What do you remember most when you fly over a stamp collection page by page at an exhibition or even privately? They may be rare cantonal stamps or other expensive numbers that you do not yet own in your own collection, neither individually nor on letters. But for once, this is not the issue here. With increasing distance to the fleeting viewing, when we recall the object after days or even weeks, it is often other album pages that are immediately present again: "coloured" pages. Pages with different stamps, if possible also in different colours, loose or on letters, pages with multiple frankings and especially those with multi-colour frankings! It is like looking at a black and white photograph and a colour image. Our eye seems to remember and remember different coloured objects much more easily than monochrome ones.
You should also keep this in mind when building up your stamp collection. There are many ways to do this. From those with relatively cheap issues to others that you cannot afford every day. In the catalogue of the Swiss Stamp Dealers Association we have listed on pages 34 and 35 various possibilities for the area of Orts-Post and Poste Locales, together with Rayons. As we have also listed the number of documents found so far, you can immediately see which units or combinations are frequently found here. But only few collectors have realized so far that there are combinations with a single-digit frequency number, which could or should not only be called great rarities, but world rarities! In comparison to other old Swiss rarities (e.g. rare cantonals on letters or pairs of cantonal stamps), where the frequency numbers have been researched and have been known for a long time, these statistics are more recent and therefore still (much) too little known and widespread. For the time being, you can still benefit from them without further ado. We currently have some of them in stock (also outside the catalogue) and would be pleased to offer you some of them without obligation. For this purpose it would be helpful if you could mention which combination you are looking for or which you already own.
We are pleased to present a few examples from our holdings in this catalogue so that you can see for yourself what such documents would look like in your collection. Please study for example the numbers 134, 135, 136, 146, 157, 161 or 165 of this catalogue. Make your own price comparisons with the rarest cantonals on letters. These usually exist in three-digit numbers. Sometimes we know up to several hundred of these numbers (Basler Taube, Zürich 4 S and W together). And yet the prices for these are no higher than the above mixed franking of local post or Poste Locales with Rayons! My opinion is that this will certainly change in the future with these mixed frankings.
It seems interesting in this context that those of the really large and important collectors of old Switzerland, who were aware of the extremely rare mixed frankings of the local post and Poste Locales, together with Rayons, acquired them quietly and silently, so to speak, for years. These were mainly collectors interested in postal history (Haemmerli, Schäfer, Grand, Nordmann, Bally, Wyler etc.). Simply because the collectors of the even earlier period were very well aware of the very great cantonal rarities (pairs of the Zürich 4, the Basel Dove or the Waadt 4 and also the full cross-borders on the yellow and light blue rayon stamps). But they had no basis in the literature and no statistics to support the above-mentioned mixed frankings, some of which are much rarer! So they could hardly integrate them into their collections. Today, however, this is now possible, even if only for a few years! This is the great opportunity for today's truly great collectors of old Switzerland. And fortunately, we do have them today - even or especially in Switzerland itself! The controversial issue of mixed or coloured franking has been with me for years. Until a uniform opinion has been reached here among all the relevant people, we will stay with the current designation.