Unusual Cancellations on Ukraine Trident stamps 1918

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The Ukrainian National Republic declared in 1918 claimed more territory than it ever controlled. As soon as German military protection was removed, the territory it did control contracted rapidly. 

Very occasionally, you see General Issue or trident overprinted stamps used in 1918 outside "core" Ukrainian guberniyas, most often Minsk and occasionally Kursk. The stamp shown above is the first I have noticed with a Voronezh guberniya cancel.

The small town of Valuyki is now in Russia, 15 km outside the modern Ukraine - Russia border, so it's possible that it was briefly under UNR control in 1918. The cancellation is dated 21 10 1918, so shortly before the German collapse. It could be CTO but I rather doubt it - the cancel is characteristic of use on a Money Transfer or Parcel Card. The stamp itself with Kharkiv III overprint is scarce but not rare (Bulat # 758, $65). The cancellation, of course, makes it much more interesting. The stamp is signed both UPV and Philip Schmidt in whose collection I found it. I will send it to Filateliapalvelu in Finland for auction.

Added 12 August 2016: Roman Procyk has kindly contributed the following scans  showing Kharkiv trident use on Telegraphic Money Orders at at Valuyki. They provide additional evidence of the little-known use of Trident stamps in Voronezh guberniya. Note the dates, late in the period of German Occupation of Ukraine, and the destination - a bank in Kyiv (written in Russian).

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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

Russian Levant Obrazets overprints

Sometimes you notice things, sometimes you don't. Here are two Levant surcharges on Imperial stamps. In the background you can see some kind of blue diagonal inscription, very weak and unreadable unless you know what it says. It says OBRAZETS and these are Specimens, even though this is not the usual form of Russian OBRAZETS overprints which are big,bold, unmistakeable and much forged on computers. But if I had not seen these almost invisible blue oveprints before, I would have missed them.

I Googled to check that I was right and within the usual 45 seconds had located an interesting Auction lot from Cherrystone where the blue OBRAZETS is combined with a UPU administration's own SPECIMEN overprint. The lot sold for $500.

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Lot #2358 RUSSIAN OFFICES IN THE TURKISH EMPIRE 1903-05 surcharged 35pi and 70pi on 3.50r and 7r respectively, each overprinted "Obrazets" (specimen) in blue cyrilic letters, affixed on piece and further handstamped "Specimen" in violet (Samuel ty. NA2), as applied bythe Natal Post Office on receipt from the UPU, fine and possibly unique combination of Specimen overprints, with BPA cert.

A Very Obscure Item from Soviet Armenia

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Sometimes you notice things, sometimes you don't. Above is a relatively common (and nicely designed) fiscal stamp of the Transcaucasian Federation. First issued in August 1923 with a face value of 60 000 Transcaucasian roubles, it was then overprinted in the new Gold currency - the Chernovets - and becomes a 10 kopeck stamp. This stamp seems to be used in 1924, I think in May - have a look at the line of red-violet writing, in the same ink as the cross cancellation.

At the bottom there is part of a seal in black and bottom right you can see an upside down hammer and sickle, so it's a Soviet seal. Under the seal and in the cartouche - the tablet - there is a number in a different violet ink which looks like 1 450 000 p. In other words, another re-valuation.

I head to Christopher Zakiyan's Armenia: Postage Stamps, Fiscal Stamps, Postage Cancels (2003) and from that I conclude that I am looking at a local re-valuation done at Goris - the place also known as Giryusy in Elisavetpol guberniya and in the same region as the famous Katar copper mines [Katarsky Zavod ].

Zakian does not list a 1 450 000 revalution on this stamp but all those he does list for Goris have high numbers which suggest Gold currency was not in use there when these stamps were available. The figure in the tablet probably just indicates the amount actually paid in tax using this stamp. That may have something to do with the anomalous location of Goris - part of Armenia but formerly part of the Elisavetpol guberniya. That may have put it in a different currency zone.

In the same way, one known consequence of the anomalous administrative position of Goris is that the 1923 Star overprints on Imperial postage stamps, normally found used only in Azerbaijan, are occasionally found used in Armenia at Giryusy and Dyg - the obvious explanation for this is that these places were still receiving stamps supplied from Baku or Elisavetpol.

What would be nice, of course, is to find some document which shows the black seal in full and in a way which allows it to be linked to Goris.

An Important Item of RSFSR Mail Abroad 1920

IN June 1920, The RSFSR re-introduced foreign mail services which had been suspended in January 1919. Unregistered cards and letters could be sent post free. The card shown below is the earliest item of such 1920 mail that I have been able to find. It was posted in Petrograd on 9 June 1920 and though the Kerensky 20 kopeck is cancelled, the card is in fact used as a blank.Perhaps because of the rather confused address, it did a tour of Petrograd with further cancels of 10 and 12 June before finding its way to the Censor's office where a violet three triangle mark was applied on 14 June (see the bottom of the card)

The card is addressed to the largest Russian Orthodox community on Mont Athos, the Andreevsky (St Andrews) Sekte - in reality, a monastery but called a "Sekte" because it was created too late to qualify for monastery status. Before 1914, several hundred monks lived there, and the large buildings still exist. 

