Wednesday, December 18, 2013

The VoA Correspondence 2: revaluations

Wading through a batch of 1200 covers from the former USSR, all sent to the USA in the first half of 1992, is a delight, as it gives you a very nice sample of what the postal system looked like in action in these early post-USSR days.
Manuscript revaluations were found on exactly 5 items, from 4 different locations. As an example, here a registered letter from Noginsk, Moscow province:
The three stamps of 1 ruble have been revalued to 2 rubles each, and a 1R TP marking brings the total franking to 7.50R, which is a recognizable rate. It's interesting that the 1R TP marking was used instead of another unrevalued 1R stamp...
Here's another example from Orel railway post office:
A postcard this time, unusually. 3 stamps of 50k have been turned into stamps of 1R each. Two stamps of 15k have been turned into 30k-stamps, and an old 10k stamp has been turned into another 30k stamp. Not sure if 3.30R makes sense as a rate, but it's interesting!
Even better, the batch contained a second example from the same office:
This time it was just the 2R stamp which was revalued, to 4R. This office seemed to like doubling the face value of the stamps. The fourth example is also a doubling:
The origin is ambiguous as the sender gives her location as Staraya Kupavna, but the postmark is Moscow. Three 35k stamps have been uprated to 70k stamps, although 2.60R makes little sense as a rate.
Finally, the most spectacular, probably from Togliatti:
Stamps of 5k were turned into 20k stamps. But the fun wasn't over yet. The reverse:
Three 35k commemorative stamps were turned into stamps of 70k each. Total franking: 3.55 which is close enough to 3.60 to be convincing.

Is ANYONE collecting and/or studying these wonderful examples of postal improvisation?

Monday, November 11, 2013

The Crimean "little" offices

As I may have mentioned once of twice, I like postmarks from the Crimea. After years of collecting and gathering information I've now recorded 230 postmarks from the Imperial period and 224 from the Soviet period (up to the final "ASSR" type), and I'm still finding new postmarks regularly.
Some postmarks are easier to find than others, of course. Railway postmarks (apart from Sevastopol' Vokzal) are pretty thin on the ground - I'm still looking for a Kerch' railway postmark for instance - and Volostnoe Pravlenie postmarks are downright rare. Seasonal offices are another group that's rarely seen.
Kerch' actually managed to cram 4 offices into its area: Kerch', Kerch' Railway, Kerch' Krepost and Kerchenskii Zavod. The latter is another office you'll rarely see:

Then there are the Town Sub-offices. Unsurprisingly, Sevastopol' and Simferopol' both had Town sub-offices, although examples are not easy to find. The one that really surprised me was Feodosiya:
By the way, both postmarks have a "1" at foot which I think implied that these were considered to be the 1st sub-office of the main post office. 
Town sub-offices are not listed in the invaluable Kiryushkin-Robinson list of Imperial Russian post offices, so each one that turns up is a surprise. I wonder how many more there are?

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

A little relic of Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan is, shall we say, not widely collected. I happen to like the combination of obscurity and cheapness that countries like this offer, so I have a mild interest in Turkmenistan stamps and postal history. I appear to be in a very small minority.
A few months ago I tripped over a little "find": a large-ish lot of progressive proofs for the first Turkmenistan stamps, issued in August 1992 (disregarding two hastily-retooled USSR stamp issues from earlier that year). It's a lot of stuff! For each of the 7 stamps (counting the two mirror versions of the president Nyazov stamp) and the souvenir sheet in the set there are from 13 to 21 of these proofs. These stamps were printed using 4 colors (red, yellow, black and blue; sometimes gold was used as well) and for each value the lot contains proofs of the individual color plates, as well as 2, 3 and 4-color combination proofs. All are unperforated.
Proof of the black plate for the 15,0 stamp
For the miniature sheet, 20 of these proofs are present, such as:
Proof of the red and black plates
How did all this fun stuff end up on the market? Here I have to speculate a little, but I think here is what happened. These stamps were printed by Specialty Printers of America in Scranton, Pennsylvania. That company was bought by the Mack Printing Group, which eventually became Cadmus Communication Corporation. My theory is that in the changes of ownership some archival material went missing. I've seen occasional other eyebrow-raising items from this issue, such as a complete unperforated printing sheet of one value, but this lot of proofs is the biggest I've seen.

