Where Can I Buy Genuine Dashnak Armenian Stamps of 1919 - 21?

Well, try

www.filateliapalvelu.com

where bidding closes on 1 December. There is a page for Armenia, most of the items from my stock, and separate pages for Azerbaijan and Georgia and, finally, a separate page for Transcaucasia as a whole.

Armenia in the Michel catalogue

Here are some thoughts on the Michel listing for Armenia. Your Comments are invited.

It is important to understand that Michel lists only stamps which, on the basis of archival research by C Zakiyan, are known to have been officially authorised. Counter surcharges made for dealers like Serebrakian and Melik Pachaev are excluded. In contrast, the Stanley Gibbons listing – based on the work of Tchilinigirian and Ashford – includes these counter surcharges.

Michel 3 – 28 Framed Z overprints

-          The earlier small type overprints are much scarcer and worth x 5 to x 10 more than the larger sized overprints

-          The earlier small overprints are roughly as common in black and in violet. But the larger overprints are scarcer in violet and are worth about x 2 to x 5 the price of black overprints

-         Michel 3,4,5 and 20 are scarcer than the valuations suggest

-          Large framed Z on 7 rouble imperforate exists and may be an official overprint, since the original handstamps would not have been available for late overprinting.

Michel 29 – 56 Unframed Z overprints

-          For the small Z overprints, violet and black are about as common; but for the large Z overprints, violet is much less common and worth x 2 to x 5 the price of black overprints

Michel 57 – 85 Rouble overprints

-          Violet overprints exist for the 1,3 and 5 rouble; they are scarce and worth maybe x 5 – x 10 the  price of black overprints

-          Violet overprints exist for the 10r on 25 kop but they are rarities

-          The valuations for Michel 65,66,72,73,84 are completely wrong based on a mis-reading of C Zakiyan’s first book. Zakiyan gave REMAINDER numbers for various stamps; Michel thought they were ISSUED numbers. Michel 66 for example is a common stamp worth maybe 15 €, not the 750€ given in Michel.

Michel 86 – 118 Combined Surcharges

-          The combined surcharges with framed Z (Michel 86 – 101) are all much scarcer than the unframed ones; Michel makes no distinction in valuations, though it lists the two types separately (Michel 86 - 101 for framed Z; 102 - 118 for unframed Z). Michel does not separately list stamps where the rouble Monogram has been obscured leaving the underlying Z clearly visible.

In general, framed surcharges are worth x 5 – x 10 their unframed equivalents. Only Michel 100 is quite common.

-          Again, some stamps are hugely overpriced due to the misreading of Zakiyan. This is true of Michel 95,96, 110, 111, 116 and 117. Fort example, Michel 111 is worth about 50 - 75 €uro not the 2200€ given by Michel

Chassepot Issue Ia – Ik

-          Stamps from the Original printing are relatively common, but the low values to 15r are scarcer as is the 70r. The set in ** condition is probably worth  20 – 25€

First Yessayan Michel IIa – II s

-          Stamps from the Original printing are probably worth 1€ each imperforate and 2 – 10 € each perforate. The 25 000 brown perforated is a rarity and worth 500 €. Confusion is created by the common Reprints/Forgeries of all values in both perf and imperf.

Second Yessayan Michel IIIa – IIIr

-          Unoverprinted stamps from the Original printing are scarce for those values which were not issued and worth 50 – 100 € each. They are rarities for the stamps which were issued and worth maybe 200 – 500 € each. Confusion is created by the two series of unofficial Reprints made by Yessayan, none of which were sent to Armenia.

-          It is a specialist task to distinguish the three printings.

Gold Kopeck surcharges Michel 142 – 166

-          In general this is a very good listing though 155a is too low (this is the 25 000 brown perforated)

Yerevan Pictorials Michel IVa – IV k

-          A set of the Original printing is not too difficult to find and 10 or 20 € seems about right; some values exist as remainders and are much more common – for example, the 400r

Manuscript surcharges Michel 167 – 170

-          In general this is a good listing, but the 2 kop surcharge (Michel 169) is a rarity.

Yerevan Pictorials with Overprints Michel 171 – 180

-          It’s very strange that Michel does not provide separate listings for the Metal and Rubber handstamps, nor for the three main colours (red, violet and black). This could be done quite easily. It is correct that the red Rubber overprints are generally scarcer. Red Metal overprints are probably Soviet reprints.

Rare Stamps Re-United

For twenty years, I have been buying and selling stamps of the Russian Civil War period. Some of them are rare - in fact, quite a lot since there are lots of philatelically-inspired varieties of Armenian and Ukrainian overprints each one of which was only produced in small quantities.

How rare is rare? What quantities? Well, sometimes only a single sheet of 50 or 100 was overprinted in such a way as to create an identifiable variety. Sometimes a few sheets.

