Ukraine Tridents - The Importance of Raritan Catalogs

Back in 2011, I prepared the late Ron Zelonka's Ukraine collection for sale by Corinphila, Zurich. It was so vast that, inevitably, much material was sold in large lots which were unillustrated both in the catalogue of the sale and on line.

The sale did not tempt any Ukraine collectors from USA to Zurich, but it did tempt Raritan Stamps of Dayton, New Jersey who bought significant sections of the collection. In its regular auctions, Raritan now offers single items or small groups of items from the material it bought - and it illustrates them, in colour, in its catalogues.

This is important. The Zelonka collection included rare items from the Dr Seichter collection and the John Bulat collection which have never been illustrated or only inadequately illustrated in black and white. This is true for example of many local Trident overprints.

Now they can be seen in the Raritan illustrations and used for reference purposes. For example, here in the latest catalogue is a picture of the Hanebne local trident on 1 kopeck imperforate stamps (Bulat #2355), ex Dr Seichter. It may not look very impressive but it provides the basis to evaluate other examples of the much-forged Hanebne Trident and to distinguish this trident from the very similar Konstantynohrad trident:

Click on Image to Magnify

The current catalog for Auction # 64 also allows me for the first time to compare a copy of a rare stamp in my stock with another example of the same stamp.

Though Odessa type 1 tridents were printed from a lithographic plate of 100 positions suitable for overprinting Imperial kopeck stamps, both Dr Seichter and John Bulat list the overprint on the 3 rouble 50 imperforate (Bulat 1078, unpriced). This overprint canot have been produced from the lithographic plate and must have been made either by a handstamp based on the design for Type 1 Tridents or by a fresh lithographic plate. Given the rarity of the stamp, the latter seems unlikely. Below I illustrate my copy (ex Schmidt) with a punch hole and blue crayon strongly suggesting use on a formular card and with an ODESSA cancel of 10 10 18 and Raritan's Lot 1262 which has a different Odessa cancel for 3 10 18. Interestingly, in both cases the Trident is tilted to the left which suggests to me a handstamp rather than a plate. Raritan have an Estimate of $750 on their copy, which seems reasonable for a very rare stamp, despite the unwillingness of most Ukraine collectors to contemplate such a price:

Click on Image to Magnify

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

Kyiv I Broken Tridents: Seichter and Bulat

I have recently added to my stock of Broken Tridents - I bought Lot 84 in the Zelonka sale [ unsold during the auction; I paid the Start price after the auction].

Looking at what I have, I realise that the Seichter and Bulat listings are different. Bulat adds to Seichter's list, as one would expect, but there are errors and omissions.

Seichter lists a red overprint on the 7 kopeck, pricing it as 120 DM either mint or used. I now have three copies with normal and inverted overprints, all CTO.

Bulat omits this overprint, though he lists other red overprints. Had he listed it, it would be # 69a in his catalog.

In my holding, the 35 kopeck perforate is as common as the 3, 4 and 5 kopeck values. But Bulat prices it at $40 mint and $35 used. All my copies are used. I checked with Seichter. Seichter prices it at 3 DM for used only [ mint unknown].I think that there is a mistake in the Bulat listing and, in proportion to his other valuations, the 35 kopeck should merit only a few dollars [But see further comments below]. Whether it exists mint should also be investigated.

I don't have any copies of the 50 or 70 kopeck perforated though Bulat gives these the lowest of all valuations, 20 cents each. I checked back to Seichter. He makes the 50 kopeck an unpriced rarity [ - - ] known only mint. He puts 10 DM on the 70 kopeck mint, but has no used listing.

Clearly, we have a a problem - specifically, yet another problem with the Bulat catalog. The valuations on his #76, 77, 78 must be regarded as typographical errors.

For all the Kyiv I special types [ Bulat 62 - 145] his pricings are generally modest. But so too are Seichter's. This no doubt reflects their sense that these are purely philatelic productions. But it is also the case that most of these Special Types are very scarce.

When I tried, maybe ten years ago, to get some from Ron Zelonka, he was very reluctant to part with any and wanted a very good price for what he sold me. He could see that his own holdings [made public in Lots 77, 81 and 84 of the Zelonka sale] were really quite small.