Is it philatelically relevant? Only if you're very interested in the printing process. personally, I find the progressive proofs interesting, and I'm toying with the idea of having the proofs for the souvenir sheet framed. Besides, it was cheap (and obscure!).

Saturday, September 21, 2013

Back! Let's talk about the Joy of Singles

I do apologize to my (entirely hypothetical) readers for my absence. Let's just say my job became even more interesting than usual and leave it at that.
I was rummaging through some old albums and found a little stash of Single Frankings. I collected these quite avidly for the 1924-1940 period at one time, but got rid of most of them after awhile. I did keep the examples from the Second Standard issue, or the Large Heads as we westerners think of them.
Most of the middle values in this set are easily found as single frankings (which is defined as an item of mail franked with one example of a stamp, paying the correct rate and preferably in the right period), although the 50k starts getting a little more difficult. But it's the extreme values of the set that present the most problems.

The 80k is hard to find as a single. Here's a cheat:
This is a scarce postcard from the extensive correspondence between professor Popov in Irkutsk and E. Colaco Belmonte in Sydney, Australia. Most of this correspondence consists of very nicely franked airmail covers, but there are a few postcards too, this being one of them. So why is it a cheat? Because 80k wasn't the right rate: this registered airmail postcard to Australia should have been franked with 70k. 
Here's how to do it properly:
By 1935 the rate for a Speshnoe letter was 80k, so this is the correct franking. 1935 is a bit late for a Large head, but the stamps of that issue can be found used normally throughout the early/mid-1930s, so I'm saying it's acceptable. This, by the way, is the easiest form of an 80k single franking.
On the other end of the spectrum there's the (also orange) 1k stamp. As far as I can tell, this would have paid for local printed matter, which has a low probability of survival. But, we all get lucky sometimes:
Life is good! And with a table of postal rates at your side, this way of collecting stamps on cover is a lot of fun.

Thursday, May 16, 2013

In praise of the recent (3): the "Voice of America" correspondence

One little project that I was really looking forward to is going through approx. 1200 covers sent from various ex-USSR countries during the first three months of 1992: responses to a lottery organized by the "Voice of America" radio station. I like big bulky lots as you can actually do some simple statistics and you get a good feel for the range of postal phenomena. And who wouldn't like going through a pristine archive?

These covers are a little puzzling since they're all unopened. I don't know what the explanation is. Perhaps all these covers arrived after the deadline? It does make me a little sad to think that all these hopefuls were doomed to disappointment.

Let's start with the basics. Of the 1200 covers or so, mere handfuls are from Azerbaijan and Georgia. Armenia is a little better represented, with about a dozen covers. Central Asia varies from Kazakhstan (15) to Kyrgyzstan (1). Ukraine is inexplicably underrepresented with a mere 15 covers. Belarus shows up with 36 covers, and Moldova with 5. The three Baltic States have about 30 covers each. Everything else is Russia. Note that this geographical distribution simply reflects participation in the lottery, not some aspect of the postal systems in question.

Frankings are almost exclusively Soviet definitives (and Baltic definitives for the Baltic states, although even there you see a few late usages of Soviet stamps). The oddballs are the St.Petersburg surcharges, the Azeri use of radio stamps on one cover, and manuscript revaluations of Soviet definitives on four covers. The first Russian stamps also appear, sparingly.