In some cases, we have Official Numbers - in John Bulat's catalogue, you will find them, for example, for Ministerial tridents, Kherson tridents, Courier Field Post overprints, and CMT overprints. In general, these figures are very suspect, since they were published by the entrepreneurs who would benefit financially from sales of the stamps. More bluntly, it's highly unlikely that the figures are truthful.

There are ways of  estimating numbers independently of official figures. It's obvious if you think about it.

Suppose I have a stamp which I think is rare - one sheet of 50 or 100. Then if I get a second copy of the same stamp, then it should be identifiable as from the same sheet - same shade of stamp, same paper, same gum, same perforation, same centering, same position of a lithographic or typographic overprint. If it's not from the same sheet, then immediately you know that there were at least two sheets of this stamp.

And so it goes on. In some cases, you will find that every stamp you come across is from a different sheet and so the print number keeps on going up.

Then there are the cases where this does not happen. If your second copy of a stamp is clearly from the same sheet as the first copy - but has come to you from a different source - then this increases the probability that there was indeed only one sheet at the beginning. (Maybe there is a statistician out there who can figure this out).

Of course, everything depends on how independent the second stamp is from the first.

Recently, I bought Peter Ashford's collection of Armenian combined surcharges. Included was a pair of stamps with a 10 rouble surcharge over an existing framed Z overprint on a 70 kopeck imperforate stamp. This is a counter- surcharge (a philatelically-inspired surcharge) since the official scheme specified 25 rouble overprints on 70 kopeck stamps - this is what you will find listed in the Michel catalouge based on Christopher Zakiyan's archival researches. You won't find a 10 rouble surcharge listed there, only in the Stanley Gibbons calogue which is based on Tchilingirian and Ashford's researches.

As it happens I already had another pair of the 10 rouble surcharge. I don't know for sure where I got this, but most likely from Dr Ceresa's collection which in turn was based on Tchilingirian's collection (which Ceresa bought at auction). I pulled out my existing pair - and, hey Presto! - the two pairs fit together. The Ashford pair is at the top.

Click on Image to Magnify

Now, in this case, my guess is this: back in the 1950s - over 60 years ago - when Tchilingirian and Ashford were writing Stamps of Armenia they had just one block of 4 of this (rare) variety. They both wanted it in their collection. So they split the block of 4, something they would not normally have done with a postmarked block.

Do you have this stamp in your collection? And is it from the same sheet?

Armenia 1920 Dashnak overprints: an important statistic

It would be wonderful to discover a genuine narrative of day-to-day activity in Erivan post office during 1920.

My guess is that it was essentially a philatelic bureau and that over 90% of all stamps overprinted in the post office were sold to people about to leave Armenia who cashed in their (worthless) Armenian banknotes against postage stamps which in Constantinople, Paris or Berlin could be exchanged for hard currency. I guess there were also a few dealers and speculators who came from Tiflis or Batum or Baku, shopped and left. There should have been no problem paying the salaries of the post office clerks.

In the second half of 1920, the post office began surcharging stamps previously overprinted with framed or unframed Z, at a rate which increased the face value of the stamps by a minimum of 100 times for kopeck values ( 1 kopeck stamps surcharged 1 rouble and so on) and a minimum of 10 times for rouble stamps (10 rouble becoming 100 roubles). This made financial sense but the sensible move came rather late.

Customers at the philatelic counter had already bought most of the stamps originally overprinted with framed Z handstamps, especially the bargain price low values which even when they were overprinted had no postal usefulness - tariffs were already at a minimum of 60 kopecks.

More sheets of the stamps with unframed Zs, overprinted later than the framed Zs, remained.

In the Michel catalogue, combined surcharges on framed Z stamps are listed as Michel 86 - 101; combined surcharges on unframed Z stamps then follow as 102 - 118. My 2006 Michel makes no distinction in the pricing - the stamps are given the same values simply according to the face values of the stamps.

This is a mistake; the framed Z stamps are much, much scarcer. How much scarcer?

Last year I bought Peter Ashford's collection of Combined Surcharges - that's the Ashford of Tchilingirian and Ashford. Today I was looking at the collection and counted 310 stamps. Of those just 32 had framed Z overprints - say 10%. Since Ashford would have been looking to represent as many types as possible, 10 % almost certainly over estimates the proportion of framed Zs among Combined Surcharges. In addition, Combined Surcharges on Imperial kopeck value stamps with a face value below 15 kopecks are extremely rare - there were no longer the basic stamps in stock to use for the second surcharge. It is only when you get to 25, 35 and 50 kopecks that you begin to see framed Zs. Here, for example, is Ashford's page of 35 kopeck stamps surcharged 10 roubles. The five stamps in the top row have framed Zs (Ashford classifies them as E1b, E1b, E4, E6, E6), the rest of the page shows examples of unframed Zs.