One of Each Collecting - Imperial Russian Stamps Used on Cover

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For very rare stamps, like Moldavia Bulls Heads, inventories exist listing and illustrating each known stamp and cover, its provenance and so on. Fritz Heimbüchler's work on the Bulls Heads is a very, very good example.

But once stamps become a bit more common, we actually have no idea how many (now) exist. How many Russia #1 exist? How many Russia # 1 on cover? It's a pity that America's NSA and Britain's GCHQ don't interest themselves in this kind of question - I am sure the Technology exists to spy into albums and stockbooks and add up the results. It would be much more interesting than the contents of people's emails.

So we have to guess. Hands up if you think that less than 500 covers exist with Russia #1. Hands up if you think less than 1 000.  More than 5 000? And so on.

Nowadays, philatelists can be snobbish about mere collectors who want "one of each stamp" but I think it can be very interesting if combined with "one of each stamp, as a single franking, at the correct period, paying a recognisable tariff, on cover". Interesting and very hard.

If you were doing it for Imperial Russian stamps during the Tsarist period (so forget about imperforate stamps issued under the Provisional Government and later), you would be well advised to ignore rouble values - unless you were willing to include Money Transfers and Parcel cards. You would also struggle with frankings comprising a single 70 kopeck stamp and even 50 kopecks would be hard.

That's not all. Even though some stamps are so common used that they really have no value, finding them on cover can be incredibly difficult. Look at the 1888 item above. It's a single sheet of printed matter, folded for despatch into letter shape, and sent from St Petersburg to Ekenas, Finland. It qualified for a concessionary Printed Matter Tariff of 2 kopecks and the franking is provided by a 2 kopeck stamp in yellow green without thunderbolts.

From a dealer's box you might expect to pay 15 euros - maximum 25 - because it is clean and pretty and announces (in Swedish) a forthcoming visit from a travelling salesman carrying samples of Härra Landrin's products. But find me another one. The NSA and GCHQ would have to do a lot of Bulk data collection to find even a few hundred of such items - that's my guess. Or to make a more precise guess, I guess that fewer examples exist of  this stamp on cover than say Russia # 2.

Of course, you can prove me wrong - just send me the scans and I will add them to the Blog!

Soviet Postage Dues: More Work for the Forensics Laboratory

For a two year period in the 1920s, from the beginning of 1924 to the end of January 1926, the Soviet Union made use of Postage Due stamps. The first stamps issued were overprints on Kerensky Chainbreakers and were used only in Moscow and Leningrad post offices; the second issue consisted of the 100r Arms and Industry handstamped DOPLATA - this was effectively a local issue available only in Moscow and only from August 1924 up to the end of April 1925; finally, specially designed stamps were issued in 1925 but were quickly withdrawn at the end of January 1926, though they continued to be used (without overprint) as ordinary postage stamps.

These stamps are all more common mint than used and on cover they are scarce. Some organisations in Moscow and Leningrad at this period (and maybe elsewhere) were telling people that if they could not afford the price of a postage stamp, they could send their letters unstamped and the receivers would pick up the Postage Due. The covers we do have are often addressed to such organisations (for example, journals).

Recently, I was invited to examine a collection of Postage Due covers and cards from this period, with over 60 items present. I was especially interested to see three items with the 1924 handstamped DOPLATA stamp. But ...

Here is the first cover front and back:

This is a philatelic cover addressed from Tashkent  to the German stamp dealer Julius Stolow. It has 20 kopecks in regular stamps on the front and 36 kopecks in Postage Dues on the back, including the Moscow "Doplata" stamp (used outside its period of Moscow validity). These Postage Dues were applied and cancelled at the same time as the regular adhesives - the cancels front and back are the same, dated 14 6 25. It is a complete confection, done by favour, with a violet cachet thrown in and so on. It's no more than a curiosity. And it didn't even pick up a Berlin receiver.