(To be continued)


Saturday, March 23, 2013

In praise of the recent (2): Dutch definitive disarray


Almost unnoticed by most Dutch collectors, the standard Dutch definitive stamps with an abstract portrait of Queen Beatrix spawned a large number of collectable varieties, booklets and less easily categorized items.
The first of the stamps designed by Peter Struycken appeared in 1981, but three major changes over the next 20 years or so changed the face of Dutch definitive stamps forever. The first of these changes was a simple change in design, from the original 1981 design (black design on a colored background) to the so-called "inverted design" (colored design on a white background), which first appeared in 1991. The second change was the change in currency, from the Dutch Guilder to the Euro. The final and most far-reaching change was a major change in the way stamps are produced and sold.

First issue: uncomplicated stamps
Stamps in the original Struycken design showing an abstract portrait of Queen Beatrix background were first issued in 1981, and over a period of 10 years 16 different values appeared. The design was not universally popular and was mocked as "the Queen Bee". The colors chosen were a drab assembly of pastels, including no fewer than 6 shades of green and 4 shades of violet. The stamps were issued in sheets of 100, while 8 values appeared as coil stamps (imperforate on two sides) and 2 values were issued in stamp booklets (imperforate on one or two sides). A simple enough issue for the collector. Perhaps it lulled collectors to sleep, leaving them unprepared for what was to follow.

Second issue: the "inverted" design
From 1991 to 2000, a total of 14 values in the "inverted" design were issued. Again, 5 stamps were also issued as coil stamps. But during the second half of the 1990s, the Dutch postal authorities started issuing more and more self-adhesive stamps, and 5 values in this set were also issued as self-adhesives, printed and sold in mini-sheetlets of 5 stamps. The mini-sheetlets were a new phenomenon: a hybrid between a sheetlet and a booklet. At the time these went more or less unnoticed as most of the attention had gone to commemorative stamps which were being issued in sheetlets of 10, to the horror of collectors. But during the 1990s, the way in which stamps were sold changed. Counter sheets from which the required number of stamps would be torn were vanishing. Stamps were sold to customers in pre-packaged blocks (initially cut from regular sheets, later specially printed), and the small mini-sheetlets of 5 filled the gap for those customers for whom these pre-packaged blocks of 50 or 100 were far too large a purchase. By the beginning of the new century, the old counter sheets of 100 had practically disappeared.
The initial and somewhat experimental pre-packaged blocks did spawn some interesting varieties. The stamp of 1 guilder was printed in sheetlets of 25 for a planned "mailer" (as the pre-packaged products were known), but the mailer never appeared and the small number of printed sheets was quietly sold off. Two other values in the set (0.80 and 1.60) were printed and sold in these sheets of 25, in mailers of 25 and 50 stamps.
The mini-sheetlets of self-adhesive stamps were printed by Walsall Security Printers, and it was soon discovered that the WSP-printed stamps differed from the original design as printed by Johan Enschedé: 3 of the dots making up the portrait were missing. As a final complication, the self-adhesive stamps were not popular with collectors who complained that the adhesive was leaking out around the edges. The 5 self-adhesive stamps were also made available to collectors in a special printing for which the backing paper was die-cut all the way through.

Third issue: the Euro-denominated stamps
After one stamp appeared in 2001 with the denomination both in guilders and in Euro as a transitional measure (only as self-adhesive in sheetlet of 5), the "inverted" design started appearing in Euro denominations from 2002 onwards. No more counter sheets for the Euro stamps - these were only issued as self-adhesive stamps in sheetlets of 5 (and, starting in 2007, of 10).
The first 8 stamps to appear in 2002 still had the three missing dots that the self-adhesive guilder-denominated stamps had also had. 3 values were issued in 2003 with a corrected portrait that restored the three missing dots, but these inexplicably also had the text rearranged slightly so they were easily identifiable. Later issues of new values had the restored portrait and the old arrangement of text on the stamps. Again, many of these stamps were also made available with the backing paper die-cut all the way through.

