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.

More About Armenia 1920 Overprints - Combined Surcharges

Emptying one of my stockbooks which did not sell in a recent auction, I pulled out all my working notes on the 1920 Combined Surcharges - the ones which add a rouble surcharge to a framed or unframed Z overprint. These notes were mostly written when I acquired the Tchilingirian - Ceresa holding of these stamps, probably 1000 + stamps at the time, and then added to when I acquired material from Serebrakian and other sources.

Here are some of my observations:

(1) I have never seen genuine combined surcharges on any of the following stamps though some are listed in catalogues:

Arms stamps, perforated: 1,2,3,5,7,10,14 and 70 kop
Arms stamps, Imperforate: 4,10,15,20,25,35,50 kop 7 and 10 rouble
Postal Savings, War Charities and Romanovs: all values except the 4 kop Romanov which can be found with combined surcharges (though it's rare)

Since these claims allow falsification I should be pleased to receive scans of stamps which require that a stamp should be taken off my "Does Not Exist" list

(2) Some rouble overprints were applied to sheets with authenticating cancellations applied at the time of the original Z overprinting. So it is possible to find combined surcharges with cancellations dated in the first half of 1920 - these cancellations relate to the Z overprint only

(3) Melik-Pachaev was able to get some stamps overprinted with both the Z and the rouble value at the same time or with the Z applied to stamps which already had rouble surcharges. See the image below where the Z is over the 100 rouble surcharge in the left hand block 4 with part ERIVAN "k" cancel. The Z in such Melik-Pachaev varieties is always (I think) type E18:

Click on Image to Magnify

(4) Combined surcharges with framed Z are much, much scarcer than with unframed Z - this makes sense if the post office in Erivan was overprinting remainders of earlier stocks. Michel valuations do not recognise this difference - perhaps only 1 in 10 combined surcharges are with framed Z. In addition, fewer values can be found with the framed Z. At its most extensive, my stock included only the following values with framed Z;

Arms perforated: 10/7, 15, 20, 25, 35, 50 kop
Arms Imperforate: 2 kop, 1, 3.50 and 5 rouble

Again this list could be expanded if anyone can scan genuine examples of other values.

(4) Though the 1, 3, 5  overprints can be found in violet occasionally (and rarely for the 10 rouble), no combined overprints show the rouble surcharge in violet, though the Z's are found in both violet and black.

(5) Despite all the philatelic manipulation around this issue:

     IF the stamp has a rouble face value, THEN the rouble overprint will be 50 or 100 roubles (never lower)