Stamps of Ukraine: Valuing and Pricing - Seichter, Bulat and the Future

How much are classic Ukrainian stamps worth and what should we pay for them?

Most serious collectors now start from John Bulat's Catalogue, published in 2003 but based on a manuscript worked on for decades previously. Leave aside the many typographical errors and there are three main areas worth thinking about.

First, the very different treatment of Trident overprints and West Ukraine overprints.

For Tridents, excepting one or two isolated instances which may be mistakes, Bulat goes up to valuations of $300 after which he makes frequent use of the - - system to signal "Too Rare to Call". Bulat's[ $ ]300 is simply Dr Seichter's top value of 600 [ DM ] in his 1966 Sonder-Katalog, divided by two. After that, Seichter also uses the - - system.

But for West Ukraine, Bulat goes up to $30 000 and makes very little use of the - - system.

Now if we simplify and reckon Bulat's lowest price as $1 for both Ukraine and West Ukraine, we have a range for West Ukraine 100 times wider than for the Tridents.(* See footnote) Why? It's certainly not because of rarity: many Tridents are as rare as the rare stamps of West Ukraine. It's certainly not to do with marking down "philatelic" productions - with the exception of the Kolomyia Registration stamps, the stamps of Western Ukraine are all philatelic productions.  It does have a lot to do with prices which can be achieved: Bulat's $30 000 was comfortably exceeded in the Zelonka sale for the stamp to which it relates (Bulat # 65) and no Trident stamp has recently sold in widely-advertised auctions for even 10% of that and very few for more than 1%.

As far as Tridents are concerned, the current position is very much like that for Zemstvos before the Fabergé sale of 1999. Before then, no one would pay more than a few hundred dollars for a single Zemstvo stamp. That ceiling has now been completely removed. The Trident situation will only change when collectors realise that the ranges 1 - 300 and 1 - 30 000 are pretty much self-fulfilling prophecies.

Second, the validity of relative valuations

In valuing Tridents, Bulat closely follows Seichter, generally dividing by two. Now Dr Seichter was valuing Tridents as far back as 1940 when he published his Spezialliste der Briefmarken der Ukrainischen Volksrepublik. Basically, the relative valuations we use were established over 70 years ago. That means that they take no account of (1) destruction and loss, which is never even-handed, whether it results from war, flood, fire or collector carelessness; (2) discoveries in archives or dealer remainder stocks or collector hoards - things which are also not likely to be balanced. As a result, we all have the experience of being able to obtain stamps with high Bulat valuations quite easily and other ones with low valuations with great difficulty. After 70 years, it is time to examine the relative valuations again. To give just one example, though the Zelonka sale has released some onto the market, just try finding the Kyiv 1 Special Types (Bulat 109 - 45) even those with valuations below $10. (And just in case you ask, I have none in stock).

Third, the relation of a Bulat $ to an actual price

Here there seems to be a divergence between Europe and the USA. When we are talking about individual Retail prices (for example, for stamps on a Wants List), American collectors are still hoping to pay about 50 cents for a Bulat dollar and sometimes they may find stamps at that price. Collectors in Europe are willing to pay more - a dollar or sometimes a €uro for a Bulat dollar - and so in Auction they are more likely to take the choice items. In my experience, most of the really common stamps (under 50 cents in Bulat) remain so common that no one should pay more than ten or twenty cents for them. But once you get above something like Bulat $10, there are many hundreds of listed stamps which are actually quite hard to find and where a real dollar for a Bulat dollar is a bargain.

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* Bulat goes down to 10 cents for Tridents and 25 cents for Western Ukraine, so technically the range is much wider. (I am struggling with the maths!)

Added February 2020: Most of my Ukraine-related Blog posts are now available in full colour book form. To find out more follow the link:

http://www.armeniazemstvo.com/2020/02/just-published-trevor-pateman.html

Odesa I Tridents: Seichter, Bulat, Zelonka

Everyone agrees that the common Odesa I trident overprints were produced by typography (Buchdruck) using a plate of 100. In his 1953 publication - the cover is shown above - Dr Seichter says (in effect) that there was a master horizontal cliché of 5 positions (a - b - c - d - e) which he illustrates (see also above). From this master, all the cliches were made and minor variations can be found giving rise to Plate varieties occurring only once in the sheet: John Bulat illustrates 5 notable varieties at page 79 of his Handbook though, of course, since this is a typographic overprint one should be able to plate all 100 positions as slightly different.

In his 1953 publication, Dr Seichter does not discuss Reprints but in his 1966 Sonderkatalog he lists "Neudrucke" sold by the "Sowjet-Agentur" and values them all at 40 DM each. He does not give any indication of how to tell Reprints apart from Originals and I don't think I have ever seen a Seichter "Neudruck" mark on the back of Odesa I stamps.

John Bulat lists Reprints on more values than Dr Seichter (Bulat 1079 - 1095), giving them a uniform mint price of $25 each which is much higher than for most of the Originals. He heads the list, "Overprinted in different variety of black ink" but does not say what the difference is.

