What's Wrong With Stamp Catalogues

I was thinking about the general catalogues we use without thinking – Michel, Gibbons, Scott, Yvert, in Russia Standard and maybe a few others. Some are good, some are not. It often depends on the country you are interested in.

But all these catalogues date back to the days when collectors were most often one of each collectors and dealers one of each dealers. The collectors wanted to stick stamps in pre-printed albums or “write them up” and the dealers kept stockbooks by numbers.

You get lots of information which makes writing up easy: Date of Issue, Method of Printing, Paper type, Perforation gauge, sometimes (Gibbons) stamp designer and printer's name. You get a numbered list of stamps and Mint and Used prices, sometimes with some note distinguishing Used and CTO.

Many of these catalogue entries have been essentially unchanged for decades – well, a hundred years in some cases - as if there is no such thing as on-going philatelic research. Yvert is an example.

What you don’t get is a sort of overview which creates a context for understanding what you might find and what you will not find. In the days of one of each collecting that may not have mattered very much. Today, when people collect covers and do social philately, the old-style catalogue is not very helpful.

Let’s take an example. Look at your preferred catalogue for the Northern Army (OKCA) issue of 1919. It will be under “Russia” and will show five values, none of which is worth anything either mint or used. You will get additional information, varying from catalogue to catalogue. 

What you don’t get is a Thumbnail Sketch which sets out what we know about this issue, 100 years on. Here’s my own attempt at a Thumbnail, which could be made more precise from the literature available (mostly due, in this case,  to Alexander Epstein and Dr R J Ceresa):

This issue was printed in very large quantity in sheets of 200 made up of two panes of 100, separated by a wide gutter and printed tête-bêche to each other. Most sheets were separated into two halves, so that the gutter variety is quite scarce. Most of these stamps were sold to the stamp trade, at the time or later, and are very common as singles (often now in poor condition) and small blocks. Sheets of 100 are quite common. Despite being common, the stamps were forged and the forgeries are much scarcer than the genuine stamps. Very little Proof material or Printer’s Waste is known and when found is worth significantly more than the basic stamps. The absence of such material suggests that this issue was originally planned as a perfectly legitimate stamp issue.

The stamps were extensively Cancelled to Order in sheets and also CTO on philatelic covers, which are quite common and obviously philatelic. Specialists are not entirely clear which cancels were officially authorised. Some may have been manufactured by stamp dealers. It seems likely that some of the CTO material, and maybe most of it,  was produced in Estonia and not at the post offices in Northern Army controlled areas of Russia.

Postally used examples of the stamps are virtually unknown, and only about a dozen covers are recorded which appear to have gone through the post from the few post offices controlled by the Northern Army. Most of those covers originate from Gdov where however the Imperial Russian canceler of POLNA SPB was in use.  Any stamp or cover with a POLNA SPB cancel should be examined carefully and submitted for an Expert opinion.

A specialist could improve on that thumbnail and a good catalogue editor could make it shorter. If I am right about this, a Thumbnail like this orients you to a specific stamp issue and gives you some idea of what to expect and what to look out for.

For more dicussion of OKCA stamps,see my next Blog

Armenian Forgeries

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It's hard to get excited about forgeries of Dashnak Armenian stamps. They were produced on an industrial scale - and no doubt there is someone still producing them. You don't need more than kindergarten skills.

Many forgeries were probably produced by people who did not possess genuine examples and had only seen pictures. Some forgeries were produced by people copying forgeries which they may have thought to be genuine examples - for Dashnak overprints they may have put their trust in the illustrations of Yvert et Tellier, all of which are (or were - I last looked a few years ago) copied from forgeries.  Over the decades, Yvert probably did more harm to Armenian philately than any other catalogue. 

The forger who produced the small multiples shown above had almost certainly seen genuine stamps since he (it's normally he) has copied a feature you see on genuine sheets - the post office clerk testing out his (then it was always his) handstamp in the sheet margin. As forgeries, these are consequently Above Average.

The 10r on 25 kopeck imperforate forgery is interesting. This is a stamp which I think exists in genuine state, but it's rare - the 25 kop was not a common stamp imperforate and it would probably only have reached Armenia in the first Bolshevik period (end 1920 - beginning 1921) and would then have been used by Melik-Pachaev to produce scarce philatelic varieties in the second Dashnak period of 1921. 

Though basic stamps and Dashnak overprints are combined in a myriad of ways, many of the permutations the inspired work of dealers and speculators, there is one area where some kind of discipline was maintained. This is the case for high value overprints (50 rouble and 100 rouble) on rouble value basic stamps. The 50 r overprint was normally applied to the 1 rouble stamp and the 100 rouble overprint to the other high value stamps (3r 50, 5r, 7r, 10r). Though genuine 100r overprints can be found on the 1 rouble, 50 rouble overprints do not appear to exist on the higher value stamps. Some 5r stamps exist overprinted 25r - and then corrected to 100r. 

So it appears that either a ruling by the post office or the economics of the situation meant that no one got hold of surcharges below 100r on stamps above 1 rouble It's curious but seems to be true. 

But spaces for lower value surcharges on higher value stamps found their way into old French album pages and forgers obliged with stamps to fit. Or vice versa: the album pages were designed for the forgeries. Below I show an old album page, given to me at the Paris Salon d'Automne with spaces for 50 r surcharges on imperforate 3r50 and 5r stamps (#73, 74). And I also show a block of 50r on 5r forgeries from an old dealer's stock which I bought at auction many years ago in Paris's rue Druout stamp trade district. I think it's a chicken and egg situation: did the album page come first or the forgery?

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