QUAN -BUU postmark is illegible. Like I said, I haven't seen this type of KBC cachet.

Anh-Tuan provided a scan of another "Remember the Year of the Monkey" cachet for comparison - this one an M3 First Day Cover. As you can see, the letters in the hand stamp are much more precise and clear.


Is the KBC 4416 cover a fake, or was the hand stamp regionally made and applied during the contemporary period?

Based on the available information, I think the underlying cover is genuine but I concur the two hand stamps appear to be a fake.

Mien Nam Military Cover with Red Postmark

The abbreviation "M.N." on this postmark stands for Mien Nam, as the Communist regime referred to the "southern region" or liberated areas of South Vietnam.

The use of red ink is unusual, but the main appeal to me is its use in conjunction with a military stamp. Mien Nam postmarks typically canceled Mien Nam stamps, such as the ones depicting Ho Chi Minh watering a tree. Military stamps and M.N. postmarks are not often found together.

Tuy Phuoc is near Quy Nhon, and near the site of Champa towers built centuries ago.




UPDATE: This cover is a fake. For whatever reason I was only paying attention to the postmark and the fact that it was applied to a military stamp, but I didn't recognize the obvious - that the stamp was issued in 1982. Thanks to Ta Phi Long and John Carroll for noticing and calling it to my attention.

Fake Postmarks on NVN Millitary Covers

Be alert to bogus postmarks on North Vietnamese military covers. This post illustrates two examples with different levels of sophistication.

I obtained these covers at different times from a trading partner in Hanoi, whom I don't think realized that these were bogus. We exchanged want lists and acquired items for each other. I am convinced that these and other covers were custom made for me from a faker in North Vietnam.

In other words, my trading partner asked a stamp dealer for a particular stamp on cover and was told to check back in a couple of weeks at which point, lo and behold, the seller had come up with the stamp on cover. These particular stamps are not at all easy to locate used on cover, however they are readily available in mint condition. The seller could remove the stamp from a genuine cover or create one from scratch.

The first cover is a simple fake featuring the orange military stamp depicting a soldier with outstretched rifle. It is meant to be an adversity envelope made from a piece of notebook paper due to the lack of paper during the war. In reality, the paper is clean and nice smelling(!) so definitely not genuine. More obvious is the cancel, which looks to be hand drawn with a pen. It is not quite round and you can see the individual pen strokes.
The second cover is "better" in that the faker went to the trouble of soaking the original stamp and postmark off the cover. Unfortunately, he got a bit zealous with the water, leaving water stains and smearing the ink in the address. But we've all seen Vietnamese military covers in much worse condition, so this is not an immediate tip off.

The benefit of this approach is the faker has genuine postmarks on the reverse to lend credence to the cover

The postmarks on the front of the cover were then applied, again apparently drawn with a pen. At least the forger knew enough to make these an earlier date from the receiving marks on the back. But how many NVN military covers apply an additional cancel to the decorative cachet?


I have a dozen or so examples of fake covers like these, so let me know if you are interested in seeing more (and yes, my trading partner provided enough genuine material to make it worthwhile maintaining the relationship).

Some of the fakes have hand-stamped postmarks making them more difficult to identify, and some appear to have been made by another person with a different "style", but all have the same pleasant smell (Vietnamese military covers don't smell nice!) and all have a random splash of something on them that glows brightly under black light that leads me to conclude that they all came from the same source.

Fake LKV Cover on eBay

Spanish eBay seller "annflo" listed a Lien Khu V cover with what are surely bogus Ho Chi Minh and Family Left Behind stamps, surcharged with new values. The cover is meant to be an artifact of the Viet Minh in central Vietnam during the early 1950s. Starting bid price is a steep $180. View the auction here.

Update: The cover did not sell when it was initially listed. On Dec 22nd this cover was re-listed with a starting price of $150.

Another similar cover was posted on Dec 15. It has what appear to be five bogus Family Left Behind stamps a cachet depicting Ho Chi Minh and a a North Vietnamese flag. View auction here. Update: the cover was relisted Dec. 25 at $99 after not selling. After not selling again, the cover was listed for $90 on January 5th.

More Bogus NVN Material on eBay

EBay seller 'archiguy' continues to list bogus North Vietnamese "local" stamps. Here's one from a current auction listed as a "Vietnam ANNAM Local stamp 1954 LKV 5 Ho Chi Minh".

Previous contacts to this seller to acknowledge these items as fake only resulted in him making his bidders' IDs private - presumably to prevent anyone from warning them to use caution. The seller has positive feedback so winners are either unaware of the item status or they are happy paying decent sums for bogus items.

Caveat emptor.