Post-Soviet Meter Frankings

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Some of us are slower to adapt to changes than others. Here is an office clerk stuck with a Soviet-era meter franking machine which only goes up to 9 rubles 99 kopecks. But he or she is trying to send a large envelope from Moscow to Estonia in July 1973. I count 86 individually-applied labels at 900 kopecks and 2 at 300 kopecks, yielding a total franking of 780 roubles. The Catch 22 is that the weight of these labels and the glue used to apply them probably altered the weight step for this letter ....

In other offices,clerks dealt with the inflation problem by removing the "k" for "kopeck" on the machine and inserting a "p" for "ruble". In this case, the franking could then have been applied by using just one label. 

This is by no means the most exotic item you could find from Russia's 1990s inflation.

Russia 1990s Inflation

Commercial covers can be more exotic than anything fabricated by philatelists. The three shown here must have involved an awful lot of work. If you think philatelists are obsessive, what about the guys who franked these covers?

601600 ALEXANDROV VLADIM.O[blast]. 16 04 93 to VÖRU [Estonia] 15 05 93 franked 1991 Reprints of 1984 Soviet 3 rouble definitives, 4 on the front and 30 on the back (= 102 roubles) + a possible but unlikely contribution from the 7 kopeck imprint and the unclear kopeck uprating beside it

432002 ULYANOVSK 08 04 93 to VÖRU 27 4 93 franked 44 x 900 kopeck cut-outs (totalling 396 roubles) from a Soviet-period franking machine. At this period, some offices modified their franking machines by scratching out "KOP" at the base and inserting "RUB".

The Winner at the top of this Blog:

390072 NOVOVORONEZH 05 03 92 to VILNIUS [Lithuania] 10 04 92 franked - as far as I can tell - with 148 x 10 kopeck stamps which are cancelled together with 2 x 1 kopeck stamps which may have been originally applied to uprate the postal stationery envelope and have probably been ignored - or which may have been silently revalued to 10 kopecks to complete what was intended as a 15 rouble franking.

Russia's 1990s Inflation - a Catch 22 cover?

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This crazy cover was sent from MOSCOW 03 09 93 using an unmodified Soviet-era franking machine only capable of reaching 999 kopecks (9 roubles 99 kopecks). A clerk (either working through the night or with only one letter a day to frank)has assembled 94 cut outs (front and back) on this cover in addition to the single regular frank at top right.

On the back there is a TALLINN transit and a VORU receiver

I am not very good at arithmetic, but I reckon the franking totals 841 roubles (there are franking labels for 100, 500 and 700 buried among the 900 labels). The Manuscript at bottom left suggests someone had calculated a postal charge of 780 roubles for 100 grams. But there is a catch: the labels when gummed (and boy are they gummed)add significantly to the weight of the envelope. So maybe the weight step changed. Or maybe we are all bad at arithmetic.

In some organisations at this time, an easier solution was found: you file down the KOP at the bottom of the franking stamp and insert "p" or "pyb", thus achieving a x 100 revaluation