Dr Raymond Casey

Readers of this Blog may wish to know that Dr Raymond Casey died earlier this week, aged 98. He was famous for his remarkable collections of Russian Post Offices Abroad and Russian Imperial Ship Mail. He was still adding to the latter collection as recently as this month.

Tags: Siberia + Civil War + Military + Maritime + Censor + Vladivostok

Click on Image to Magnify

Here is an interesting and very unusual item. It's banal picture postcard, posted On Active Service - the Russian equivalent of that is written at the top of the card in blue-green. Though it has an 11 October 1919 Vladivostok postmark, the message begins with the traditional Easter greeting, Christ is Risen! But this seems to be used as a joke to refer to the fact that it is someone called Christopher's birthday. The recipient obviously liked the card which is full of holes from having been pinned up repeatedly.

Now to business: the card was posted on board ship, where it was subjected to naval censorship indicated by the small two-line cachet above the handwritten address. This cachet reads EXAMINED /BY NAVAL CENSORSHIP.  But where?

Dr Raymond Casey comes to my assistance: the large "AMUR 9 is the (probably) incomplete strike of a slightly larger cachet, probably with a second pair of inverted commas after "Amur and maybe another letter or number. It is the personal cachet of the censor, struck in the same ink as the two-line general Naval Censorship handstamp, and it identifies the ship on which the card was posted.

The Amur (and here all the information is from Dr Casey) was a minelayer built in 1907, a vessel of 3068 tons with a full complement of 318 sailors which was based for the duration of World War One at Vladivostok. In 1919 it was presumably under White (Admiral Kolchak) control.

A puzzle remains: the address as written in ink looks incomplete - it is just someone's name. But at the base of the card, in a childish hand is written in pencil, partly inked over, "Morskoi port" - which means no more than "Sea Port" but might be sufficient to identify where the card should go in Vladivostok. Alternatively, it is a later addition to the card, made for unknown reasons.

Can anyone illustrate another example of the AMUR cachet - or provide an image of the ship?

Dr Raymond Casey Grand Prix Collection at David Feldman

Dr Raymond Casey, at the age of 94, remains an indefatigable collector. Yesterday, I saw him in animated conversation at London's Philatex stamp show. A couple of weeks before, he was at my table at London's Strand Stamp Fair - and,remarkably, I found something ( a small something) to offer him for his Ship Mail collection.

Today, I sat down at my computer and watched the sale of his Grand Prix collection of Russian Post Offices in China, Mongolia and Sinkiang. I didn't get the item I really wanted: a 1918 insured letter from Pekin to Petrograd, returned as undeliverable even before it reached the border. It interested me as showing that in the Pekin Russian post office, they still thought Petrograd a possible destination as late as May 1918.

Particularly interesting also were the Romanov franked items in the collection, all of which achieved high prices - and in some cases, very high prices. Here, I want to put out an unorthodox idea:

The conventional wisdom, endorsed by Dr Casey (page 17 of the catalogue), is that the Romanov stamps were not stocked in the China post offices (let's leave out Mongolia and Sinkiang from this and stick with China). However, so the story goes, they were valid for use if supplied by the customer - and this is how we come to find examples of them.

In the Feldman sale, no PEKIN items are franked with loose Romanov stamps; one very philatelic KALGAN cover has a 3 kop Romanov (Lot 20047); no CHEEFOO or HANKOW items have Romanov frankings; but two SHANGHAI items, both seemingly non-philatelic and dated 1913 and 1914, have low value Romanov frankings ( 2 kop, Lot 20064 - shown above - and 10 kop x 4, Lot 20065).

In the recent past, I had in my stock a fragment of a wrapper from Shanghai the franking on which included a 4 kop Romanov. I am sure I have seen loose stamps with Shanghai cancellations.

So my hypothesis is this: for some reason, the Shanghai Russian Post Office did receive some Romanov stamps for its stock. Maybe they asked for some.

Over to the specialists!

Dr Casey's collection realised over one million euros, with only one Lot unsold. You can consult the results at www.davidfeldman.com where you can also browse the illustrations of every Lot.

Postal History for Beginners :)

I was one of those boys who took the stamps off old postcards. My aunt had quite a collection and, rather reluctantly, she let me peel off the stamps. So I got damaged stamps and she was left with damaged postcards.

It's called, Not being able to see the wood for the trees. I know better now, but it took a long time.

Postal history should always be placed in the biggest context possible:

Who sent What to Whom? From Where, When and Why?

How much did it cost and how was the cost shown (the Franking)? By what Route did the item travel and how long did it take (Receiver cancellation - Despatch cancellation = Transit time)?

How was it handled en route? Did censors open it? Was it delayed by conflict?

Was it a typical item? Was everyone doing it? Was it specific to a particular time and place?

Some times the answers to these questions are obvious and sometimes they require a lot of research.

Today I was looking at Dr Raymond Casey's collection of Russian Post in China and Mongolia, as illustrated in two fine books The Russian Post in the Chinese Empire (David Feldman) and in the catalogue for the forthcoming sale of that collection (also David Feldman). This is how postal history should be done. Dr Casey pays attention both to the traditional philatelic matters - stamps, cancellations, tariffs - but also to the wider contexct of this mail. And what he has done can be done for items costing a dollar, not just for those costing thousands.

Russian Post Offices in China (Again)

Some years ago, I got from Dr Raymond Casey a fat stockbook of his duplicate stamps of the Russian Post Offices in China, mostly used - and put it in my cupboard. From time to time, I added new acquisitions, mostly mint multiples.

I have just emptied the stockbook. Most of the stamps have gone into the "Pick Anywhere for £1" stockbooks which I take to small fairs. Some I have put aside for expertising. Some I have put into regular stock using Stanley Gibbons as a guide to pricing.

I was satisfied that the used stamps were genuine - no doubt because they had a good provenance - and a few had nice postmarks. The handful of used copies of 1917 Cents issues included ones used as late as 1921 in Kharbin.

This issue is really very scarce used: Stanley Gibbons partly recognises this but Michel does not. The 1917 Cents set is a "Civil War" issue used in a limited number of offices providing an increasingly limited service in the East : Shanghai to Vladivostok is about as adventurous as it gets. Some of the values used are probably no easier to find than used copies of the 1920 (K)harbin Cents issue.

When I came to the mint stamps, I did a quick check for forgeries on every stamp - and quickly concluded that most were fakes, including the majority of my rather nice mint multiples. I have put them all (over 180 stamps including some which are probably OK and some which as I got tired I just could not be bothered with) into one Lot and will consign it (if he will take it!) to one of Kaj Hellman's forthcoming sales, to be offered "As Is" for a nominal starting price.

I was actually left with very few worthwhile mint stamps in which I had confidence; few of them were signed so I could not use signatures as a short cut. Interestingly, it was the kopeck value stamps which contained the highest proportion of forgeries.

This is understandable if you consider that stamps like the 5r and 10r on vertically laid paper are pretty scarce mint. If you were a forger and found a complete sheet of either of them in mint condition, you would simply be a fool to overprint them: they are too valuable to mess around with.