RICTUS
with
POSTAL RATES

After twenty-five years of collecting letter scales, I am sometimes still surprised on auction sites by versions of letter scales that I have never seen before in all those years. I saw this Rictus with postage rates on an Austrian auction site. They are German postage rates from the period December 1, 1933, to May 1, 1939. The scale was missing the letter plate, and the paper oval with the rates was heavily discolored and stained. It was no longer easy to read. The rates are framed in a brass frame attached to the Rictus with four small screws. Changing the rate paper is therefore a difficult task. I disassembled a few things to clean and scan them and polish up the list. To my surprise, there was an image of a Rictus with postal rates on the back of the rate paper; see the photos. I carefully edited the scanned front of the rate sheet in a photo editing program, made it clearly legible, and printed it on slightly thicker paper. I also cleaned up the scan of the back of the rate sheet; see the photos. Underneath the paper, virtually undamaged, is the well-known Rictus name oval with the abbreviation D.R.P. and patent number 384478. On the back of this Rictus letter scale, a factory plate from Gottl. Kern & Sohn is attached with two small screws. Also on the back is the logo with four lowercase Ms surrounding a large M, a later version of the logo by Philipp Jakob Maul from Hamburg, Germany. This Rictus was undoubtedly made by this Ph.J. Maul; I do not know who made the addition with the framed postage rate. The firm Kern & Sohn most likely supplied this Rictus. Previously, a letter scale with German postal rates on cardboard was shown on this website, see the bakelite letter scale. Switching to a new rate card is much simpler on that.