Collecting Russian postmarks: choose wisely!

I never tire of telling this story because it demonstrates how absolutely clueless I was when I first became interested in Russian philately: I walked into a philatelic bookstore in London and asked for a book on "all Russian postmarks"...

Of course no such book existed or will ever exist, as there are just too many Russian postmarks to collect. So if you are interested in Russian postmarks, which is a natural interest to develop after collecting stamps, what should you do?
Well, first you should decide if you want to break new ground or whether you want to collect something that has already been explored previously. If the latter, then there are not that many areas to choose from, as the vast majority of Russian postmarks is still waiting for a good handbook. There's good literature on St.Petersburg, Transcaucasia, Siberia and the Baltic region, while Moscow has an incomplete book that covers some useful ground. Beyond that, literature is either spotty, outdated or absent. If you're not thinking about geographical areas but about types of postmarks, then railway postmarks and ship postmarks have great books devoted to them and not much else does...

Next you should think very carefully about the availability of material and how much you're willing to spend. For example, the postmarks of Russian offices in China can be collected, but be prepared to pay very steep prices for everything except the most common postmarks. Just trawling through eBay listings for a few weeks should give you a very good idea of what kind of material is available and how much you may have to spend. I will tell you right now that most material you will see is either from the Baltic region, Poland, St.Petersburg, Moscow or some areas in Ukraine. Other regions you will see infrequently, so if you're unwilling to go weeks without finding anything new for your collection, be prepared!
For example, say you've become interested in Pskov province and are thinking about collecting the postmarks of the Imperial period. Check out eBay and you will find a few postmarks from the city of Pskov itself and not much else...So don't make your chosen area too small.

Siberia is another great example. There's a wonderful handbook about its postmarks available and it's HUGE, right? But when you start checking out eBay you will quickly find a few Vladivostok postmarks and everything after that becomes hard work...Plus, Siberia probably had thousands of postmarks, so it's a lot to collect.

With all that in mind, here are a few suggestions for feasible collecting subjects:

1. Kiev or Odessa. Big cities that generated a lot of mail (Odessa more than Kiev) and they had a lot of postmarks. I'm not aware of any literature on either city in English, but I believe there's a book about Odessa in Russian which should help.
2. The Caucasian resort towns: Kislovodsk, Zheleznovodsk, Mineralnie Vody and the like. They had tourists visiting them and that generated mail.
3. The big southern provinces of Terek, Kuban and Don.
4. Town Post postmarks. These are easy to find from the big cities and very scarce for anywhere else, which makes them fun.

Good luck!

Azerbaijan's 1992 mystery issue

Few stamp issues of Azerbaijan confuse me as much as the Other Overprints. Let me explain: one of the first stamp issues of independent Azerbaijan was a set of 5 surcharges on an unissued 15k stamp. The offending text of the stamp was obliterated by bars consisting of horizontal lines. However, the same set of surcharges was also available in the stamp trade with solid bars.
Azermarka, the Azeri philatelic bureau, isn't always helpful when it comes to these early issues, and Azermarka publications just ignore these "solid bar" surcharges altogether. That seems unwise, as they were accepted for postage in Azerbaijan itself, as we know thanks to Trevor Pateman:

Two stamps of the "solid bar" issue on cover from Baku to England. Sure, this is a dealer-inspired cover, and I believe Trevor even supplied the stamps and the envelope but a.) the stamps were accepted and b.) the letter went through the mail and reached its destination. QED. Note that this cover in no way proves that these stamps were available in Azerbaijan itself.

Trevor performed similar useful duties when it comes to those odd early imperforates:

Same caveats but same conclusion.

Coming back to the "solid bars" issue, I've found it to be an order of magnitude more scarce than the regular issue. The regular issue I have in sheets, for the solid bar issue, blocks of 4 is the best I can do and I'm quite pleased with those. I wonder if after so long, we'll ever find out the story behind these stamps...

Fake covers of the Nikolaevsk-on-Amur issue

In the past I have made no secret of my disdain for the so-called Nikolaevsk-on-Amur issue. Briefly, I believe the issue to have been concocted by stamp speculators, and never to have seen use in NNA itself. "Remainders" of the issue (i.e. all of it) were sold in Vladivostok as late as 1922.
Every now and then a faked cover of this issue appears at auction. There was a prize specimen in the 1983 Rand auction, and I've seen one at Delcampe as well. Recently I was able to add one to my reference collection for about $50, which seems about right for a curio like this. Here it is:

You can write a whole list of things that are wrong with this cover from the front alone. Let's see:

• Wrong rate
• Nikolaevsk postmark in Soviet spelling (a backdated Soviet postmark perhaps?)
• Vladivostok "g" used as arrival marking on an unregistered letter
• Address written in Soviet spelling as well
• And of course, the whole cover is far too clean for this period.

It gets even better when you see the reverse:

A ship postmark from a very scarce line used as a transit marking? Except this particular postmark has never been seen on anything except these fake covers...

I'll add that the Vladivostok "g" postmark was used extensively for backdated covers. Judging from its state of wear, these strikes are from 1923 or later: in 1921 this postmark looked a lot cleaner.

As desperately poor as these faked covers are (and there are at least 3 of them in existence), they're masterpieces compared to this nonsense:

which was offered by Gaertner a few years ago. How wrong can you get?

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