By now, what should have been a modest definitive issue had become a ripe field for specialization. The "official" NVPH catalog was slow to realize all this but the 2008 edition included a full listing of the various mailers, mini-sheetlets and other new phenomena for the first time. Already, the earlier mailers are fetching high prices, as they were not recognized as collectable varieties when they appeared, and a lot of Dutch collectors are playing catch-up in a field of dizzying complexity. A first handbook of these issues also appeared during 2007, while the (bilingual) website of a philatelic journalist who was one of the first to understand the complexity of these issues is an invaluable guide.

A tale of two small cities in Poland

Take a look at this cover. It was sent in February 1824 From Warsaw to France. It has 5 postal markings, in order:
  • A Warsaw postmark
  • A Strzalkowo postmark
  • T.P. which stands for "Transit Prusse" or Prussian transit
  • R.No.5. This is worth a blog all by itself but briefly, it means the French regarded it as an unpaid letter from Prussia's 5th Raion - that part of Prussia the furthest removed from the French border
  • Prusse Par Givet: a French marking (actually applied in Paris)  simply denoting that this Prussian letter had entered France at Givet, and that French internal postage was to be calculated from Givet to its destination, Rheims.
Since the Strzalkowo postmark is similar to the Memel postmarks you see on many Russian letters from this period you might conclude that this is a Prussian postmark, and that it denoted where the letter entered Prussia. You would be right. Since Strzalkowo is in Prussia's 5th Raion, that also fits with the R.No.5 marking. Apparently Polish domestic postage had been prepaid but after it left Poland it was all unpaid. The "17" is the final charge to the addressee of 17 decimes. 
Strzalkowo is still around: you'll find it due West of Warsaw and yes, the Prussian border really used to be there. It wasn't until 1945 that Poland was forcibly relocated a few hundred kilometers to the West.

Now take a look at this letter:
This letter, from February 1818, went from Warsaw to Leipzig in Saxony. It has a similarly Prussian-looking postmark of Slupce. Slupce is now called Slupca and it is right next door to Strzalkowo, about 4 kilometers closer to Warsaw. What's going on?

The postal history of Poland in the 19th century is as complicated as its history. Recall that Napoleon had re-created a "Grand Duchy of Warsaw" as a rump Polish state. After Napoleon's defeat, the Vienna Congress decided to once again slide and dice Polish lands between Russian, Prussia and Austria, but the Russian share was made into a Kingdom of Poland, which just happened to have the Russian Tsar as its king. Poland  had an independent postal system from the moment of its rebirth, and it slowly got going in 1817. At the time, Slupce was in Prussia and it was the Prussian entry point for westbound mail from Poland. However, in 1817, Prussia and Poland (re)defined the border between the two states more exactly, and by that treaty (signed in late 1817 and ratified in February 1818) Slupca became Polish and Strzalkowo became the new Prussian entry point for Polish mail. So for a very brief period (about February 1817-March 1818) you will see a Prussian Slupce as entry marking for Polish mail, and after that, Strzalkowo takes over.

The best literature on this stuff is probably the series of articles written by Ilse Popp for the Deutsche Altbrief Sammler-Verein. They're impossible to find, but priceless.

Saturday, February 16, 2013

The forgotten nation: UkrSSR

If you look at this 1926 cover you probably won't spot anything out of the ordinary. It took me literally decades to realize that we're seeing an example of an odd and short-lived class of postmarks.

When Ukraine had its much-interrupted first period of independence in 1918-1920, it introduced new postmarks which were in Ukrainian, not Russian. My Russian is terrible and my Ukrainian nonexistent, but you can usually spot them simply because the spelling is different from what you're used to, e.g. Kiiv instead of Kiev, Kharkiv instead of Kharkov, etc. A few of them lasted well beyond Ukrainian independence into the mid-late 1920s.

