The following letter was forwarded by one of our readers:

Many thanks for sending the article from the newspaper Zoutpansberger that deals with the legacy of Fred Jeppe.

I read the article with great interest and was surprised to learn about Fred Jeppe’s work as a cartographer. The statement in the article that Fred Jeppe had designed the first Transvaal stamps was to me particularly interesting.

The philatelists, however, who deal with stamps of the old Transvaal associate the names of the brothers Jeppe with an entirely different, not so gratifying, story. I once read in an English stamps newsletter the following: “The history of postage stamps of Transvaal is the history of its forgeries.”

Below you will find the scan of two of my Transvaal brands. They belong to the first editions (if they are not fake).

- By Peter Blaschkowski, Germany