Help with these?

Would like to ask a question, hope this is the right thread.

As some of you may know, I volunteer at a local economy shop that supports several charities. We always have to check the donations, because some people inadvertently mix into their donations papers that we shouldn't put in the recycling bin, e.g. we have found wills, ID's, credit cards etc and in those cases we contact the person and inform them what we found and if they want / need it back.

This week I was going through a lot of papers and found 2 coupons, which at first I was just about to put into recycling. But then I saw it has a date mark: "9.X.41" meaning it was used / stamped during WWII. So I thought I would better try to find out what this is, and at least learn something

I searched the Web and found that it is not a stamp, it is an IRC, International Reply Coupon, apparently used in countries members of the UPU (Universal Postal Union) and it could be used for mailing letters exchanging it for stamps in a foreign country.

Trying to find out if this kind of "stamps" are collected by stamp collectors I did a search at CT looking for a thread mentioning IRC with 0 results.

As you can see the original value of the ones attached was 30 Reichspfennig and they were "devaluated" to 25. On the obverse we can see that both were stamped in Vienna in 1941. The reverse is the same for both, so I only attach one reverse.

Before I send it to recycling, does anybody know if stamp collectors also collect this kind of "replacement" stamps?

Any idea why does it say Deutschland if they were bought at a post office in Vienna?

 

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@lordmarcovan What do you think of redirecting this post to Paper Money or Foreign Coins?

 

Thanx

 

@cmezner You can leave your post here or contact lordmarcovan or any Moderator (report) and ask him to move to Paper Money, your choice.

 

Thank you very much @Robert Ransom, @lordmarcovan for your advise; didn't know where I could ask the question.
Reported and asked to move my post.

 

I’m not familiar with them. Maybe @lettow will see this thread and have some information.

 

According to Wikipedia, an international reply coupon is a coupon that can be exchanged for one or more postage stamps representing the minimum postage for an unregistered priority airmail letter of up to twenty grams sent to another Universal Postal Union (UPU) member country. IRCs are accepted by all UPU member countries.

Regardless, it would seem that very few of these have sold on eBay recently.

Sold Listings:

Active Listings:

Back to your original post @cmezner, Deutschland is printed on the note due to Anschluss of 1938. The Anschluss essentially joined Austria and Nazi Germany prior to the beginning of the Second World War.

 

Thank you very much @Bradley Trotter for your information. Interesting that the Anschluss meant that Austria was considered as part of Deutschland. Learning every day. Will pass the info to the shop, as it seems that there could be a few collectors interested in these vouchers - they won't go to recycling for the time being.

 

Well, I have a couple "somewhere" in my "stuff" but until I can find them, here's one for sale on eBay; a Canada 1955 12 cent one.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/CANADA-12-...on-IRC-London-design-dated-1955-/223286911053

And there are several reference in Wikipedia (your online 'grain of salt' reference)

 

International Reply Coupons are collectible. They are not particularly scarce. These being wartime issues from a belligerant country are interesting.

If I were mailing something overseas and wanted to pay for the return postage, I would send along an IRC that I purchased at my post office in my local currency. The recipient would take that IRC to his local post office and purchase the return postage.

 

I didn't even know they existed, until now - very interesting, and I can see from the links that Bradley Trotter sent, that there were many countries issuing them for many years.
The one I shared seems interesting because it shows that Vienna was considered German, as Bradley Trotter explained about the Anschluss.

Amazing what one can learn here on CT

 

checking some "old" modern coins that I have, just found that I do have a "10 Reichspfennig", 1944, mintmark "B" - legend is "Deutsches Reich", has a swastika and per your info, was minted in Vienna it is made of Zinc and looks quite poor....

 

Nice work @cmezner. Thank you for your efforts to "save" some history and posting this for us to become better educated. I don't believe I've ever heard of these before so will add it to my fading memory.