The card would have travelled up to Archangel / Murmansk and then across the White Sea to Vardo in northern Norway, then down through Norway for onward transmission. This was the only route out of Bolshevik Russia available in June 1920. This is no doubt a main reason why it took until 11 February 1921 for this card to arrive at St Andrews, an arrival indicated by the violet cachet at the top of the card. The confused address has been clarified, probably on arrival in Greece, with a red annotation in Greek which abbreviates the Greek Agion Oros for "Holy Mountain" in order to indicate the destination.

Mail from Bolshevik Russia going abroad in the second half of 1920 is rare. This early item is particularly nice. Added 9 July: Alexander Epstein has posted a Comment below which adds further information.

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British readers (in particular) might like to know that Mount Athos though part of Greece and therefore part of the European Union is exempt from the EU's "Free Movement" requirements - this is written in to Greece's accession treaty. A visa is required to visit and you must be male and preferably Orthodox to get one.

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Alexander Epstein has kindly provided scans of the May 1920 Luga item to which he refers in his Comment. Here they are. You can see that the item has gone from Luga to Petrograd and been delayed there until 26 June before being sent on to Estonia, but with no markings to indicate the route. This items would also have qualified for Free Post and the Kerensky 20 kop card is again used as a blank:

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Vasilis Opsimos has submitted an interesting item from June 1920, a Registered letter from Petrograd with multiple cancellations of 12 June, arriving three months later in Koenigsberg with a typical boxed violet M.P.k  Koenigsberg Censor mark and an arrival cancellation. BUT the franking is a mystery. The new Foreign Tariff specified 10 roubles for a Registered letter. Since 5 kopeck stamps were revalued x 100 in the Spring of 1920, this cover is franked at 50 roubles. Suppose the clerk forgot the revaluation, then 50 kopecks is not a Tariff either. The only explanation I can think of is that the sender put the stamps on before going to the post office, thought they added to 50 kopecks and remembered that this was the Internal Registered letter rate in 1919 .... But I am not convinced by my own story.

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Thinking of Becoming a Stamp Dealer?

Well, it can be fun .... But here are three things to think about:

1.
You are probably thinking about a one-person business. Now, a one-person business can only be as good as the one person. If you are well-organised as a person, it will show in your business. If you are lazy, the same. If you are mean, the same. Etc. Usw.

2.
If you choose to stock just a few expensive items, then it will be easy to see if you are making a profit and what kind of profit. It will be quite easy to keep records. But most dealers end up with stocks bigger than the stock of the local IKEA. It's very hard to keep a record - it could take 100% of your time. It's very hard to know what profit, if any, you are making when you sell one item on the Internet or at a Stamp Fair. At best, you can have a general idea. So maybe you bought 1000 items for 1000 euros. So you know that if you are selling each one at more than 1 euro you are doing something right - if you sell them all. But if you sell one item for 100, you know that means that you can afford to sell some other items for 50 cents. The only method I have is this: when I buy 1000 items I try to put a price on them all before I even sell one. That way I at least know what Total value I have placed on them. Maybe if I was starting again I would use bar - coding and store everything in a data base. But I still think that maintaining the data base could be a full-time job. You will neglect the important things: studying what you have in your stock, picking out forgeries, picking out damaged things,noticing good things, doing a bit of research when you get something you have not seen before.


3.
Trust. If you don't trust other people, it's difficult to be a stamp dealer. I don't have a problem trusting other people and it saves me a great deal of time. Here is a short list of things I don't do: I never make photocopies of things I send out on approval or of things in my boxes, I never use "Premium" postage or shipping services, I don't insure my stock. Sometimes I say to a client "Go through them" - maybe it's a bag with 1000 stamps in it - "pick out what you want and then we can agree a price". And I have no idea what is in the bag. Oh, and another thing: I usually say, Pay me when you get the stamps I am sending you today. That way, when I get a cheque or a bank transfer I know that the transaction is finished. (Among themselves, dealers constantly rely on trust).

Of course, sometimes I lose things this way. But it's rare, actually very rare. And I save so much time. If you asked me why I think my business is profitable, I have to say: well, partly because I trust other people. Having clients you trust is a very big business asset. It makes life so much simpler.

The Crown Jewel of Western Ukraine Philately?

