Stamps Expertisation: Past and Present

In the past, dealers and experts guaranteed stamps by signing them on the reverse, sometimes by hand and sometimes with a handstamp. 

This method had a number of disadvantages.

 First, it was unclear what the signature was meant to claim. 

Second, it was open to abuse: you could get an expert to sign a relatively common stamp and then you could later add a rare overprint and point to the signature as a guarantee. To try to stop this abuse, experts sometimes signed twice when given an overprinted stamp - once for the stamp, once for the overprint. 

Third, handstamp ink often penetrated to the front of the stamp, causing an immediate reduction in value. 

Fourth, over time collectors forgot who the experts were especially when they signed with initials or a symbol. 

Fifth, when someone got it wrong, the mark on the back either had to be crossed out or otherwise commented upon. I have several stamps in my stock where an expert has written FAKE or FORGERY or FALSCH and has later changed their mind and crossed it out and signed again. These stamps are not saleable.

Modern photographic, scanning and computer print technology allows a much better way of doing things. At no great cost, an expert can now link a stamp to a printed document and not sign the stamp at all. This is now standard procedure for most experts, including anyone who is a Verbandspruefer of the German Bund Philatelisticher Pruefer e. V. Here’s an example. 

Note how both the back and front of the stamp are photographed, in high resolution, and how the “Attest” format allows for comment and explanation. Even twenty years ago, to produce a document to this standard would have been quite expensive; nowadays, a desktop computer and scanner are all that is needed apart from the security-printed “Attest” formular.

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New Catalog: Joseph Geyfman, Specialized Catalog Local Stamps, Provisionals, 1918 -1922; 1931

This is a very impressive catalog. With 450 high-gloss full-colour pages it makes full use of the possibilities provided by modern print technologies to organise a reasoned listing of very difficult stamps, clear and detailed enough to make it possible for even non--specialists to see what they should be looking for in Russian local stamps, by which is most often meant the Postmaster Provisionals of 1920 - 22. Cross-listings at the end make it possible for the user to start from the stamp rather than an overprint, from the ink colour of the overprint, as well as from the precise form of the overprint, for example p 1 p (which, incidentally, yields a unique result). The author is cautious in his assessments and if he is not convinced that a supposed local type  is genuine, even though others have listed it, then he indicates this with a ? or ??

What more can one ask for? I think there would be little point in illustrating the numerous forgeries produced with a child’s printing outfit, mostly on mint stamps - which simply don’t exist for the majority of provisional issues. The important thing is to study what the genuine items look like and what kinds of cancellations they should show. The catalog allows us to do both those things. I did think that the author could have mentioned the small number of signatures which are reliable on 1920 provisionals. My own list would include Dr Jem, Krynine, Mikulski, Pohl, Vinner. But “reliable” here does not mean 100% reliable. 

The only provisional I don’t find here but would have included is the use of the 20 / 14 kop Romanov in Tomsk guberniya, revalued x 100 in 1920 and put into use on Money Transfers and Parcel Cards well after the invalidation of Romanov stamps. I believe that this use would have required local authorisation; a counter clerk would not have taken the initiative to use an invalid Romanov at this late date.

I have blogged several times about the 1920 provisionals - 9 December 2010, 10 Feb 2011, 8 March 2011, 18 August 2014, 17 November 2014, 18 November 2014, 4 June 2017.

My main belief is that we only have Postmaster Provisionals / Local postmaster stamps to collect because the early Soviet Philatelic Association was alert enough and powerful enough to obtain the relevant post office archived money transfers and parcel cards for 1920. I think they started with many thousands of items and studied them fairly carefully. It would be interesting to know exactly who was involved in the work (Krynine? Vinner? …) and how the material was then marketed. Apart from Michel Lipschutz, who else before, say, the 1950s, formed large collections of this material?

New Book: Tobie Mathew, Greetings from the Barricades

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This extraordinary hardback book has 478 pages which include several hundred full-colour illustrations as well as a long, detailed text. The focus is on the years 1905 - 1906.

