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...

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.

A back to die for

This cover is quite nice on first glance, though nothing special:

Registered, double-weight letter from Blagoveshchensk to Zuerich

It's a perfect respectable 50k rate letter from Blagoveshchensk. These frankings puzzled me for a bit since you normally see 40k frankings (20k postage plus 20k registration), but it appears that 20k was postage for the first 15 grams, with each additional 15 grams costing 10k, so 20k+10k postage and 20k registration. August 1922, so sent during the last few months of the FER, although the Chita stamps remained in use until February 1924.

But the back makes this cover a rarity:

Charity labels! In Gold kopeks! From the Ts.D.V.K.! If only I knew what that meant! (I'm betting Central Far Eastern Committee)

Only cover from the FER with charity labels I've seen.

In praise of cash (frankings)

I have a weak spot for cash frankings. I think it started when I first spotted a 1919 registered cover from Perm' with its 1.20R rate (50k postage and 70k registration) paid in cash, as witnessed by a nice cachet on the reverse of the cover.
As I started seeing more and more of them (though never many - I estimate I've seen about a dozen examples from Siberia and the Far East during the last 25 years) a few trends were obvious. Disregarding the howlingly rare cash frankings of the Far Eastern Republic, the cash frankings were all from areas under Kolchak's control, and they were all on registered letters to inland destinations. Since such mail isn't exactly common it's no wonder we see so few examples, and the fact that stampless mail seems to have a lower survival rate to begin with doesn't help. And yes, unregistered mail to domestic destinations was franked with stamps!
You can form a small and frustratingly static collection of the cachets involved. I've seen examples from about 5 cities and while a few are obviously from the same mold, they're mostly very individualistic creations.

The odd man out is this cover:

Registered letter from Tugulymskoe, Tobol'sk to Kamyshlov, March 1919

Yes, the back has the "smoking gun":

A few differences makes this one example unusual. It's a wholly manuscript notation, which is unique in my experience for White Siberia, but hardly surprising for such a small place. Second, it's fairly early, predating Kolchak's first set of rates, though not the earliest I've ever seen (I've seen a late 1918 example from Vladivostok). Finally, what about that 7k stamp inprint on the stationery envelope? Was it counted? Ignored? Was this envelope sold by the post office with ms. notation and all?

Wonderful stuff!

Kolchak's Express

Many years ago, Prof. Howard Weinert made me a fine gift of this cover:

Chita to Omsk, September 1919, sent on to Irkutsk. Cash franking of 2.20R on reverse

It's battered, but interesting for a few reasons. It's addressed to Nikandr Mirolyubov, who investigated the murder of the royal family in Ekaterinburg. It's franked in cash (aside: am I the only person on the planet who thinks cash frankings are more interesting than franked letters?). And it has the word "EHKSPRESS" written on the front. After some time I became aware that the cash franking of 2.20R probably included 70k registration and 3x50k postage, so that this would be a triple-weight letter seemed a plausible explanation of the rate. The "Ehkspress"? I assumed it was a plea for this letter to be carried on an Express train, perhaps, nothing more since Express Mail didn't exist in 1919, right?

Flash forward a bunch of years. Masha Chlenova is kind enough to make me lots of copies of Kolchak's postal circulars. For the first time I had primary source material on postal rates in White Siberia! Two sets of rates, as surmised, one starting in late April 1919, the second in October 1919. The rates were for domestic mail only, the rates for mail abroad still have a few riddles left.
But the surprise was with the October 1919 rates. These included rates for Express Mail, at triple the normal postage. Oho!

The April rates did not mention Express mail, but it could have been introduced sometime between the two circulars of which I had copies (April and October) at triple the domestic letter rate. Could it be that ratty letter was actually Russia's oldest Express letter?

And so we come to THIS letter:

Omsk to USA, late October 1919. 6.50R franked in cash on front

It's marked Ehkspress as well! And it's franked 6.50R which would have been the right rate for an Express letter to a domestic destination. However, this one went to the USA, and the reverse had a further surprise:

4R in Arms types, which would have been the correct rate for a registered letter abroad... Is it possible the letter was assessed a kind of schizophrenic rate because the foreign letter rates made no provisions for Express mail? In other words, the Express service only applied to the domestic leg and only paid for that domestic leg. It took a further 4R to get it from Vladivostok to the USA, perhaps?

Two 1919 Russian Express letters...Who could guess?