Now here's the second cut-down and beaten up cover:

This item started out in a small town in the Kharkiv region 30 10 24 where it was noted at the time of posting (using the same ink pad) that 14 kopecks Postage Due should be collected on arrival in Moscow. Arriving in Moscow on 1 November 1924 it picked up a receiver cancel on top of which a 12 Kopeck Kerensky overprinted stamp was applied and then a pair of 1 kopeck DOPLATA stamps (on Pelure paper) with what look like 5th Exsp. cancels. It needs closer examination, but I think it's genuine. It's just a very disappointing fragment, even if it is rare.

Finally, here's an intact cover which looks more promising (there are no marks on the side I have not shown):

This cover was sent from Ekaterinburg on 22 8 24, addressed to a Moscow journal. In Ekaterinburg, it picked up a cachet indicating that 12 kopecks Postage Due should be collected on arrival. On the back are two Moscow arrival marks dated 27 8 24 after which a 10 Kop Kerensky and a pair of 1 kop DOPLATA stamps was added and neatly cancelled MOSKVA 28 8 24 using a canceller of the 19th Office.

The problem is this: in the whole collection of over 60 covers and cards, this Moscow 19 cancel is by far the cleanest, crispest cancel to be found. There is no other Moscow cancel which comes near it for its First Day of use appearance. True, it's a metal canceller (there are indentations) but it obliges me to believe that not only have I got a rare cover in front of me but one which has been cancelled on the first day of use of the Moscow 19 canceller.

I think it probable that the Postage Due stamps were applied in Moscow by a post office official - look how the stamps overlap in the same way as they do on the previous cover. But I think the post office official forgot (or did not feel it necessary)to cancel the stamps. So the cancelling had to be done later - by a forger.

I can't prove that. What I would need to prove it (or to be shown that I am mistaken) is other examples of this Moscow 19 canceller - and I haven't got any. Readers?

Click on the Images to enlarge them and make your own judgements.

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.

Collecting Imperial Russia on Cover

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There are collectors who try to find every issued stamp from their chosen country and period used on a cover. Some make it a more difficult task by ruling out philatelic usages or usages at the wrong date. Some set themselves the even harder challenge of accepting only single frankings.

Imperial Russia did not really issue many stamps and it ought to be possible to find them all used on cover or card or Money Transfer Form or Parcel Card ... but some are very, very elusive. 

The card above shows one very elusive stamp neatly used at the correct period on a card franked at the correct tariff (4 kopecks). It may be that the sender - an Englishman staying at the Grand Hotel Petrograd -  chose the stamps to make the card look more interesting but he probably did not realise that the 3 kopeck stamp on the left is the scarce one with perforation 13.5. This stamp is hard to find mint or used and people seem willing to pay 100 to 150 euros for examples (see the last www.filateliapalvelu.com auction results for Russia). This is the first time I have seen the stamp used on a cover or card and I hope to get a very good price for this very nice example of its use!

The Igor Gorski Collection of the RSFSR

Like many of this Blog's readers, I just received the catalogue for the sale of the Igor Gorski collection coming up at Cherrystone Auctions in New York on 20 February 2014. If you don't get the catalogue, just go to www.cherrystoneauctions.com to see it all.

It's a spectacular collection with many rare and attractive archival items with price tags to match.

But it struck me that until you get to the last Lot (338) where an unbroken postal history collection of 224 covers and cards is on offer, it's mainly about stamps, including their essays and proofs.

Particularly for the period 1917 to end of 1920 or even 1921, the gap between what was passing through the postal service and what was being projected in Moscow is enormous. Most of the designs submitted to the authorities in Moscow - and present in this collection - came to nothing.

It's not really until the second half of 1921 that mail going through the regular post begins to suggest the ideology or the aspirations of the new Bolshevik order. Until then, the order of the day was Improvisation using Imperial Arms adhesives to serve the postal needs of a much-reduced postal system. Remember, for example, that Bolshevik Russia had no publicly-available facilities for sending mail abroad from the beginning of 1919 until the middle of 1920 - and even then, foreign mail services got off to a slow start.

As for philately in this period, the typical philatelic covers illustrated from the Gorski collection have an amateurish appearance. I think there are three reasons. First, the initial hostility of the Bolshevik regime to philately (stamp collecting = speculation) discouraged any boldness. Second, no one had any money anyway. Third, many of the old collectors from the middle and upper classes had emigrated or, like everyone else, had no money to spend on their old hobby. The result is some pretty disappointing stuff. The non-philatelic parcel cards and money transfer forms which you can see in the Gorski collection for 1921- 22 look much more attractive to me.

