A cover of the month of July 2023 shows us a letter from Liechtenstein from 1941. More precisely, a first-day cover with the “Madonna of Dux” stamp, which has a high nominal value of 10 francs. On the first day of issue of the stamp – 7 July 1941 – the letter was also sent as a COD item by express courier from Vaduz to Zurich in Switzerland.
There was almost no use for a stamp with a nominal value of 10 francs at the time. This simple letter would have cost 20 centimes for postage and 40 centimes for express delivery, i.e. 0.6 francs. For the cash on delivery of 20 francs, a fee of 20 centimes would still have had to be affixed. So all in all far from 10 francs. Therefore, this stamp was almost only affixed to collector’s letters or to COD letters from the postal stamp office if the collector so desired or if the stamp was delivered to him stamped in this way. This “impractical” nominal is probably the reason why the stamp in a small sheet of 4 (on the above letter the upper left stamp with the edge of the sheet was affixed) only reached a circulation of 49,462.
The stamp was designed by Johannes Troyer (1902-1969; Innsbruck (A), Vaduz (FL)) and produced in intaglio or letterpress. The engraving for the stamp was by Eugen Zotow (1881-1953; Kharkiv (RUS/UKR), Vaduz (FL)). The image of Mary on the stamp is the image of grace at the high altar in the chapel “Sankt Maria zum Trost” in Dux, which stands above Schaan. The figure itself was created around 1740, the chapel existed earlier.