The UK publisher, Four Corners Books, has given it a cover price of £20 which looks like a mistake for £200 but isn't. It really is £20. Buy it while stocks last (ISBN 978 1 909829 12 1). It's available  direct from the publisher www.fourcornersbooks.co.uk  which may be the cheapest and most reliable method of obtaining it:

https://www.fourcornersbooks.co.uk/books/greetings-from-the-barricades/

The author is a UK-based writer who was previously an Associated Press correspondent in Moscow. Much of the archival work for this project was undertaken in Russia.

Review to follow ...

Single Frankings

One way to combine stamp collecting with doing postal history is to collect covers with single frankings, one cover for each stamp issued. It should be easy – after all, stamp denominations relate to tariffs. Or do they? Inflation is the main enemy of single frankings. Another is the inability of Supply departments to get the right stamps into the post offices at the right times.

For Imperial Russia, there are really a very small number of stamps to collect from one kopek to 10 rubels, which is just like the range 1 cent to $10. Ignore the rubel values and surely the kopek values will appear as single frankings….

It’s actually very difficult to complete this relatively small set. It seems that collectors quite often get stuck on the 70 kopek, so here is a cover to prove that 70 kop single frankings exist.

BUT it’s a use in Bolshevik Russia in September 1918 – and a very unusual one. This is a registered court envelope sent from Petrograd to Sestoresk. There is a cachet on the back and a number (450) bottom left of the cover which together entitle this letter to a privilege. The Court did not have to pay for the basic letter ( a 35 kopeks tariff at the time) ONLY for the Registration fee (70 kopeks at the time).

If you have interesting single frankings at 70 kop, send me a scan and we can expand this section …

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Added 17 November 2018: Here's a very fine cover from Howard Weinert (USA). This 70 kop franking from 1916 represents a sixth weight step ( 6 x 10 kop) plus 10 kop registration fee on a large envelope from Tiflis to the Psycho-Neurological Institute in Petrograd. Mail to this Institute does turn up in dealer boxes so at some point I guess its archive was sold off.

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Added 19 November 2018: Here's a very nice 1911 registered cover scanned to me by Henri Taparel (France), this one going abroad. Note that this cover shows an early printing of the 70 kop in a paler brown. Howard Weinert's cover above shows a later printing of the 70 kop in a darker brown:

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Russia 1920s Tula Local Revenue stamps for agricultural improvement

For many countries, fiscal / revenue stamps issued by national governments for general use are very common. In contrast, stamps issued by provincial or local government organisations can be scarce or rare. The obvious reason is that fewer  copies were used; the less obvious reason is that dealers or collectors at the time may not have known of their existence and so did not seek them out.

Early Soviet Russia was a very bureaucratic society but also one where local improvisation and local initiatives were common. There are a LOT of early Soviet fiscal stamps which were not issued by the national government.

I illustrate here one example since I cannot find these stamps already illustrated on the Internet. They were issued and used in Tula and they imposed a local tax on land transactions in addition to that nationally prescribed. This local tax was intended to fund agricultural improvement. It’s possible that there was some continuity with the activities of the Tula Zemstvo organisation. 

The stamps which indicated payment of the local tax were locally produced on poor quality coloured papers and had no gum – sometimes they were attached to legal documents by overlapping the gummed national-issue stamps. There is evidence of their use in 1922, 1923 and 1924. There were three values: 5 k orange, 10k pink and 20k green. The high value appears to be the scarcest. The stamps were also modified in three different ways as I illustrate below. Click on Images to Magnify.

5 kop without modification used here on a May 1924 document:

5 kop with revaluation to rubels by means of manuscript Руь in tablet at base used here on 1923 document:

10 kop without modification used here on May 1923 document:

10 kop with handstamp Γ.Ο.З. in tablet at base used here on June 1923 document:

10 kop with handstamp С Д А Н О in tablet at base used here on February 1923 document:

20 Kop without modification used here on February 1922 document. The 20 kop appears to be the scarcest value and the strip of three on this document is the largest multiple on any of the documents I have seen:

Crimea in Sindelfingen 2018

I am just back from a visit to the annual Sindelfingen (Stuttgart) stamp show – the Briefmarken Messe Sindelfingen. It’s still very good, even though visitor numbers were clearly down as they are at every stamp show now. That did mean that I was able to look through dealer boxes - some with thousands of covers -  without too much fighting with other people’s elbows. 