Ukraine Tridents By District: some interesting data from the Zelonka Collection

When I did the lotting for Corinphila's sale of Dr Ron Zelonka's Ukraine collection, I avoided creating "Mixed Lots" (some existed as such in the collection and I left them like that). Instead, I grouped material by Issue and District. As a result, it is possible to see some philatelically-relevant patterns just from the Lots.

For example, I grouped nearly all the non-philatelic Trident covers and cards into a few large Lots. This is what they looked like:

Podillia over 250 items [Lot 115 Start 5000 Swiss francs Hammer 12500]
Kyiv over 175 items [Lot 74 Start 4000 Hammer 6500]
Odesa over 90 items [Lot 104 Start 3000 Hammer 4400] (the Trachtenberg covers went into a separate Lot 107 Start 900 Hammer 1900)
Katerynoslav over 60 items with no ENAKIEVO EKAT stuff [Lot 93 Start 3000 Hammer 4400]
Kharkiv over 40 items [Lot 86 Start 2000 Hammer 2600] I bought this Lot
Poltava over 40 items [Lot 99 Start 1500 Hammer 3400]

My guess is that this ordering tells us something about the relative volume of mail in the different Districts during the period of Ukrainian independence. If anything, I would expect Podillia's lead to be greater than shown here. That is because the Zelonka collection did not appear to include much from the enormous Vyrovyj collection which was auctioned after Dr Seichter's death and therefore not incorporated in any way into Seichter's collection - which formed a large part of Ron Zelonka's postal history holding.

Kyiv includes uses in Chernihiv and Zhitomir postal districts - their own issues are scarce othe than philatelically used.

Just 40 items from Kharkiv seems small in relation to the size of the city but it was an area of intense conflict and early Sovietisation.

Of course, all these Lots showed stamps used outside of their District of issue. Indeed, it is sometimes remarkable to observe just how much movement of stamps between Districts there was and a study could be made of out-of-district uses. For Podillia, for example, you can find the issues of Kyiv, Odesa and Kharkiv. I think I have even seen Poltava used non-philatelically in Podillia.

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

Dr Ron Zelonka Ukraine: a million dollar collection

The bare facts are these: on 6 September, Corinphila of Zurich, offered Dr Ron Zelonka's Ukraine collection in 400 lots. It took five hours to sell, the pace slowed by competition for most lots. Start prices totalling just under 400 000 CHF turned into hammer prices of 900 000 CHF with only 10% of lots unsold. Many of those were bought immediately after the sale at the start prices. Add Corinphila's commission to the hammer prices and you have a sale comfortably in excess of a million US dollars.

The sale was important for Ukrainian philately in a number of ways.

Ron Zelonka's was probably the largest Ukraine collection ever formed. It was larger than Dr Seichter's since Zelonka bought Seichter's collection (it was unsold in a 1990s Swiss auction)and incorporated it into his own, except for some of the duplicated material which Ron Zelonka sold to me.

For a major international auction house to take on the Zelonka collection and offer it for sale, broken down into 400 lots, was a considerable risk. With no real precedents to rely on, it was simply not known if the buyers existed to absorb such a large offering at prices which were, at a minimum, sensible.

Of course, it was known that Carpatho-Ukraine is popular and likewise Western Ukraine. But it was also known that Tridents were not popular and the Tridents were central to the collection. And the collection was so big ...

The risk paid off for the auction house. From their perspective, to achieve in total over double your start prices with virtually everything sold is a good result when - as in this case - the total achieved is on the scale which you expect for an afternoon's work (see footnote *). And this has been achieved in a difficult economic climate and amidst uncertainty about currency exchange rates,

This auction will help boost Ukraine as a serious collecting area. There is now a respectable auction record for a single stamp (CHF 44 000 hammer for the rarest stamp of Western Ukraine). There are also prices right through the auction results which begin to recognise just how rare are some of the stamps and postal history of Ukraine. Take a look at the Corinphila on-line auction catalogue while there is still a chance to see all the illustrations (many more than in the paper catalogue) along with the hammer prices.

There are still areas where collectors hesitate. For example, the sale contained some of the finest available examples of local Tridents on cover and, more often, transfer cards. Yet a superb Cernihiv transfer form (Lot 121) did not sell until after the auction and the splendid Konstantynohrad form (Lot 126) sold at the start price of 1000 CHF.

