1918 - 1919 South Russia Kuban Overprints

The 1918 - 1919 White stamp issues of the Kuban, were carefully printed in Ekaterinodar and normally yield crisp, clean typographic overprints. Errors and varieties exist but the printing plates were kept clean and aligned carefully.

This is very obvious for the 10 rouble overprints on Postal Savings Bank stamps. Here the plates were prepared in such a way that if the plate was carefully applied the "10" obscured the 1, 5 or 10 of the underlying stamp and the "rublei"obscured the underlying "kopeka". See the top row of stamps in the illustration below.

Most forgeries make the mistake of placing the "10" centrally above the "rublei" so that the "10" never obscures the underlying 1, 5 or 10 - see the rest of the stamps below, all of which are forgeries.

Notice that on the basic stamps, the "1" is aligned to the left and the "5" and "10" to the right. As a result, the Ekaterinodar printer had to prepare two plates for the overprinting. The forgers economise and use just one. One of the forgeries (bottom row, third stamp from left) does realise that the "10" should be above the letter L of rublei, not the letter B, but the quality of the lettering is very poor in comparison to the genuine stamps.

Click on Image to Magnify

Russia 1917 - 23: Speculative stamp issues and Fantasy issues

Recently (2 February) I blogged about non-speculative stamp issues in the 1917 -23 period and gave some examples. Speculative stamp issues can be identified by their failure to meet some or all of the criteria I listed. Of course, most of the time there are shades of grey.

But when is a supposed stamp issue not a stamp issue at all but simply someone's private fantasy or business speculation? In other words, completely bogus and collectable only as such?

I suppose the fundamental questions are these: Was the supposed stamp issue ever available at a post office counter (even just one counter and even if only for a short period)? Could it be bought by (almost) anyone who walked in? Could it be used to frank mail which would then be carried from A to B by some post office delivery person (even if only within the limits of a town or city)?

Here are some "issues" (listed in some catalogues and some of which are popular with collectors) which I think had no real existence as stamp issues. There was no post office, you couldn't buy them there, and there was no mail delivery service which recognised them:

• The so-called Refugee Post (Wrangel's Army) stamps, produced by a group of speculators who spent a lot of time fabricating attractive covers which circulated no further than the table they were sitting at. There was no Refugee Post which issued and recognised these stamps and delivered letters
• The so-called Courier Field Post issues of Ukraine. Ditto as for the Wrangel stamps. There was no Courier Field Post which used these stamps even if there was a Field Post on whose existence they play.
• The so-called "Beirut" ROPIT issues - overprints and ship designs (the latter I suspect - from the gum and paper - printed by Yessayan in Constantinople, just like the Refugee Post overprints)
• The Georgia "Constantinople" consular stamps, undoubtedly linked to obliging consular officials who provided authenticating documents - but even if you were Georgian you couldn't walk into the consulate, buy the stamps and hand over the letter for delivery.

There are others like the Occupation Azerbaijan overprints but these are generally recognised as fantasies.

In contrast, though highly speculative, there are other issues which met the minimal requirements of availability connected to an actual postal service. I would include here the issues of the Western Army and the North Western Army. I have a feeling that the stamps of the Northern Army were - shall I say - less speculative. They were printed in very large quantities in the worst designs ever chosen for postage stamps and the amount of proof, trial and error material associated with them is very small. Given the chance, the Northern Army would have made more use of these stamps than it did: a few genuine usages exist and Alexander Epstein has chronicled them

The stamps of the Belarussian National Republic [Bulak-Bulakovich], designed by Zarins (the designer for some of the Romanov stamps) and beautifully printed in Riga - these I think of as simply unissued. The BNR would have used them if it could have ...

The issues of Western Ukraine fall into the same category as the Western Army and North Western Army, except for the Kolomiya Registration labels which have a much better claim to be regarded as genuine stamp issues.

Well, I suppose some of this may be controversial!

Russia 1917 - 1923 : Non-Speculative Stamp Issues

Very early on in postage stamp history, control over some stamp issues fell into the hands of people hoping to make a profit from sales to collectors rather than wanting to prepare stamps to meet a genuine postal need. Surprisingly, there are quite a few issues from former Imperial Russia during the 1917 - 23 period which were not speculative in this sense.

