The Beach at Baku: Azerbaijan's 1921 Pictorials

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There are some stamp issues where the rarest thing is a well-centred, well-printed stamp. At the other extreme, there are stamps like Russia's Imperial Arms definitives where printing was strictly controlled and varieties, even quite minor ones, are seldom seen.

The pictorials lithographed in Baku in 1919 - 1921 were carefully printed, even though this must have been quite difficult to achieve - the printing sheet was large newspaper, thin and difficult to handle. 

The "Beach at Baku" variety shown above is created by a downward shift of the blue colour of the sky and sea. It is rarely seen as marked as that in the top block of 12, though a little more often with a less striking shift like that in the second block of 12.  

Remainders of the Azerbaijan pictorials were sold of from Moscow in sheets and some of these came to England and into the 1950s collections of philatelists like Ian Baillie and Peter Ashford, usually cut up to fit album pages. I don't know which other countries picked up quantities of these remainders.

Azerbaijan 1921 Soviet Pictorials: More on the Varieties

For those who like Plate Flaws, there is a nice one at Position 291 in the 304 - stamp sheet of 500 rouble Blacksmiths. This results in the "500" in the bottom left value tablet looking like "50". Since it occurs only once in the 304 stamp sheet, chances of finding it by chance are - well, 1 in 304.

The example above on the right is combined with a significant downwards shift of the background colour print. As a result, you can see (and I am seeing for the first time) that somehow the background also got affected at the same point. How to explain this I don't know.

In general, these pictorials were quite carefully printed and - even with the massive lithographic stones involved - very few varieties are found, whether damage to the stones or colour shifts. The only really remarkable variety seems to be the five inverted cliches in the bottom row of the 3000 rouble sheet producing the tête-bêche variety listed in catalogues. The variety seems to be non-philatelic since it is found in multiples of the stamp used on entirely non-philatelic covers. Here, for example, is the back of a Registered cover from ELENENO ELISAV 14 11 22 to Munich (no receiver). The franking may be incomplete - see part cancellation at the very top - even though it comes to a round number (30 x 50 000 = 1 500 000), but the inverted cliché in the bottom left corner has not been removed ...