But - and here's where it gets interesting - when many of the Union Republics that constituted the USSR started issuing new postmarks during the 1920s, the postmarks were bilingual: Russian and the local language. So yes, the Ukrainian SSR introduced many of these bilingual postmarks during the 1920s. However, there were some places (not many) that introduced all-Ukrainian postmarks, and apparently Tsibuliv (Tsybulevo in pre-Revolutionary times) in Kiev Oblast' was one of them.

They're worth looking out for, but count on seeing them very rarely. And by the way, the whole Ukrainian SSR period is almost a white spot on the philatelic map: apart from the "Index" postal code introduced in the 1930s I don't know of any subjects from this period  that have been studied, let alone exhibited.

It's a pity because Ukraine was actually a very interesting place, politically. The conscious policy of korenizatsiya or "indiginization" led to growing national consciousness as Ukrainian communists tried to develop a separate national identity within the USSR. There's a great book on the subject, James Mace's "Communism and the dilemmas of national liberation" that follows the process and its abrupt end in the early 1930s. I wonder if the maker of this Tsibuliv postmark was charged with nationalist deviations during the Purges....

Saturday, February 9, 2013

Another awkward item

This parcel address card is nice for a lot of very different reasons.
Late use of an Imperial form. Sent "Dolgovaya" (on credit), so the addressee paid the postage. Franked with  nice high values of the "Small Heads" standard issue. And hey, franked with a commemorative stamp too! And double hey, with a postage due stamp, used as postage stamp?  Too many reasons!

But the nicest surprise came from the destination. "Ginsburg", I hear you ask? Yeah, it didn't ring any bells with me either and Google was silent for once. It had Arabic in the bottom half so...Central Asia?

In the end it was Adrian Room's very useful 1991 book "Placename changes" that had the answer. Ginsburg is the town known as Kaakhka in Turkmenistan. It was known as Ginsburg during the 1920s. Lord known why...I can't find a suitable Ginsburg that might have served as inspiration for this very obscure renaming.

I need about 5 identical items...

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Echos in the past

Does anyone remember the Spitak earthquake? This terrible earthquake in 1988 pretty much destroyed the Armenian town of Spitak and caused terrible damage in Leninakan/Gyumri and Kirovakan/Vanadzor. An international aid campaign came into being quickly, but the whole aftermath became entangled first in the Armenian independence movement, then in the break-up of the USSR and the Armenian-Azeri war. All we're left with is a memory of an earthquake that killed tens of thousands of people.

Sometimes you find out things by accident. Take a look at this card:
1929 stationery card from Tiflis to Sweden
I like the stationery cards of the Second Standard issue (a.k.a. the Big Heads), but they're hardly rare. Still, the Georgian cards are not that easy to find, and this one is nice and clean. But on the reverse...
Nice trilingual charity label! And read the message... An echo of 1988, 59 years in the past.

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Those awkward covers!

When you collect postal history you occasionally run into a problem that I call the Too Much Happiness problem: you find a cover that fits into multiple categories that you collect. It makes for awkward decisions, as you're unlikely to find a similar cover.

As an example, here's one cover that caused me some headaches:
Bilingual postmark, I collect those. Nice single franking of USSR stamp, I collect those. Registration label with ASSR name manually added, I certainly collect those. Improvised "Express" label, how could anyone not collect those?
Crap. I have to find about 3 more covers exactly like this one...

Saturday, January 19, 2013

What is rare?

As you gradually grow older and rack up more years of experience you do get a more informed view of which things are rare. You notice that some things pop up with some regularity and other things don't.

As a collector of Siberian Civil War stamps and postal history there are a few prime candidates for rarity. I'll disregard the Nikolaevsk-on-Amur garbage, but for example, the Merkulov Anniversary issue of 1922 is hard to find. About 2000 sets were overprinted and it can take a few years before you're lucky enough to find a set. Of course, these days the internet improves your chances of success dramatically!

Mint, these stamps are hard to find. Postally used, these stamps are downright rare.Disregard the philatelic postmark of Vladivostok "g" and you really have to get lucky to find used stamps of this set.