The auction catalogue tried to draw attention to the rich historical and political context of the available philatelic material. I wrote about 80% of the catalogue descriptions, and I wrote hoping it would encourage more collectors to think about putting together not only private collections but exhibits for national and international shows. If those exhibits start to appear in future years, some of the finest items will be marked "Ex Zelonka".

It remains to be seen whether the material just sold now reappears, broken down further, in other auction sales or whether it has gone straight into collections. It will also be interesting to see if other Ukraine collections now come on to the market, rather in the way that Zemstvos suddenly appeared after the successful 1999 Corinphila sale of Faberge's collection. But even if they do, I am sure they will not match the quality of the Zelonka collection
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*Corinphila normally has one auction a year, lasting one week. That auction has to generate enough to cover the cost of everything, not only catalogues and publicity, but also the year-round operations of the company, including salaries of permanent staff.

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

Ukrainian National Republic: General Issues and Tridents

I was in Zurich on Thursday viewing Ron Zelonka's collection which is being sold at Corinphila on 6th September. It is probably the biggest accumulation in existence of Ukrainian National Republic material (much of it coming from Dr Seichter's collection) and West Ukrainian material (much of it from John Bulat). There are extensive illustrations on Philasearch and on www.corinphila.ch (though use the online bidding catalogue not the online version of the printed catalogue which has far fewer images)


One thing puzzles me and one thing I have a theory about.

The puzzle is this. The Ukrainian National Republic (UNR) managed to produce a five value set of stamps - the first General Issue - early in 1918. It was produced in large quantities over several printings and never used up - mint remainders even in complete sheets are common. It would have been relatively easy to add a few more values to the set.

So why did the UNR go to all the trouble of Trident overprinting its stocks of Imperial stamps? They could simply have been locked away and, for postal purposes, invalidated. True, it may have seemed good housekeeping (economical) to use them up. True, they provided a wider range of denominations with much - needed higher values. True, many of the stamps were perforated and thus easier to use than the imperforate first General Issue - but Tridents were also applied to imperforate Imperial stamps.

So this is my puzzle: the Trident overprinting, often highly labour intensive, could have been avoided by adding a bottom value (2 Sh) and a few higher values to the General Issue set and simply invalidating Imperial adhesives, thus avoiding the supposed problem of imports of Imperial stamps from Russia being sold as "Postage" at big discounts on face value.

Any answers to my puzzle?

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And here is my theory (which is about another topic).

In many ways, you would expect the "old" Imperial high values - the 3r50 and 7r of 1904 on vertically laid paper - when overprinted with Tridents to have been bought up by philatelists and speculators since the remaining stocks of these stamps was small and probably known to be small.

But when you do see these stamps with Trident overprints they have often been used on Money Transfer Forms, with later punch holes and so on, and they often have early dates of use (1918 rather than 1919). Mint versions are often scarcer than used ones - for example, Kyiv I on the 3r50 grey and black is a very rare stamp mint.

So my theory has to be this: for some reason, perhaps becaue it was thought to be "methodical", these old stamps were overprinted early on and sent out to post offices early on where they got used up before philatelists had properly organised themselves. That's my theory.

This is not the whole story: there are philatelically-inspired overprints on the old 3r50 and 7r. For example, in the Corinphila catalogue you will see a very pretty sheet of the 3r50 overprinted with Kyiv III. This is almost certainly a philatelically-inspired production (and the inspirer: Svenson) and the overprint is a later type.

So there must still have been a few sheets of the 3r50 around even after Kyiv I and Kyiv II overprints had used (most?) of them up. Interestingly, however, Svenson could not lay his hands on a sheet of the old 7r black and yellow which does not exist with Kyiv III and this may be taken as a small bit of confirmation for my theory.

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 on Philasearch - Now is a good time to look

Now is a good time to look at Ukraine material on Philasearch.

On the one hand, you can see the Dr Ron Zelonka collection for sale in Corinphila's September auction - a collection which incorporates the Dr Seichter collection and part of the John Bulat collection. If you want to see some serious - and sometimes spectacular - postal history, you will find it here.

On the other hand, you can see the usual philatelic covers and cards for which auction houses try to get ridiculous prices. You can even see a pretty but completely forged Poltava postcard. These are quite common - there was a little industry making them, maybe seventy or eighty years ago - and when I get one I usually pass it on for a few pounds to one of my clients who likes such things.

