Soviet Georgia 1923: new handstamps

(Introduction: my old friend Peter Ashford passed away a number of years ago. We had corresponded about the Soviet Georgian handstamped definitives of early 1923, but it wasn’t until I acquired his collection of these stamps that I realized Peter had identified a new handstamp type that was unrecorded in the literature. This note is me acting as ghostwriter for Peter)

When the Georgian Socialist Soviet Republic switched to the Transcaucasian ruble in early 1923, the available definitive stamps – issued in 1922 – became almost completely useless. With postal rates in the hundreds of thousands of ZSFSR rubles, the five stamps with face values from 500 to 5000 rubles were clearly inadequate, and handstamped surcharges brought the stamps into closer – though far from perfect – alignment with postal rates.

Philatelists were quick to realize that multiple handstamps for each value had been used during this operation. How many handstamp types you recognize depends on your desired level of obsessiveness. The simplest subdivision is simply to talk of “large” and “small” types for each value, with “medium” thrown in if you want to get pedantic, but the truth appears to be more complicated than that. Various authors through the years identified different numbers of handstamp types:

Reference	10.000 on 1.000	15.000 on 2.000	20.000 on 500	40.000 on 5.000	80.000 on 3.000
Golovkin (1927)	3	5	5	3	4
Filatelia (19XX)	5	5	5	5	6
Ceresa (1993)	6	6	6	6	6

Peter Ashford had organized his very fine collection of these handstamped definitives by the Kohl handbook (which copied the information in Golovkin(1927)), but Peter had already spotted that there were more types than Kohl had published, as we would expect. Even so, it was quite a surprise to see a page in his album devoted to a subtype that appears to have escaped identification or recording by all other authors.

The handstamp type in question – an 80.000 handstamp -  is different from the 6 types identified by Ceresa and the Filatelia Handbook and is therefore a new seventh type. It is easily identified by the large gap between the last zero and the word “man”.  Ashford’s collection contained 12 examples: 8 loose stamps and a strip of 4. All are postmarked Tiflis Vokzal. It is hard to escape concluding this is a handstamp type that was only used at Tiflis Vokzal. Once I knew what to look for, I found a 13^th example in my collection, also postmarked Tiflis Vokzal.

The new "Type 7" for the 80.000 handstamp

All this is reminiscent of a rare 10.000 handstamp identified by Ceresa (his Type 4): only known from two loose stamps, both postmarked Tiflis Vokzal. That type is also distinguished by the large distance between the last zero and the “man”, so perhaps we are dealing with a Tiflis Vokzal “house style” here.

The next step was to look for examples on cover, and Robert Taylor came through with two items: a registered letter from May 1923 and a postcard from June 1923. The postcard also bore an 80.000 stamp with one of the previously identified handstamp types, so clearly this new seventh type was not the only type for this particular value to be used at Tiflis Vokzal.

Registered letter from Tiflis Vokzal to Germany, May 1923. 4 copies of the Type 7 handstamp

The registered letter has four 80.000 stamps as part of a 350.000R franking, and the examples of this new type 7 handstamp are the crispest of all known examples – early usage date? Of the two 15.000 stamps that complete the franking, one is one of the known types but the other is another unrecorded type, also identifiable by the large distance between the last zero and “man”.

The new "Type 7" of the 15.000 handstamp

So for 3 out of 5 values in this set of stamps, we have a rare handstamp type, which is only known used at Tiflis Vokzal, and only known so far in violet. Remaining questions are:

•  Were there also Tiflis Vokzal types for the other two values in the set, the 20.000 and 40.000 stamps?
• Does anyone have a mint copy of any of these stamps?
•  Does anyone have an example handstamped in black or any color other than violet?
•  Does anyone have examples of these types used in places other than Tiflis Vokzal?