Hi,
Item #4 is a cover from Bahrain. It was hiding inside a lot of U.A.E. covers.
It is an air mail cover sent from Bahrain to E. Gehle of Mainz West Germany and cancelled with a 7.5.1986 circular date stamp from Bahrain. As far as I have been able to ascertain from searching the net the E. Gehle on the cover is probably Erich Gehle GMBH.
There is no return sender listed, and this is the case with the UAE covers in the lot which were addressed to E. Gehle.
The cover is franked with two 100 f. stamps Bahrain SG 229b (Scott 232) issued in 1977.
What caught my eye is the third stamp, a blue stamp with no English wording on it (the perforation is 14-1/2):
Usually this means some kind of emergency stamp such as postal tax, refugee relief, war stamp, etc..
SG Arabia lists this stamp as T194 5f. new blue, issued 1 December 1973 and says: "Nos. T192 and T194 were for compulsory use on all mail in addition to normal postage ... The tax was introduced at the beginning of October 1973 ..."
SG Arabia also states that: "T194 exists from at least six known printings. The colour shades vary as is consistent with lithograpy printing. The paper varies from thick white to glazed paper." Scott lists it as Bahrain Scott MR2 perforated 14.5 issued in 1974 (but doesn't give any additional information).
Note that the date on the cancel is May 1986, that is twelve and a half years after the tax was established. Perhaps that is the explanation for the six printings. Maybe someone knows when this tax was ended? Or has information on the different printings?
T194a (perforated 14 by 13-1/2) was issued in 1988, so I assume the tax was still in force in 1988.
I was hoping that the stamp on the cover would turn out to be T194a, whose issue date was determined by the earliest date found on a cover (10.4.88), but no such luck.
Cheers,
Carmel