Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Nope, not buying it (literally)

The last White issue from the Crimea is the 100R surcharge on 1k Arms stamps. As is by now well known, these never saw use and left the Crimea in the luggage of the Whites' Evil Philatelist, Shredinskii. I've read references that Shredinskii also exported a Crimean postmark so he could concoct "used" copies, and I've seen (rather suspiciously clean) covers with 1919 dates that were identified by greater experts than me as Paris Products.
So when the cover below popped up on eBay I had to get past my initial impulse (Crimea! Civil War! 1920! Buy! Buy! Buy! Want!) and let sanity prevail.

This purports to be a letter from Sevastopol' to Yalta dated sometime in October 1920. It's a fake, in my opinion. The rate is wrong (should be 100R if it's after 15 October and 5R if it's before 15 October), no Yalta receiver (not impossible but uncommon, even for non-registered mail) and that postmark...
I collect Crimean postmarks and maintain a small database of information and pictures about them. This seems to be a legitimate postmark (SEVASTOPOL' TAVR.G. serial "k") but it seems to pop up a lot on faked covers...
So no. The cover went for a little over $100 - a price that is far too low if it were legitimate - so I think I'm not alone in disliking it...


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