These stamps on cover? Yikes! I've seen about half a dozen covers over the years. Most of these were philatelically-inspired. Good luck!

The low print run is somewhat deceptive in this case. Sure, only 2000 sets were issued but these all seem to have ended up with a small number of stamp dealers and collectors, ensuring a high survival rate over the years.

Other stamps may have had larger print runs but present different problems. Take the 1 rouble imperforate of the DVR Monogram issue. 3000-5000 were issued, depending on which source you believe, so that doesn't make them that hard to find, compared to some of the stamps with smaller print runs. Postally used copies to turn up - one wonders where they came from?

But on cover?

You need to get very very lucky to find these stamps on cover, and you're not helped by the odd fact that almost no parcel cards or money orders are known from the Vladivostok area from 1918-1923, since those are usually a good source of postally-used high values.
9-fold weight registered letter from Vladivostok to USA
This cover is one of very few that I've seen, and the only one with a single franking. It also appears to be non-philatelic. In 27 years of collecting that makes it the only one I've ever seen. Rare!

Sunday, January 6, 2013

From Collection to Exhibit (1)


A collection can take many forms. I’ve seen collections that were so exquisitely organized they might as well have served as reference works. Others, including some of my own, are more in the “primitive accumulation” phase and a little chaotic as a result. Most collections will fall somewhere in between those two extremes.
If you have made the decision to exhibit part of that collection, the question arises of what you’re going to exhibit and how you’re going to exhibit it. The first thing to realize is that you’ll have to pick a clear subject to exhibit. As an example, I collect Paraguay, 1900-1945, stamps and postal history, but that’s a huge subject to exhibit! I’d have to pick a small subset of that to exhibit, for example the proofs and essays of that period, or postal rates for airmail. Something that will fit into a reasonable number of frames, before I go bankrupt on frame fees.

Once I have picked my subject, it’s time to start thinking about a plan. The general outlines of a plan will usually be obvious just from the subject. A study of postal rates will divide quite easily into rate periods; or rates for particular classes of mail; or mail to particular destinations or…okay, perhaps not quite that obvious.
You see the problem: you’ll have to make some choices. A clear plan is crucial for a successful exhibit and frankly, it just helps you tell the “story” of your exhibit much more easily. Here’s a simple trick that I’ve found helpful: make a list of what you feel are the really nice items in your collection that you’d like to include.
Making a list like that is easy for any collector. We know our collections, we know which items are the important items and we know which items are the most attractive items (and we will grudgingly admit that they might not be the same items as the important items). From that list we can see the outlines of a plan appearing, and maybe even more: the list might suggest that we need to strengthen some areas of weakness in our collection to bring it in line with a good plan for the exhibit.

Let me give you an example. Say I’m putting together an exhibit of Russian post offices in China. The first thing I’ll have to decide is if I want to focus on the stamps that were issued for these offices or on the postal history. Not too many stamps were issued, and it might be tough to fill more than 3-4 frames with this stuff (even including postal uses). So forget that, I’ll go for a postal history exhibit. I browse through my many albums of these covers (I hasten to add that this example is completely hypothetical) and select 30 covers I really like. And I see some problems developing. I have 10 really nice covers from Peking…that’s going to make the Peking office a little over-exposed. And I don’t have any nice covers from Hankow. I know they’re out there – I’ve seen them! – but I just haven’t found one for my collection yet. Since I can’t really ignore the Hankow office and its postal history I may have to either wait until I’ve found some Hankow covers, or rethink the exhibit and make it a “Peking Only” exhibit, for example.

And that leads me to the most heart-breaking decision any aspiring exhibitor has to make. I might have to leave some material I really like out of the exhibit, either because there are too many similar items in the exhibit already, or because it just doesn’t fit into what seems to be the logical plan for the exhibit. Curses! Take some time to shake your fist at the heavens and then get over it. Look on the bright side: maybe you’ve just discovered you really have some duplicate items, and selling them might enable you to buy some material you’re missing.