How to distinguish? Here are some of the criteria for what I would call a genuine stamp issue:

• control over the issue is in the hands of a postal authority 
• the printers have at least some features of what we would now call "security printers", securing the production process to prevent unauthorised printings by workers; disposing of printers' waste; keeping account of the number of stamps produced; not producing deliberate errors and varieties; and so on
• the issued stamps are widely distributed to functioning post offices in the territory controlled by the postal authority
• the stamps can be freely bought over the counter
• more stamps are used non-philatelically than are stuck on philatelic covers or cancelled to order for collectors and dealers
• the quantity of essays, proofs, trials, is reasonable in relation to what is required by the production process. If a committee of 20 has to decide on colours, then of course the printer will produce at least 20 sets of the possibilities on offer. But not 2 000. (In practice, a colour trial is produced by printing off at least one sheet so the minimum number of copies which can be produced corresponds to the sheet size)
• no one value in a set is selected for production in artificially limited numbers and excluded from general distribution

And so on. Most or all of these criteria are met by:

• the first issue (the "Flowers") of Estonia
• the first general issue of Ukraine
• the Don and Kuban overprints
• the "One Russia" stamps of General Denikin
• the first Musavat issue of Azerbaijan (though the short life of the Musavat regime limited actual postal use)
• the 1921 "Chita" issue stamps of Siberia
• the 1923 "Yerevan" pictorial set of Armenia
• the 1923 pictorial issue of the Transcaucasian Federation - probably the most tightly controlled of all these issues

There are others: Podillia Tridents are a surprising example of good security printing: all those handstamps but no variation in ink colours and hardly any inverted overprints.

Anyway, all the above stamps have low catalogue values. They were definitive stamps (Dauermarken) intended for regular use and, in general, were actually used quite widely. So in each case - except Azerbaijan  - it is possible to make a collection, at fairly reasonable cost, not only of the basic mint stamps but of cancellations, covers - and, very occasionally and more expensively, errors and varieties; proofs and trials. (For some of these issues, trial and proof material does not appear to exist. In most cases, there was extensive remainder material later sold off - often by the Soviet Philatelic Association - to the stamp trade.)

Forgeries of Denikin stamps

The "One Russia" (or "United Russia") stamps issued by General Denikin's administration in 1919 were printed in large quantities and widely used in all the areas Denikin's White Armies controlled - not just the Don and Kuban but the North Caucasus, Ukraine and Crimea - and even north into Russia proper. As the Bolsheviks defeated Denikin's forces, they nonetheless continued to use the Denikin stamps especially on the parcel cards accompanying the Loot which Red Army soldiers sent home (they qualified for reduced postal tariffs).

Forgeries of the Denikin stamps exist, as Dr Ceresa confirmed in his Handbooks, but they are very rare. For a long time, I identified them from the gum. As with most genuine Denikins (though not all), the gum on the forgeries is thick and brown. But it is smooth and varnish like - the gum on the genuine stamps is full of lumps, particles and what looks like dirt. It's very uneven and you would not want to lick it.

For a long time I could not find anything on the front which told me that a stamp was a Forgery. There is something wrong with the ornaments - the shading is too light - but that hardly distnguishes them from lightly printed genuine stamps. And St George, his horse and the dragon in the middle don't look quite right, but that could just be inking or wear. IN other words, these Forgeries are really very good copies and the colours are almost exact copies.

But today, for the rouble values, I think I have found a feature which can be used to sort the genuine from the (very rare) forgeries. It's St George's lance. On the genuine stamps,it touches the edge of the coloured oval and on the Forgery it doesn't. I have chosen the dark coloured centres of the 3 rouble to illustrate my point - the Forgery is on the right:

And here's a set of rouble value forgeries. Don't worry. You are very unlikely to see them again! Click on images to Magnify 

And to illustrate my point about Red Army use of Denikins, here is a Parcel Card  from ROSTOV NA DON 20 4 20  endorsed at the top "Certified Red Army N 1026" and charged at 1 rouble for each of the 17 Funt (there is a 2 rouble Denikin on the reverse), sent to a private address in Serdovsk, Saratov guberniya. As it happens, the 3 rouble stamps are from the part printing on white paper:

Postscript 23 December 2014: I have received the following interesting commentary from Adam Szczesny which I have cut and pasted from his email to me:

Herr Pateman,

aller wichtigsten Merkmale für Erkennung von Denikin-Fälschungen

(Rubel-Werte) sind:

1. Das Papier: Das Papier ist mit bunter Faser (mit verschiedenen Intensität).

2. Abmessungen: In Regel größere als die echte Briefmarken.

3. Gummi: Dick und Braun, mit Streifen oder ohne .

4. Abbildungen: Kleine/Größe  Unterschiede.

Doctor Ceresa hat nur Fälschungen von Kopeken-Werte erwähnt, leider

ohne genaue Abmessungen. Herr Ihor Miaskowskij hat die Fälschungen

in zwei Bücher beschrieben:

1.“Poschtowaja Istorija Grazdanskoj Wojny:Wypusk Generala Denikina“ und

2.“Stranicy Poschtowoj Istorii Grazdanskoj Wojny – Sprawotschnik“.