The high point of these Poltava fakes is that the forgers went to the expense of making a fake cancellation - but in a style which suggests that they wanted it NOT to look like a genuine one.

But on Philasearch you will have to pay a lot of money for an example. It is signed by someone whose name you will know :)

When you have finished with the Zelonka material, do have a look at the little collection of Chernihiv (Chernigov) Tridents on an album page. This is something I put together. You could buy it for about the same price as a fake Poltava postcard. Unlike the postcard, it's genuine.


BTW, remember that "Ukraine" and "West Ukraine" and "Carpatho-Ukraine" are separate search terms on Philasearch - the Zelonka collection comes up for all of them

John Bulat's Comprehensive Catalog of Ukrainian Philately

Bulat's catalog published in 2003 has become the catalog of choice for Ukraine collectors. The reasons are fairly simple: every stamp has a number, a mint price, and a used price. It's as comprehensive as Dr Seichter's work, which it follows closely, and it's in English and Ukrainian rather than German. Seichter's work has no numbering and is poorly presented.

Bulat is not without faults. I notice, for example, that the coverage of colour variations for Kyiv II overprints is not consistent: sometimes known variants are listed, sometimes not. Listing of inverted overprints is also not consistent.

This is minor. More important is the large number of typographical errors. Where these involve pricing, they can often be corrected by referring back to Seichter's catalog: in general, Bulat's $ price is arrived at by halving the Deutschmark figure in Seichter. So if Seichter has 100 and Bulat has $5 that's going to be a typographical error for $50

One of Bulat's special interests was in the Tridents of Poltava. He did fresh work on the 25 - cliche handstamps and this is presented at pages 50 - 73. Some of the panes on which Bulat's work is based will appear for sale in the upcoming Corinphila auction of Dr Ron Zelonka's collection.

But the pricing of these panes is a mess. For example, a single copy of a 2 kopeck imperforate with a Type I handstamp in violet is priced at $10 (Bulat 963). But a complete pane of 25 is priced at $50 (Bulat 909,913, 927). The $50 must be a mis-print for $500 on the basis that if a single is worth $10 then a pane of 25 is worth a minimum of $250, doubled to recognise the scarcity of the 25-cliche handstamps in complete units.

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 Stamps and Postal History 1917 - 1923: a neglected field

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

Ukrainian philately has its own specialised societies, not only in Ukraine but also in the USA (UPNS) and in France (SFUP). I guess the UPV still exists in Germany, where it was once the world's most important vehicle for research in Ukrainian philately.

Despite these organisations, Ukrainian stamps and postal history 1917 - 23 seem neglected. Partly, this is because there is actually a lot of material available. For example, for the year 1919 when Russian material is very hard to find (and most of it without stamps), Ukrainian material - and with stamps - is quite plentiful.

True, for some parts of Ukraine material is scarce (Poltava, for example) and true, mail going abroad to anywhere except Germany is hard to find.

But against this, common stamps are common and Money Transfer Forms are actually not scarce. The basic catalog listing in Michel - based entirely on Dr Seichter's work - is excellent. The illustrations are all accurate and reliable. Compare Yvert, which is dreadful!

But there are whole areas which are under-researched. Tariffs, for example - though we now have the work of Alexander Epstein; the use of Ukrainian stamps by the Bolsheviks after the Sovietisation of Ukraine; and even the dating of Trident introduction in 1918: if I came across a First Day of Use cover in a dealer's box, I would not know that that is what it was. [ But as free advice: if you see a genuine Trident cover with an August 1918 cancellation, buy it ]

In September 2011, Corinphila in Zurich will auction the Ukraine collection of the late Dr Ron Zelonka. It is much more than a Trident collection (it covers the whole period 1800 - 2000). It will be the first time that a specialised Ukraine collection has ben offered, broken down into Lots, since the 1987 sales of Vyrovyj's collection by the Swiss auction house Schaetzle. It will be a very interesting sale!

POSTSCRIPT 17 January. I was just looking at the latest Michel catalog for Eastern Europe (Osteuropa). They have scrapped the very good Ukraine listing which took up only a few pages and replaced it with something that looks useless! Nicht intelligent! All the more reason to use John Bulat's catalog: go to upns.org to order a copy