The final step is to take that list of “star” items and see if you can build a logical exhibit around it. A useful trick here is to start with a really rough plan and use that to decide roughly how much stuff goes into each part of the plan. You can then see if some sections are “bloated” and others are a little anemic, and change your plan (or the items you include) accordingly. By the way, it is always easier to make a selection from the material you have available, then it is to find you have just enough material to fill the frames, so choose your number of frames wisely.

OBRAZETS madness

Obrazets. The word, meaning "specimen", was printed on or perforated through specimen stamps of the Russian Empire and the USSR. Such specimina are very collectable and they all seem to be different. The 1905 War Orphans set came in sheets of 8 stamps across and the temptation to overprint those sheets with one letter per stamp - "Obrazets" was 8 letters in pre-1918 spelling - was impossible to resist, so you can find stamps of this issue with one letter of the word printed on the front.

A few years ago, some eBay vendor (I forget his name) started offering rather a lot of Obrazets material. All of the perforated variety, but interesting nevertheless. However, after the third lot my spider-sense started tingling. Here are a few examples:
 Okay, this one I almost believe.
Wait, what?

WHAA...? 

No. Just no.

On KOLCHAKS? OH fer chrissakes...

So it seems pretty clear that someone has been busy with his very own Obrazets perforator. Buyer beware...

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Azerbaijan and its damn imperfs!

Post-Soviet Azerbaijan. What can one say? For many people this is just one of those republics. Not Russia or something that ignorant Westerners think is "kind of Russian" like Ukraine or Belarus. Definitely not a Baltic State! Not Georgia (as if anyone cares. Is anyone collecting Georgia? Hello? Is this microphone working?) and very, VERY not Armenia. Armenia has an international community of emigres collecting it like crazy and any mention of Azerbaijan tends to produce deep frowns. And when an Armenian frowns, it's a serious frown. Not a Central Asian republic (although I've heard one US journalist calling it Azerbaistan. And yes, this man can vote!).

I have a big soft spot for Azerbaijan. I blame Thomas Goltz, whose utterly non-objective book "Azerbaijan diary" is such a great read about the 1991-1993 period.

Philatelically, Azerbaijan has been pretty much a normal post-Soviet republic. High inflation, check. Big stocks of USSR stationery, check. Overprints, check. Cult of personality, big check. Azerbaijan? Might as well call it Alievistan! Non-philatelic covers are difficult to get hold of outside of a few archives addressed to Kiev and Minsk. So, fun for any collector, and cheap too.

However. Azerbaijan? We need to have a little chat. It's about those imperforate stamps. At first a few stray sets magically appeared without perforation, and we have that bloody French printer to thank for that (and Trevor Pateman to figure out what was happening and get the information). Then things got very quiet for awhile. Three sets from 1994 (birds of prey, big cats and football) started turning up imperforate on eBay/Delcampe. And then...it seems just about every single issue now also "appears" imperforate. You can get them without too much trouble in Moscow, I believe. They seem to receive very little distribution (and indeed interest) outside of the former USSR.

What's going on, Azerbaijan? Why!? You were doing so well!

In praise of the recent (1): Guyana's overprint madness, 1981-1985


Guyana, the only English-speaking country in South America, has built up a dubious philatelic reputation since its independence in 1970. The first 10 years were uneventful enough, but after that, Guyana pursued an issue policy that lifted eyebrows to stratospheric heights around the globe. During the 1990s, the policy was mostly one of excess, with miniature sheets and thematic issues on the wildest variety of subjects galore. Often these issues were distressingly “gimmicky”: cut-to-shape sheets, gold and silver embossing, etc. Your basic run-of-the-mill philatelic abuser.
During the second half of the 1980s, it was orchids: Guyana issued an improbable number of stamps illustrating orchids (taken from a famous illustrated book on Reichenbachia), including surcharges, overprints, etc. Again, mercenary motives were probably at work here.