New Issue Collecting, Heritage Collecting and Philately

How people spend their free time and their own money is pretty much their own affair. Each one to their own taste. But it's always sad when you realise that someone is not doing what they think they are doing.

New Issue Collectors often seem to  think that they are making an Investment for the Future, their own or their children's. Most of the time, they aren't. At the Paris Salon d'Automne, I used to watch from my Stand as - at the opening of the Show - hundreds of men (and a few women) ran towards the counters of La Poste to buy the latest "philatelic products" (as they are called in France). But every dealer watching knew that in a few years' time, those eager buyers would be lucky to get back 70% of the face value of the stamps they had purchased and which can only be sold off as "Postage" for use on the mail-outs from stamp dealers and auction houses. As an Investment, they do worse than keeping your money under the bed.

It's not a universal truth that buying New Issues is a doomed Investment. Agathon Faberge was a New Issues collector. He just had the good fortune to buy Zemstvos, often in sheets since the stamps only cost 1 or 2 kopecks each.

Heritage Collectors are not always philatelists and, as a result, often end up spending money on things which have nothing to do with the Heritage they think they are collecting. They are often enough victims of forgers and forgeries. It's quite often painful to look at "Heritage" collections for Armenia or Ukraine. You will see things which have never been near either country but have been fabricated in Paris or Moscow or California.

Some Heritage Collectors are more fortunate. If you go round a European stamp show looking for postal stationery cards written in Yiddish, you won't be disappointed - even now in 2014 nearly a hundred years after Yiddish started its post-World War One decline as a written language, you can find the cards in the boxes from Imperial Russia (the "Pale of Settlement" areas), from K u K Austria, and from Romania. It would be hard to fake them and not very rewarding - you will pay between 5 euro and 15 euro for a card, that's all.

Likewise collectors of their local Heimat  - home town -do better than those who take a whole country as their heritage. Picture postcards and postmarks of your home town can be bought with reasonable confidence and often cheaply and it's generally easier to build up your own knowledge for a single town or city than for a whole country. Dresden is easier to master than Deutschland.

Of course, for a country like Armenia, Heimat collecting would be very frustrating. There just isn't the material, at any price. But for Ukraine, it's possible and, I think, fascinating. You don't even have to pick a big city.

The same is true for Russia and the Soviet Union and it surprises me that more collectors do not choose to concentrate on a single town or city. There are opportunities and surprises from Archangelsk to Zlatoust!

Trident of Poltava (Type 2) with a Bonus ...

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Before about 1900, sheet watermarks in papers are often very elaborate. They go well beyond telling you the papermaker's name. Beehives, Eagles, Castles .... So it is not surprising that there are collectors of such watermarks. It's just rather difficult to display the material - you need light boxes.

About a dozen years ago I bought the Lindenmeyer collection of Ukraine (the Lindenmeyer who catalogued the Fabergé Zemstvo collection for sale at Corinphila in 1999). In it were many attractive items like the one above. It's a Poltava Type 2 trident on the "old" 7 rouble stamp of Imperial Russia (Bulat # 1030, catalogued $275). It's never hinged mint.

But what "makes" this item is the beautiful sheet margin watermark, which only needs black backing paper to make it visible. It is a papermaker's triumph: not only are there the vertical lines which philatelists concern themselves with but the beautiful ornamentation which can only be appreciated when you have marginal stamps like this one.

One of my uncles (Jack Burke) worked as a crafstman papermaker in an old paper mill at Eynsford, Kent in England. The paper was made by hand, the craftsman shaking the pulp into sheet format. My uncle told me that sometimes a man would suddenly lose the ability to shake correctly. That was the end of his career.

At home, Uncle Jack kept samples of his work, heavy rag papers which were I imagine off the Richter scale in terms of gsm. They had watermarks. When I was a boy in the 1950s, he would sometimes give me a few sheets. I remember them mainly because the edges were so sharp that you could slice your thumb open if you ran it along the edge of the paper.

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