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.

Review: Kaj Hellman and Jeffrey C Stone, Agathon Faberge

This remarkable book closes with two complimentary remarks made by contemporaries speaking about Agathon Fabergé; one described him as “a charming gentleman” and another as “a great philatelic scholar”. Those remarks could be applied to the co-author of this book, Kaj Hellman, who died shortly before it was completed. His fellow author, Dr Jeffrey Stone, has carried through the work to a splendid completion assisted by Kaj Hellman’s son, Oskari, and Kaarina Martilla who are responsible for an exceptionally well designed and illustrated book produced to a very high standard.

Agathon Fabergé (1876 – 1951) was one of the sons of the Imperial Russian court jeweller Peter Carl Fabergé. As a young man, he both worked for the family firm as a gemologist and became an avid collector of stamps and many other things besides. He had the resources to spend lavishly. The war and the revolutions closed the family business, resulted in the confiscation of many of his collections, put him in to a Bolshevik prison and - no doubt to survive - obliged him to work for the Soviet GOKHRAN organisation describing and evaluating Imperial jewels for later sale – in the end, it was the USA which would provide the market for them. It was not until December 1927 that Agathon escaped from Russia to Finland where he settled for the rest of his life.

My guess is that his decade in revolutionary Russia was traumatic. He never took employment after he left but also found it hard to downsize his lifestyle. He became a gentleman philatelist in constant financial difficulty, taking out loans against his collections and then losing them because he could not repay. Much of this is documented in this book. Kaj Hellman once told me that Agathon’s son, Oleg, on his father’s death had found his father’s office desk heaped with unopened letters, many containing bills long overdue.

Agathon Fabergé applied himself to his stamp collections in a spirit of scholarship making many discoveries which he simply noted for his own use and never published. This book retrieves some of that scholarship and makes it available. It also reconstructs many aspects of the ways in which “top end” philately was conducted in the first half of the twentieth century. We are introduced to a world of dealers who have very considerable financial resources to commit, to collectors who network extensively and exchange material privately, of international exhibitions, of personal feuds. Some of this reconstruction is enabled by Fabergé’s well-known habit of annotating his purchases, recording on stamps and covers who he had got them from, when and for how much. Hellman and Stone have made a big start on constructing a modern database of the annotations and this strikes me as an important piece of philatelic work. The Appendices to the text also contain valuable research material, notably in Appendix 2 which reconstructs Fabergé’s 1933 WIPA exhibits and Appendix 4 which is an inventory of known 1846 – 1851 Moscow postal stationery envelopes.

I would have welcomed a brief discussion of how Agathon’s collection was continued by his son, Oleg, who like his father periodically disposed of material ( Imperial Russian fiscals, Transcaucasia 1917 – 23) but also mounted up an extraordinary Zemstvo collection, which after his death was sold by Corinphila (1999) in what was the last remarkable auction of the twentieth century.

The book has been carefully proof-read, is surprisingly readable, and strikes me as a major contribution to the history of philately.

Kaj Hellman and Jeffrey C. Stone, Agathon Fabergé, published by Oy Hellman-Huutokaupat 2017, hardback, 370 pages, price 50 €

Agathon Faberge Acquisition Notes

As many collectors know, Agathon Faberge - son of the Court jeweller to Nicholas II - pencilled acquisition notes on stamps and covers he acquired. These usually give the date of acquisition, the supplier, and (in code) the price paid. Sometimes they include Comments. The style varies a bit over time - the example below (on a pair of Ananief Zemstvo seals) seems to give the coded price paid first whereas usually it comes at the end. The item was bought from Ruben in March 1901:

Click on Image to Magnify

Dr Jeffrey Stone is making a study of these acquisition notes and tells me that he has no examples of a note dated between 1915 and 1926. Can any readers supply examples? You can send him a scan at

 jeffrey.c.stone@btinternet.com

Imperial Russian Fiscal Stamps - Colour Trials and Gum Trials (?)

Here are Colour Trials of Imperial Russia's 1887 General Fiscal Issue - lovely ** blocks 4 from Agathon Fabergé's collection. But look at the backs. It is clearly deliberate - only part of each stamp is gummed. Why?

Often, Trials are not gummed at all - there is no need; they are not going to be used. If they are gummed, then they are gummed normally as if they are the finished product. Why this half gumming?

My GUESS is that someone wanted to test the effect of the gum on the appearance of the front of the stamp.

Does anyone have a better guess - or even real information?

Russian Fiscals: examples from Agathon Faberge's Collection

Click on image and use magnifier to enlarge

Fiscal stamps were not usually sold to the public. So unless they were remaindered at some point and sold to the stamp trade, it is unusual to find mint examples.

But some collectors and dealers always had the contacts necessary to obtain mint stamps. In Agathon Fabergé's fiscal collection there were mint copies of many fiscal stamps normally only seen in used condition. Above are three mint examples of the 1895 Tobacco Licence stamps. These are mint with full gum. On each one Agathon Fabergé has written an acquisition note:

The 1 1/2 and 3 rouble stamps were acquired from Eichenthal in February 1906
The 5 rouble was acquired in July 1906 from "G x Köhler". This stamp is particularly interesting because it already has a manuscript 25% reduced tariff inscription, suggesting that these were not applied at point of use but in whole sheets prior to use.

A very nice group of stamps!

Fabergé's Fiscal Collection

It is not widely known that Agathon Fabergé began collecting Russian fiscals around 1900 and that Oleg Fabergé continued the collection. It was never properly written up or exhibited but it was vast. At some point, much or all of it passed to the Finnish collector B.-E. Saarinen. From him, a prominent English collector obtained a great deal of material and the remainders appear to have passed to one Finnish collector.

Recently, I have been able to acquire quantities of this Fabergé material from both the English and the Finnish collector. As with the Fabergés' better-known Zemstvo collections, there is both common material in abundance and rarities - sometimes also in abundance. Agathon clearly enjoyed privileged access to state offices and, as a result, scattered through the collection there are mint (gummed) copies of revenue stamps which were not on sale to the public as well as ungummed copies which may well have been taken from proof sheets.

Agathon's pencilled notes on the stamps start around 1900 and the names of his suppliers overlap with those of his Zemstvo suppliers: Withy, Peto, Roussin and so on.

I will have some of this material with me at ANTVERPIA 2010 and again in May at PHILATEX EXTRA in London.