Heilongjiang Province (黑龍江省) Local Issue, Longzhen (龍鎮)

Longzhen (龍鎮) – Date of Liberation: 19 August 1945

[huge_it_maps id=”76″]
This map only gives rough impression about area and location.

Some comments:
– Kerr and Chan are both wrong about the town location (looks like they copied from each other). All existing commercial covers show clearly the use in Longzhen (龍鎮) under the jurisdiction of Bei’an (北安).
– The overprint of Longzhen (龍鎮) shows a very unusual Chinese character, a combination of “垂” + “攵” which does not exits as single character. The meaning of the combination stands for “郵” [post] and I will use this character in the following table.

1st stamp issue (Kerr 131.7-7a + unlisted):

Provisional Issue:	Stamps Overprinted "Chinese Post Temporarily Used for" and Surcharged
Issued:	May 1946
Issued by:	Longzhen Postal Administration (龍鎮郵政管理局)
Overprint	"Chinese Post Temporarily Used for" and Surcharged ("中華郵政 暫作" 改值郵票)
Overprint method:	Hand-overprinted with rubber chop
Currency:	Northeast Currency (東北幣)
Not all stamps of this issue shown here.

The unused stamps of this issue shows are all a slightly differently overprint in faint details and comes always in a rough impression. This might be in a result of the better copy of the overprint chop of a misuse of chop after the stamp validation. Like in Bei’an (北安) the following denominations were used in Longzhen (龍鎮): 1 元 / 2 分 ⦿ (sheet and booklet stamps) and 5 元 / 12 分 ⦿ (this stamp use the correct Chinese character “郵” in overprint). A commercial use of the 5 元 / 30 分 listed in catalog is unknown. Overall the unused stamps also have a different overprinted ink, which goes more in a grey instead of black color. In conclusion we can’t put the unused stamps as a regular issue and I state them as bogus made from (probably) Russian stamp dealers for collectors.

Bogus stamps similar to this issue (Kerr 131.7-8):

A close compare of both bogus stamps with genuine commercial used stamps:

Trade Prices 2019 (USD)			(★)	⊙	Kerr Cat. No.	Remarks
1 元 / 2 分 ●	blackish yellow green	K13	--,--	80,00	131.7 [used]
●			--,--	100,00	--	booklet stamp
●			--,--	800,00	131.7a [used]	booklet pane
5 元 / 12 分 ●	blackish orange	K13	--,--	150,00	--	correct "郵" in overprint
Set of 2 (without booklet stamps)			--,--	230,00

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Remarks:
– All shown sets exists (at least some stamps of each set) genuine used on domestic covers.

Not shown:
– Kerr 131.1-6: Set is unknown to be genuine used, possible not issued / bogus
– Kerr 131.7-8: Stamps are unknown to be genuine used, possible not issued / bogus (see above).