Archangel, Odessa, Vladivostok: Stamp Dealers and Maritime Mail

 

The recent April 2021 sale (by Corinphila Veilingen) of Dick Scheper’s fine collection of Siberian postal history during the 1917-24 period made me realise how important Russia’s major ports were to stamp collectors and dealers in the Civil War and early Soviet period. Proximity to ships which could carry mail had two major advantages. First, it avoided sending mail overland in territory which might be subject to banditry or Red versus White fighting - or both. The Trans-Siberian railway, for example, ceased to be a reliable routing for mail from Siberia to western Europe and ship mail replaced it. Second, though it did not entirely avoid censorship and customs control, it may have been the case that local censors and customs officers in the ports - even when under Red control - were more sympathetic to private enterprise than their counterparts in Petrograd and later Moscow. And if not more sympathetic, at least more easily bribed.

Thus, for example, when in March 1922 - well into the Soviet period - the well-known Vladivostok stamp dealer Pappadopulo wants to write to his opposite number in Archangel, the equally well-known Tarasoff, he writes his postcard in Roman script and endorses it “via America”. The journey takes seven weeks but the postcard gets there, as the receiver mark of Archangel attests. [Lot 139 in the Scheper sale]. Pappadopolu uses the same endorsement for a card to Bulgaria [Lot 133] in July 1921 and to Iceland [!] in January 1921 [Lot 131]. Times were clearly harder at this earlier date - Pappadopolu is reduced to using indelible pencil, and only later has ink for his pen. In all three cases, he is writing from the Soviet-allied though not fully-Bolshevik Far Eastern Republic.

As late as August 1923 I can see a Registered cover going to New York from Vladivostok via Japan [Lot 218] and in February 1924 via Seattle [Lot 226]. I assume that at some point all foreign mail had to be routed through the centralised censorship of Moscow, but I don’t have a date.

Tarasoff’s overseas mail often went by ship via the Norwegian port of Vardø [see my long Blog about Tarasoff 11 March 2015]. Ship mail from Odessa went to Constantinople, Genoa, and Marseilles - and no doubt other ports. Dealers - like Trachtenberg -  and collectors would have been able to take advantage of this in the period of Ukrainian independence but also into the early Soviet period.

Illustrations to follow but right now the Scheper material can still be seen on line as www.corinphila.nl

 

 

 

How to distinguish genuine DVR (Far Eastern Republic) overprints

Ivo Steijn writes to me from California with a useful method of distinguishing genuine DVR (Far Eastern Republic) overprints. He tells me that on the genuine DVR monogram, the top half of the upright stroke of the central letter ALWAYS has a small protrusion on the left side. See the enlargement he has supplied. He says he has never seen a forgery which reproduces this feature.

However, this distinguishing feature is only found on the small DVR overprint (applied to kopeck value stamps such as the 1 kopeck previously overprinted with Kolchak "70" shown here)and by the time it is applied to stamps in combination with a Far Eastern Republic surcharge ( 7 kop on 15 kop and so on)the protrusion has been removed. But on the illustrated block of 25, every stamp has Ivo Steijn's identifying mark.

This is a very useful piece of information - forgeries of the DVR overprint are common.

Thanks, Ivo!

Expertising Russian Civil War Issues

Anyone who has met me at a stamp show will know that I keep most of my stock in small boxes with about 100 to 150 items in a box. Today, I sat at home and went through my Russian Civil War box which was a mess.

In fact, the Civil War is a real problem for me. There is no one reliable expert who covers all of the Civil War range (Baltic armies, South Russia armies, Siberia) and for some areas there is currently no one who offers a fast, cheap service.

Some signatures I count as reliable or generally so: Romeko, Mikulski, Soviet Philatelic Association (for Siberia), Riep (for Baltic armies), von Hoffman (also for Baltic armies), Dr Jem ( generally reliable), Dr Ceresa, Borek, maybe others that I can't think of right now.

For unsigned material, it is not a great problem with basic stamps - Denikins, Chita issue, Blagoveschensk issue, Belarus National Republic and so on. The Denikin forgeries are rare and very good, but I reckon I can identify them from the gum. Chita and Blagoveschensk issues appear not to have been forged. I can do the BNR issues for which there are a couple of fairly poor forgery types.

For overprints, it's a nightmare. For some issues - Kuban, Kolchak - genuine stamps are much more common than forged ones. This is not true for Western or North Western Army stamps.

Used copies are usually genuine and forged cancellations are mostly well-known and illustrated in Dr Ceresa's Handbooks. So often I start from whatever used copies I have and use them to check the mint stamps. But it can be a slow business.

Anyway, the Box looks a bit better at the end of the day than it did at the beginning. I will have it with me in September on my stand at London STAMPEX. Tomorrow, another Box to tidy.