But it was before that, during the first half of the 1980s, that Guyana first gained a reputation for philatelic eccentricity. Starting in May 1981, Guyana almost ceased issuing new stamps altogether and simply overprinted the apparently vast stocks of older issues again and again, with new face values, new purposes or both. While it is again tempting to think of this as aimed at collectors only, the truth was a little more complicated than that.

Since its independence in 1970, Guyana had been under the enlightened leadership of a man with the wonderful name of Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham. Guyana was declared to be a “Co-operative Republic” and various more or less eccentric economic policies were pursued, including nationalization of several large industries.
Sadly, the oil crises of the 1970s had their effect on Guyana’s economy as well. Briefly put, the country ran out of money, crippled by a huge foreign debt and further handicapped by admirable but expensive government policies. Under those circumstances it was quite understandable that no more hard currency reserves could be spent on having stamps printed abroad. Instead, existing stocks of stamps were simply overprinted locally whenever the need for a new stamp issue arose.

More than half of these overprinted/surcharged stamps used the “Flower” definitives of 1971-1976 (Scott 133-147) as their raw material. These were charming stamps, issued in sheets of 25 that made them very suitable for further overprinting. Four values exist in two different perforations and the 25c stamp exists in two different designs but other than that it’s an uncomplicated set of stamps. During the 1970s, three stamps had been given a new face value by overprinting them – hardly excessive – and most of the set had been overprinted “REVENUE ONLY” to serve as revenue stamps in 1975.
But starting in 1981 with commemorative surcharges to celebrate the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, the Guyana authorities went overprint-happy and issued over 300 different overprints or combinations of overprints on the “Flower” definitives, mostly during the first half of the 1980s. These issues fall roughly into three groups:

  1. Revaluations. Guyana was no stranger to inflation and postal rates increased during this period, creating demand for stamps of higher face values.
  2. Commemorations. Anything from Boy Scout Centenaries to religious festivals was honored with a commemorative overprint.
  3. “Repurposing” (if you’ll forgive me this ugly word). Postage stamps were turned into Official stamps, or parcel post stamps, or official parcel post stamps and then back into postage stamps again. And the revenue overprints of 1975 joined in the fun as well.

You might be forgiven if you think this was all exploitative rubbish, designed to separate collectors from their hard-earned cash, but the truth is that many or most of these issues were widely available throughout Guyana, were used to frank mail and often filled a need, as the scarce Guyanese covers of this period show

What makes these issues so challenging to collect is that identifying a given stamp correctly can take quite a slog through the catalogs, and some catalogs are more helpful than others. I’ve found the Michel catalog very useful since it not only notes on which stamp a given stamp was overprinted, but also which subsequent overprints appeared on that stamp. Scott collects overprints of similar appearance into groups, which is not always helpful, and neither Scott nor Stanley Gibbons is very good at noting which subsequent overprints appeared on a given stamp. In the end I produced my own catalog of these issues, including a 3-catalog cross-reference and found it time well spent.

As a taste of the madness, the $2 stamp (Scott 146) is a good introduction. It exists with 13 different overprints (two of them on previously unissued overprints). In addition, various further overprints were later placed on 5 of these, creating 22 different stamps with two overprints. For example, the $1.10 “Royal Wedding” surcharge (Scott 333) exists with no fewer than 10 different “second generation” overprints. Finally, on 9 occasions a third overprint was added to two previous overprints, so even without trying hard there are 44 collectable stamps based on that $2 stamp alone. I’ll also point out that the basic stamp exists in at least 2 very different shades, creating plenty of room for further variety, and that overprint varieties and errors do exist, although they are surprisingly scarce.

In all, I’ve found these stamps a pleasure to collect, and finding them used on cover is a nice challenge. Gold-embossed Mickey Mouse stamps, no thanks, but these overprinted “Flower” definitives are a lot of serious philatelic fun.