Globalisation? Nothing New to Stamp Collectors

Globalisation is nothing new to philatelists. From the moment that collecting stamps became a hobby in a few countries, it also became a global trade. When a country joined the club of stamp-issuing countries, at least one person started to ship the new issues out of the country and make some kind of business out of doing so. In some cases, they shipped to lots of other countries; in other cases, they shipped to a select few and specifically to the biggest dealers: Moens in Belgium, Senf in Germany, Gibbons in Great Britain, and so on.

One hundred and fifty years ago and even more recently, there were often restrictions on both exporting and importing. In some countries, like the old Soviet Union, private individuals could only export through official channels, specifically the Soviet Philatelic Association. Even now, there are “heritage” restrictions on exports from countries like Russia and Poland. Those restrictions are often ignored, and always have been. Stamps are very portable and if you don’t want to follow the rules, it’s very easy not to.

Countries  sometimes impose restrictions on imports, making duty payable on stamp imports. If I buy something in a Swiss auction, then I expect to be charged 5% import VAT. But sometimes an official mistakenly charges me 20% and sometimes nothing at all – when they can’t cope with the volume of work, I suspect they just let some things through. If people don’t want to pay import duties, then often enough at the airport they walk things through Customs.

One way or another, we have globalisation and it’s a bit like the famous Six [ or Seven ] Degrees of Separation. In fact, for New Issues it must be unusual for there to be as many as seven links between a person buying stamps at a post office counter and a collector buying those stamps across a stamp dealer’s counter. It’s more likely to be two.

When we move away from New Issues to material which has been inside the philatelic world for decades or more, there is an interesting distinction between those stamps which constantly churn and those which are still only a few degrees of separation away from their starting point. For example, there are “Investment” grade stamps like the 1929 British PUC Congress £1 stamp which circulate more or less continuously in auctions and have no obvious “provenance”. They are both common and anonymous. It is really only because they are investment items that they command prices which make it worthwhile for an auctioneer to present them as a Single Lot item. The PUC £1 is a common stamp.

Over my quarter century as a stamp dealer, it has interested me that some of the material I handle is only a few  degrees of separation away from its original starting point even when that starting point is over a hundred years away.

For example:

In 1861, the Moscow Police authority issued its first stamps to indicate that someone had paid the fee to register their residence in the city with the police. In 1881, the rather crude first issue was replaced by a State Printing Works-grade second issue. I guess that it was around this time, that PERSON 1 approached someone in the Police department and enquired whether it would be possible to buy the unused remainders of the first issue (which might otherwise have been destroyed). With or without bribery and corruption, PERSON 1 got the stamps. They sold them on to PERSON 2, the famous Belgian dealer Moens, who put the sheets and part sheet into his stock. It’s possible that Person 1 and Person 2 were the same person, namely Moens, but I assume there was an intermediary.

Much later, PERSON 3 bought some of the stamps from Moens – some in large blocks. That person was Lentz, who sold on to PERSON 4 , Agathon Faberge who helpfully recorded on the back of his blocks that he got them on 21 I 07 from Ltz Moens Lager [Lentz Moens stock]

When Agathon Faberge died, the stamps passed to PERSON 5, his son Oleg Faberge, who probably put them onto new album pages. Late in his life, Oleg sold the stamps to PERSON 6, a Finnish collector B E Saarinen who took them off the new album pages. Then it becomes a bit unclear. 

We know that he sold on parts of his Faberge fiscal collection to another Finnish collector and to a British collector, but neither was the PERSON 7 who (probably after Saarinen’s death) kept or bought the best bits of the collection, including the ex-Moens mint stamps, and sold them at auction a couple of years ago to me, who is therefore PERSON 8 at the current end of a chain which stretches back to the 1880s. 

That’s a very short chain for 130+ years.  In those 130+ years, the stamps have crossed from Russia to Belgium, back to Russia, out to Finland in 1927 when Agathon Faberge fled/ was allowed to leave Russia, and finally from Finland to the UK [directly?] under EU single market rules.

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Moscow Police fiscal stamps of 1861

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Above is an old Xerox copy of a page from the Emile Marcovich collection of Russian fiscal stamps. It shows the 1861 Moscow Police issue. I have copies of all the stamps except the last, perforated, one and I have never seen an example of the perforated stamp.

The problem with a stamp like this is the possibility that someone has created a variety by perforating an imperforate stamp. True, the perforation is high quality. On the other hand, did Moscow police in the 1860s or even after have access to good perforating machines? And if Moscow perforated , why did St Petersburg not do so for the equivalent 1860 issue of police stamps?

In the absence of archive documentation, to establish the credentials of a stamp like this we really need to see an example used on a dated fragment of a document – we know what the documents should look like because plenty exist. We also need to see more examples of the stamp itself. Any offers?

Russia Revenues: Imperial Moscow Police residence permit stamps, first issue

St Petersburg and Moscow police departments began using adhesive stamps to record payment of residence permit fees in the 1860s. Most St Petersburg stamps are common, though one is a great rarity, but Moscow’s are not common even though they remained in use until at least 1881 when new stamps prepared by the State Printing Works were issued.

Nothing about the first Moscow issue suggests it was printed by those State works. The gum, the variable paper, the wide variation in colour, the deterioration of the printing plate, the lack of alignment of individual stamp clichés – all this is well below the standard achieved by the State works. The stamps look like a job which might have been done in-house by the Police department itself. To me, the stamps look as if printed by lithography, the plates retained over a long period and the quality of the print greatly deteriorating.

It is quite difficult to study the issue for four reasons. First, the scarcity of large mint multiples for plating purposes. Second, the impossibility of dating the use of stamps which have been taken off document, where they were always cancelled by a simple pen cross. Third, and connectedly, the difficulty in distinguishing printings when there appears to be wide variation within printings and not just between them. Fourth, the scarcity of stamps used even on a fragment of a document. In addition, lacking access to the relevant sources I do not know what the fee structure was or how it changed.

On the pages illustrated below I have assembled over 100 Moscow stamps now in my possession. About half of them have pencil notes on the reverse which indicate that they are from Agathon Faberge’s collection. These notes are dated between 1900 and 1907, though some notes do not give a date. It is my belief that Faberge annotated stamps that he bought individually but that, in addition, he bought bundleware or kiloware of these stamps for research purposes and only annotated those where he noticed something unusual. My guess is that in the 1900 – 1914 period Faberge owned and studied many hundreds of these stamps, now dispersed across many collections.

My assembly does not include two varieties listed in the John Barefoot catalogue: an error of colour on the 5 kopeck printed in blue instead of the correct green; and a perforated version of the 5 kopeck green. I have never seen either and would be pleased to illustrate them here if anyone has either of them. Added: John McMahon has kindly provided the following scan of his error of colour stamp. This appears to be the only recorded copy,from the Marcovitch collection. However, to my eye, the blue would be more convincing if it could be matched to the same blue appearing on a 3 kop stamp (the 3 kop stamps were printed in blue). 

I can show two varieties identified by A Faberge: bisects on the 2 kopek and manuscript revaluation of a 2 kopek stamp to 3 kopeks.

On my very provisional pages, I have copied back-of-stamp A Faberge’s notes and written them underneath the stamps on which they are found. Any notes above the stamps are mine. Click on Images to Magnify.