It is a Danzig stamp issued in 1920, SG40b. Danzig was declared a Free City (Freie Stadt) by the Treaty of Versailles, 28th June 1919, and issued its own stamps from 1920 to 1939 when Germany took over. After the war it became Polish (Gdansk).
There are multiple types:
1. background in grey (issued Aug.20th 1920)
2. background in lilac (issued Nov. 1st 1920)
A. burele background with points upward toward the right
B. ditto with points downward towards the left
or "All values exist without burele background"
or "All except two with background double"
At a guess I'd say your stamp shows:
2. Lilac background
B. burele, points downward, and
background double
So, Dave, was my post useful - apart, that is, from "SG40b"? Did it give you the information you sought, which I presume you were unable to get from your Scott catalogue?
It would be nice to know.
By the way, I take it you are working from the simplest version of Scott; they are not commonly used over here (indeed I have never seen one), so I do not know what versions are available to you. The simplest version of Stanley Gibbons would have got you pretty close to "40b" (it does not distinguish between the lilac and the grey backgrounds).
There is the "normal" Scott catalogue from which I lifted this information and then there is the Scott Classic Specialized, which runs to 1940 (1952 for British Commonwealth)
Jan-Simon
Note: I should have known better and realized that it was not allowed to post a scan out of the Scott catalogue. Those of you who have seen it, they now know what Scott has to say about this stamp. To everybody else: tough luck...
For those, then, who missed Jan's evidently illegal scan, the following. The normal Scott catalogue has much more detail than Stanley Gibbons Simplified, and almost as much as whatever SG now call their next step up, which in the 1970s was a three-volume "Europe" catalogue, and which may now be something like a one-volume "Part 7, Germany". The distinction lay only in SG's observation that "all values exist without burele background" and "all except two values have background double", which Scott omits to mention. Neither did Scott display the various overprints in Jan's scan, which SG does.
No-one has yet ratified my original answer to Dave's question, "What is it?". What do you think it is?
My conclusion was that it is Scott #26c, which is the violet burelage with points down. Scott does not list double backgrounds, so this is as detailed as it gets.
Well, it is all academic now, since Dave has left us (see other posts elsewhere on this website). I do wonder why he could not have done the homework himself, though (hence my initial enquiries about what catalogue he might have used). Perhaps there was more to the Master Sergeant's back-story than an outsider knew of.
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re: What Is It?
Ahhh - but for those of us who collect Danzig and Germany, you have helped us immensely! Thank you for the info.
Kelly
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Thanks for that note, David. Is it appropriate to say, "Welcome back!"?
I think I was originally puzzled by what is or is not included in the catalogues people have to hand at any given time. Sometimes it seems strange when people ask for information which is readily available in one country and is clearly not in another. I suspect this applies especially to those who collect Whole World, where even an up-to-date set of the simplest catalogues runs into hundreds of pounds/dollars.