Wrong Language Cards

by Tom Fortunato, October 3, 2009


Roger Cichorz has done it again!

In his further investigations of type settings of differing language cards, he has now found what might be a unique anomaly--a card in English mailed to a non-English language country--France. Even more interesting is that while both cards are written in English, their messages are written in two different settings.

Take a closer look. This card features two "children in native dress" and come from a later Abbott mailing from 1968. These postcards (reference 87n on the master checklist) were mailed from Liechtenstein on November 28 and 29, and sent to Pennsburg, PA and Paris, France, respectively. They received the same slogan cancel and may have even gone through the same cancellation machine.

The two handwritings are strikingly similar with the exception of just a few letters that may have intentionally been made to look different, like the capital "N" in "Nurse" and the letter "A" in "Anesthetist" and "Abbott". Now notice the "T" in "Though," the printed lettering of PENTOTHAL, the small letter "t" in "thiopental," and the "bbott" combination of "Abbott" at the very bottom.

There is definitely more to be found and learned from these cards!


After posting this article, member Bill Holland came up with two more "wrong language" cards:

Spanish language card from Andorra to Canada (card 1 sp)

German language card from Ifni to the USA (card 67 ge)