The Sisters Tru'ng - Vietnam Collector

The Sisters Tru”ng, March 14th, 1958, Michel Nr. 96-97; The Tru’ng were female military leaders of the Luoyue tribe that incited a rebellion against the Chinese 14 a.d. Two stamps with 5xu and 8xu nominal were issued. The choice of the nominals is a bit of a puzzle as none of them appears to conform to the 12xu standard letter rate that was 150 old Dong (equal to 15xu in new Dong) until April 15th, 1959 nor to the 12xu standard letter rate that was adopted thereafter. May be in March of 1958 there was still uncertainty as to what the new postal tariff should reflect. The 8xu nominal was hard to use in the tariff structure at the time and as a result the stamp is difficult to find on cover. The stamps come in two standard forms. One with the paper ribbed horizontally and one wirth the pair ribbed vertically. Here is the complete mint set in blocks of four (Vertical ribbing) Here are two cancelled to order sets. The left pair shows horizontal ribbing while the right pin shows vertical ribbing. Note that the second 5xu stamp is taller than all the other stamps. This had to do with the manual perforation setting in the early days of North Vietnam. Mixed franking of the 5xu The Sisters Tru”ng stamps (2) together with stamps from the Worker Congress and Young Pioneers sets paying an overall postage of 12xu on an international air mail letter sent in June of 1961 from Hanoi to East Germany. Colorful mixed franking on which the smaller 20D and 60D HCM values were used. They are rare to find on cover. Since the letter was mailed just one month after the currency devaluation in 1959 it carries a dual currency franking as follows: 250 Old Dong :1,000 = 0.25 New Dong (or 25 Xu) plus 5 Xu for total franking of 30 Xu. Sent on April 9th, 1959 to Czechoslovakia.

Interesting mixed currency franking featuring one of the Cam Phase stamps in 150 Old Dong, the 12 Year Republic 20Old Dong and two of the Tru’ng Sister stamps in 13 new xu. The old Dong was devalued by 1,000:1 so the two old stamps were only worth 17xu. So, there overall franking amounted 30xu which represented the surface letter rate to China. The 8xu Tru’ng Sister stamp is due to its unusual nominal value very hard to find on cover.

Complete letters are pretty hard to find. Here is a mixed currency franking from April, 1959. On March 1st, 1959 the Old Dong was devalued by 1,000:1 which meant that the stamps in the old currency (250D) were worth 0.25 New Dong or 25 Xu. A value with 5 Xu of the New Dong was added for a total postage of 30 Xu. That covered the surface rate to Eastern European countries, in this case Romania. Arrival cancel on the reverse.

Mixed currency franking mailed April, 1959 from a guest of the Hotel Metropole to Czechoslovakia. The values in Old Dong amounted to 460D which at the time were worth 0.46 New Dong or 46 Xu. Added was a stamp with 5 Xu of the new currency for a total franking of 51 Xu.