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The famous stamp shown above was unsold in the Christoph Gaertner Rarities auction in New York on 30 May 2016. It's described in the catalogue as the "crown jewel of Western Ukrainian philately" - and I used the same words when I wrote the descriptions for the Ron Zelonka sale at Corinphila Zurich in 2011. There the stamp was started at 30 000 CHF and sold for 44 000, which meant a final bill to the buyer of 52 800. So the Gaertner start price looks as if the 2011 buyer was prepared to sell with a chance of doing no better than getting their money back.

Personally, I think it's an over-rated stamp. The stamp issues of the Western Ukraine National Republic in 1919 all had strong philatelic motivations and little genuine postal use. This combination of stamp and overprint, in an edition of two, was entirely speculative - it was made so that someone or some group could benefit in some way. It must have added significantly to the value of the Ekonomat document to which it was originally affixed, even before its "Crown Jewel" status was given to it..

In contrast, scarce and rare non-philatelic mail used in the Republic during 1919 is bought and sold for only a fraction of the price expected for this stamp. For example, in the Zelonka sale I described a lot of 37 mostly non-philatelic covers as a "valuable lot" and attached a start price of 3 500 CHF  - 100 CHF per cover. It sold for 11 000 hammer, but that still works out at only 400 CHF per cover. But if you started out today to accumulate 37 non-philatelic covers from 1919 Western Ukraine, not in the Zelonka lot, you would I think be lucky to achieve your goal. True, most of the covers in the 11 000 lot were franked with unoverprinted Austrian adhesives - but that is what you would expect. The overprinted stamps were made principally for dealers in Vienna, not for local mail. The exceptions are the Registration and CMT stamps of Kolomya and that for the rather strange reason that the philatelist involved in the issue, Cerniavski, liked to collect ordinary commercial mail - at the time, a fairly eccentric choice. Since he worked in the local court in Kolomya, he simply collected the envelopes coming into the court from all over the district of Kolomya / Pokutia - and very interesting envelopes they were!

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

Kharbin in the Russo-Japanese War 1904 - 1906

Kharbin in Manchuria was the largest Russian military rear base during and immediately after the Russo-Japanese War, with warehouses holding supplies of food and weapons, barracks housing soldiers, and hospitals for the wounded and dying. A Hospital Suburb  [Gospital'ny Gorodok] was created in 1904 and by July of that year there were 12 Army hospitals and two Red Cross facilities. By January 1905, the number of hospitals had grown to 84 with a capacity to hold 30 000 patients. I take these figures from David Wolff's To The Harbin Station.

In the context of such numbers, it is not surprising that a post office was opened in the Hospital Quarter just as one was in the Barracks or Camp Quarter [ Korpus'ny Gorodok ]. In 1959, Tchilingirian and Stephen in Stamps of the Russian Empire Used Abroad, Part Five recorded a cancellation from the Camp on the basis of a single example. But they did not record a cancel for the Hospital Quarter. I show an example below; the cancellation is identical in style to the Camp Quarter cancel and reads KHARBIN GOSPIT. GORODOK serial "b". The card is an Imperial Formular card, pre-addresed in hectography to the Maria Feodorovna charities in St Petersburg.

What is puzzling is why this cancellation and the Camp cancellation should - apparently - be so rare. There were a very large number of people in Kharbin who would have wanted to write home at this time. Perhaps cards like this one are buried in dealer boxes, but after a hundred years that seems a bit unlikely - I did not find this  in a dealer box and paid a three figure sum for it But maybe readers do have other examples of this cancel and the Camp cancel. I will happily show them here if sent scans.

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POSTSCRIPT 7 June 2016

At the same time as I was writing the above piece, I was looking out Theatre Tax stamps from my stock. It occurs to me that I may have the answer to an old problem.

There exists a Kharbin Theatre Tax stamp which is rarely seen .I show it below. I first saw an example maybe twenty years ago when I bought parts of Agathon Faberge's fiscal collection. I have seen two or three since and have the example below in stock. Now, the printing, the burelage, the paper and the gum looks like those I would associate with the State Printing Works in St Petersburg; it does not look like a local production. The 2 kopeck value seems too low for a World War One or Civil War period production. The obvious conclusion is that this stamp was issued at the time of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 - 06 in response to the vast influx of troops and other personnel to Kharbin, some of whom would have sought out theatres or concert halls for entertainment. In effect, Kharbin was a boom town at this time. Though the inscription on the stamp refers only to charitable purposes, the style in two halves with repeated text is that of a Theatre Tax stamp, designed for tearing in half.

Can any reader offer any confirmation or alternative suggestion?

12 June: YES is the answer to that - and I am wrong.Jack Moyes tells me in conversation that this stamp is a Theatre Tax stamp ( he tells me that he has in the past owned theatre ticket stubs) but that it is a First World War (Imperial period) stamp. We discussed why the theatres weren't using Maria Feodorovna Theatre Tax stamps and came to this conclusion: Kharbin was not part of Imperial Russia! It is for this reason that the stamps could be issued by the local government of Kharbin

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