I found a couple of Crimea items from the period when Stalin’s nationalities policy meant that local languages were officially recognised alongside Russian. In Crimea, the other recognised language was (Turkic) Tatar. Originally, this was written in Arabic script and some postmarks can be found in that script. But later Tatar was written  in the modernised Roman script introduced into Turkey by Ataturk. I have blogged about this before on 6 March 2014.

I now add to that Blog with the two cards below. You can see a cover with a postmark of Cyrillic Yalta ЯЛТА and Tatar UALTA  and then a card with Cyrillic Simferopol СИМФЕРОПОЛЬ and Tatar AQMESCID.

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Was There A Post Office?

In my areas of philatelic specialism the question is often asked, Were these stamps really issued?

To answer this, you need answers to several other questions:

Was there a post office or post offices?

Were these stamps “available at the counter” – even if only for a short period of time – and would they have been used to frank mail brought in by “an ordinary member of the public”?

What did the post office/s do with the letters franked with the stamps? Did they have the ability to put them into a mail delivery system – and was that system local, regional, national or international?

A key part of this set of questions is played by the “ordinary member of the public”. If the stamps will only be brought out for known philatelists (dealers or collectors) or, say, for the local military commander who has ordered their production, then in the ordinary sense of the word, they are not a regular issue. They are stamps produced by or for favours. On the other hand, the stamps may have franking validity and may succeed in getting a letter carried from A to B in which case one might say that they had a “limited issue”.

For many stamp issues, the vast majority of used stamps are found on (obviously) philatelic mail. The British Empire used to control many small and remote islands – still does – and issued stamps for them. But in some cases as many as 99% of all covers now existing are philatelic.

But what counts is the 1% of non-philatelic mail – the same stamps were available to “ordinary members of the public” (maybe there were just two of them) as well as philatelists.

That is why the 1% (or even the 0.1%) is so important. For example, it is the 1% or less which shows that the stamps of the Northern Army and the North West Army were issued. There clearly exist cards and covers which were not sent for philatelic motives. It’s true that the distances they travelled are mostly quite limited – backwards into Estonia, most notably. But a few made it as far as Finland and in that case you have an even stronger case for saying that the stamps were issued and served to get mail put into a mail distribution system. Similarly, though their period of use in December-January 1918-19 was very short, the original map stamps of Latvia saw limited non-philatelic postal use, both on internal mail and on mail to Germany.

The really difficult questions arise with stamps which appear to have been issued but for which evidence of ordinary postal use is now missing. In some cases, there are not even philatelic covers. There are undoubtedly stamps which were officially prepared and would have had postal validity if used but which went straight from post office counter to waiting philatelists who bought everything for onward sale as mint stamps, none even stuck on philatelic covers. This would be true of an unknown proportion of the combinations of stamp and overprint  issued by Dashnak Armenia which could have been used but weren't.

The only really clever guy in the confusing postal history in which I specialise was Dr Ivan Cherniavsky who produced the 1919 CMT overprints of Kolomea in co-operation with the occupying Romanian military commander. Cherniavsky required that quantities of the stamps be distributed to the post offices which the Romanian authorities controlled. These post offices actually served very few people in a widely illiterate countryside. But they did serve local lawyers who were always sending petitions to the district court in Kolomea, and the stamps got used on their registered mail.

Dr Cherniavsky was in charge of the district court in Kolomea. His clerks simply passed to him the one hundred percent genuine commercially used envelopes which brought petitions to the court. Cherniavsky was an unusual collector. He was interested in ordinary commercial mail.... He took a chance that no one out in those small towns and villages would spot the opportunity to buy the CMT stamps for onward sale. As far as I know, only at one office did some other collector/dealer get to secure part of the issue. Elsewhere, it seems that everything went to the lawyers and back to Kolomea, as Cherniavasky intended.