Before his death, Dr Ron Zelonka helpfully expertised for me two copies of 20 kopeck perforated stamps with Odesa I overprints, identifying one as an Original (Bulat 1068, $75) and one as a Reprint (Bulat 1084 $25). See the illustrations above.

It seems that the Reprint is characterised by ink infill between the double outlines giving an overall blacker appearance - something you might expect from a re-used typographic plate with a build up of old ink. However, this alone is not the whole story. Ther are heavily inked Originals which look similar. And some cliché positions seem to fill with ink more than others. What is distinctive on the Reprint is the overall uniform darker impression.

What someone with a taste for research could do is this: assemble copies of a basic stamp for which there are no Reprints: for example, both Seichter and Bulat reckon that the very common 2 kopeck perforated is found only with Original overprints. Then assemble stamps which only exist with Reprint overprints: for example, the 1 kopeck perforated. (This will not be easy!) Then try to work out the distinguishing features. In some cases, it will also turn out that the shades of basic stamp used for the overprint also differs between Originals and Reprints. This is the case for the 4 kopeck perforated.

Postscript May 2012: A reader in the USA has kindly provided the illustration below showing Odesa I overprints which have been classified by Dr Seichter as Reprints (ND, Neudruck) - something I could not do. It can be seen that on all the stamps the overprints show what I called above an "overall darker impression". Thanks to this anonymous contribution, the reader is now in a much better position to set about classifying Odesa I overprints as Originals or Reprints according to the Bulat catalogue. It is just important to remember that in general Reprints are much scarcer and are unlikely to be found in small accumulations of Odesa I stamps.

Added February 2020: Most of my Ukraine-related Blog posts are now available in full colour book form. To find out more follow the link:

http://www.armeniazemstvo.com/2020/02/just-published-trevor-pateman.html

Ukraine: Tridents of Odesa Va, Vb, Vc, Vd

My Odesa Tridents are in a 64 page stockbook. Today I was taking out some stamps for a client. I realised that some of the stamps were in the wrong places - the Type V Tridents were not always correctly classified. So to remind myself what the four different types look like, I made up this card: top row, Va; second row, Vb, third row, Vc, bottom row, Vd. For some reason, I don't have Vb on any one kopeck stamps so I have used the 5 kopeck value instead. All the stamps shown above have good signatures - Bulat, Seichter, UPV and Trachtenberg (which is fine for Odesa)

The type V overprints are usually clearly struck - none of my copies above have unclear overprints - though they vary from deep black to grey. When the base cap does not print clearly, then it can be difficult to decide what type of overprint you are looking at. The same is true, of course, if a cancellation obscures the Trident. For the Vc Trident, horizontal marks or a line of marks often appear to the left, above the top of the wing and extending across to the top of the prong. For a very clear example, see the first example in row three above.But this line does not always appear.

Hope this is useful!

Collecting Single Handstamps: Armenia, Ukraine

Between 1919 and 1923, EVERY issued Armenian stamp is overprinted with a single handstamp - framed Z, unframed Z, rouble surcharges, Gold Kopeck surcharges, Transcaucasian rouble surcharges.
Likewise, in one Ukrainian district - Podillia - all the Trident overprints issued in 1919 - 20 were prepared with single handstamps.

How should single handstamps be collected? Wherever possible, they should be collected in small multiples and, if possible, in horizontal strips. This makes it possible to see variations in the appearance of the handstamp. Normally, one can also see how the clerk who did the work set about his task.

Look at the block of 25 Armenian stamps below. (Click on the image to enlarge). The clerk has re-inked his handstamp for every impression and has applied it with great care. Why? In this case, probably because the 25 r on 50 kopeck combination was not an officially scheduled one; these stamps have been prepared at the request of a collector or dealer or someone simply about to leave the country and trying to convert their cash into something of value. Such items prepared by favour are normally called "counter overprints". In this particular case, the block of 25 provides solid information about the characteristics of the metal 25r handstamp, though when the handstamp is applied using another ink pad, it can look very different.


Now look at the block of 10 Podillia type XIVb on the 1 kopeck imperforate. Here the clerk has overprinted the top row from right to left (he was probably left-handed)having inked his wooden handstamp for the first strike and then used it a total of five times. Then he re-inked the handstamp and proceeded from left to right, again five times. Sometimes, this clerk, working fast, struck six times on five stamps, producing double overprints (listed in the Bulat catalog): such double overprints are particularly associated with type XIVb and presumably with this one clerk. Podillia Tridents were applied in a carefully supervised workshop: inverted, missing or double overprints are uncommon - surprising given the tens of thousands of stamps overprinted.

So this block of 10 is already much more informative than would be a single stamp.

Of course, it's more expensive to collect like this, but even if only some cheaper values are collected this way, it will enhance a collection of single handstamp overprints.

These items are for sale