Another pleasing Civil War item from the Crimea

I make no excuse for showing yet another Civil War item from the Crimea, as they are so fascinating and so scarce. This is an October 1919 postcard from Dzhankoi to Simferopol':

Slightly overfranked since the correct rate was 35k (and the 5k postcard was still valid for postage, as shown by some 1920 items), but utterly non-philatelic. Addressed to a Irma Ottovna Zeel (clearly a German, as borne out by the text of the reverse), but I'm stumped by one line in the address, just before the name of the addressee: "Neft Poosa" is my best guess...? Anyone? Help?

Edit: Pavel Pavlov points out that what I misread as "Neft Poosa" actually reads "kvart Grossa", short for "Gross' apartment". 

Those damn Town Post offices...

I have already spoken a few times of the unpleasant discoveries that await the unwary postmark collector, and Town Post (sub-)offices are among them. They're not listed in any postal list that I know of, and I suppose it would take painstaking sifting through the Post-Telegraph Journal to find hard information on their opening and closing, let alone existence.
Here are a few Crimean examples, to set the scene:

This is Sevastopol' Town Post sub-office, one of two postmarks I know from that place and definitely the oddest. I found it in Bristol while visiting Ian Baillie.

A nice registered cover from Simferopol' Town Post sub-office, serial letter "a", but the same serial letter was also used for a smaller postmark:

Incidentally, under that British registration label is a Russian label identical to the label on the other cover. 

What brought all this on? Well, eBay spat out this:

A nice old postmark of Odessa's second Town Post sub-office. First time I've seen one, although Odessa specialists may have done better.

But you see the problem here...Town Post postmarks are like landmines for postmark collectors: you don't know where they are and how many there are. But they're very nice to find!

The "Kiev-Odessa railway"? What?!

This post is mostly a call for help as I am truly baffled by a postmark. The conundrum in question is on this cover:

This is an 1872 letter from Kiev to Germany. The 10k stamp is canceled with a postmark reading KIEVSK.P.O./KIEVO-ODESSK.Zh.D. and I'm just not getting that. Let's start with the obvious: the postmark is recorded in a 2002 Kiryushkin & Robinson update, so at least I'm not the only one hallucinating. The part where I get puzzled is the concept of a Kiev-Odessa Railway in the first place. Any look at a railway map (like map S4 in K&R) will tell you such a line would be a bit of a beast. The TPO postmark of line 47-48 tells a bit of the story, being used on the line Zhmerinka-Volochisk and station number 1 being Zhmerinka also makes sense. From Kiev to Zhmerinka, then from Zhmerinka to Volochisk at the border and on to Germany (also note the rectangular German TPO mark on the front). So was the line from Kiev down to Zhmerinka (and on to Odessa in 1872) truly called the Kiev-Odessa Railway?

On one website I found the following schematic detailing the mergers of railways in Ukraine:

Note: no mention of a Kiev-Odessa railway... Help?

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?

© Ivo Steijn, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ivo Steijn with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

A complicated Crimean cover

I find the Civil War postal history of the Crimea fascinating. All three years (1918, 1919 and 1920) offer their own challenges to the collector, but it is 1920 that's probably the most challenging because material is so scarce. We know the final Wrangel administration raised the postal rates drastically, to 5R, with 5R for registration, and thanks to Pavel "Duck" Pavlov, we finally have complete information on these final White rates and know they were effective May 1st, 1920 to October 9th at the latest.
Which brings me to this cover, a registered letter sent from Evpatoriya on August 7, 1920 to Sevastopol' where it arrived on August 11. Franked at 10R (correct rate) and with impeccable (though sadly lightly struck) postmark of Evpatoriya and Sevastopol', it looks genuine, and has a censor marking on the back as well, that you typically see on Crimean covers of this period.

Of course, the franking raises eyebrows. One perforated and one unperforated stamp? Too good to be true? But I can't fault the cover...

It was Pavel Pavlov who put the pieces together. First, note that the cover is addressed to Aleksandr Nikolaevich Sredinsky, and the name Sredinsky should ring all kinds of bells. He was the evil genius behind the "Russian Refugee Post" nonsense as well as the final Crimean "issue", the 100R/1k surcharge that was prepared but never issued (but marketed vigorously by S.). I will not reveal his findings here, since they are so interesting they deserve a long article of their own, but these stamps were not distributed to Evpatoriya at all. The only person who could have access to them was Sredinsky. So it looks like this cover was sent by Sredinsky or one of his minions. Philatelically inspired then, but still legitimate.

I don't know of any other frankings like that, but feel free to surprise me!

© Ivo Steijn, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ivo Steijn with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.