Herr Miaskowskij hat dort die Kopeken- und Rubel-Werte beschrieben,

die Fälschungen sowie die echte Briefmarken.

Leider ist dort nicht alles erwähnt über diese Fälschungen. Wahrscheinlich

für Autor fehlt noch Briefmarken-Vergeichsmaterial. Seit ein paar Monaten

suche ich Kontakt mit Herr Miaskowskij, zurzeit vergeblich.

Nirgendwo ist E-Mail zu finden.

Zurück zu Rubel-Fälschungen.

Die Rubel-Werte wurden in kleinen Bögen (4 Reichen je 7 Briefmarken) gedruckt,

gesamt 28 Briefmarken. Je Werte haben zwei unterschiedliche Typen:

Typ 1: die erste und die dritte Reihe,

Typ 2: die zweite und die vierte Reihe.

Die oben genannten Typen stammen von mir, Herr Miaskowskij klassifiziert

die Typen etwas anders.

Die Ränder sind ohne Spuren von Farben und ohne andere Merkmale wie z.B. Plattennummer.

Die vom Ihnen hier abgebildete Denikin-Fälschungen, Herrr Pateman, sind folgende Typen

(in Klammern schreibe ich die Klassifizierung von Herr Miaskowskij):

1rub. – Typ1 (Miask. Typ2)

2rub. – Typ2 (Miask. unterscheidet keine Typen für 2 Rub.)

3rub. – Typ2 (Miask. unterscheidet keine Typen für 3 Rub.) 

5rub. –  Typ1 (Miask. Typ2)

7rub.  – Typ2 (Miask. Typ1) 

10rub. – Typ1 (Miask. Typ2)

Alles wichtigste Merkmal für 3 Rub.-Fälschungen:

ALLE Fälschungen, egal Typ1 oder typ2, haben in Wort „Rub“ (rechts),Buchstabe „y“

die andere „Bein“, längere und nach oben gekrümmt. Ist in Ihrer Abbildung sofort zu erkennen!

Natürlich gibt es auch Unterschiede bei Papier (mehr oder weniger bunten Faser), bei Gummi

Sind die Pinsel-Spuren und ohne) und so weiter.

In meiner Sammlung habe ich auch Fälschungen mit den verschiebenden Zentren oder  mit 3 Zentren.

Es gibt auch Unterschiede zwischen Fälschungen die stammen (sind von mir gekauft) in ehemalige

Soviet-Union und West Europa Länder.

Die Kopeken-Werte wurden in kleinen Bögen (5 x 5) gedruckt. Alle wichtigste Erkennungs-Merkmale

sind das Papier und die Abmessungen. Aber das ist noch eine andere Geschichte…..

Am Ende noch ein Rätsel. Alle Philatelisten die beschäftigen sich mit Süd-Russland-Briefmarken

wissen, wer war Herr Rosselewitsch. Vor ein paar Monaten habe ich in eBay eine 1 Rubel-Fälschung

gesehen mit Signatur „ROSS“, also Rosselewitsch-Signatur. Diese Fälschung war gut zu erkennen

(die Scans von Awers und Rewers waren sehr gut).Jetzt kommen die Fragen:

1. Hat Herr Rosselewitsch die Fälschung nicht erkannt?

2.War die Rosselewitsch-Signatur eine Fälschung (ich habe noch keine gesehen) ?

3.Herr Rosselewitsch hat die Briefmarke absichtlich signiert, weil „die Fälschungen“ sind keine

Fälschungen (?!) aber zum Beispiel eine Art von Technologische Proben ?

Ich hoffe das jemand liest die Wörter und lade Ich die Person zur eine konstruktive Diskussion ein.

AdamS

Dieser Philatelistischer Bereich (Denikin-Fälschungen) ist zur Zeit sehr veranlässing

Und wollte ich die anderen Philatelisten zu Diskussion einladen.

Das war mein Ziel bei o.g. Kommentar.

Vielleicht können Sie selbst mein Kommentar ins Ihr Blog einfügen?

Mit freundlichen Grüßen

Adam Szczesny

Aschaffenburg/Deutschland