Recent High Value Russia Acquisitions

Picture 1 - a collection of (I think all are) SC #1's. One of them comes with a certification of auth from APS. Variety of postal and penmark cancels

Picture 2 - SC #11 - the pair in the bottom right come with a certificate as well. Hard to find a used pair of these

Picture 3 - C68, MNH, OG

Picture 4 - rare postmark from Kyel'tsy, Poland, on a cover


I have a lot of this material I purchased, for probably too much money, off a long-time Rossica member only because I wanted the Canadian and British content. Tempted to put most of this up for auction but it's hard to part with such a well put together specializied collection

Very attractive groups and some beautiful pieces.

A great pair and some nice cancels.

Can I ask what you would want for the russian sort? I have a pretty intense russian thing going on but have yet to properly catalog and ID. The confusion comes with occupations but for now I'm focusing on basics and when other filter through I'll add but not part of my hunting process as yet

Great to see those, stamps101!

I do not know what other Russia/Soviet Union material you have in that collection, but, if you decide not to keep, I would suggest selling them individually or in sets, i.e not as a bulk lot through an auction house. For example, in your first page, individual copies of #1,2,3,11 or even the later 30k (Scott 10 and 18) would fetch you good prices that would be unimaginable in a bulk lot sale.

Nice showing of #1's! I am somewhat troubled by the appearance of the 4th from the left, particularly its color and its relatively small margins (trimmed copies of later stamps are, unfortunately, frequent). I would assume that a Rossica member would have been careful in this, but maybe you can post a larger scan.

A final comment for now: was there a special note accompanying the cover from Busk (Keletskaya Guberniya, after 1920 in Poland, later in the USSR, today in Western Ukraine) that identified it as rare? I am asking because it is a typical Imperial-period cancellation and its origin from Russian Poland should not make it automatically rare. But maybe there is something else that I do not see....

Nitro, I will likely be selling parts of it at some point and can let you know.

Vasia - ya I honestly have no idea on either concern. There is a stockbook of ones labelled as forgeries and another stockbook of errors.

The postmarks I know absolutely nothing about. There are abot 10 albums of covers - some labelled with bits of info such as this one. There is also a book of one stamp from various post offices. Ill try to post more as the weeks come by.

As for occupations, there are a few books of that as well, with a particular focus on different military generals who overprinted stamps

10 albums of covers - that is impressive! What period do they span? Only pre-1917 or Soviet period as well?

It would definitely be interesting to see some!

There is a few that look post 1920s. Most of them are pre 1900s. Ill get some pics of some

Yes they are great looking stamps

Thanks for that info - I have such little knowledge in that area so this is a huge learning curve. I spent quite a bit of time going through things just to get a rough idea what all is included for covers. I am starting another thread in a few minutes just for Russia covers and will be including a link to about 25-30 different various pictures of items.

Here is a link to the new thread:
https://goscf.com/t/21849

I used photobucket so as not to clog up the page with pics like I did above (oops). Thanks again to everyone for their input!

The direct link for the pics is: http://s1141.photobucket.com/albums...ia%20Covers/

BAYERN1kreuzer and stamps101,

I think that the cover is correctly identified as originating from Busk, in Russian Poland. Notice that in the lower semi-circle of the postmark reference is made to the district (guberniya) to which the locality belonged: Keletskaya (Keltsi - Kielze in Polish).

Busk has a regular post-office in the 1916 postal list of the Russian Empire. In 1887 it appears to have the status of a postal station (notice the designation P.C after the town name in the postmark).

There is no other locality with the same name and a postal facility in that list (except for the adjacent to Busk spa resort with the same name: Busk Kurort, which is the one that had the Temporary post-office).

Busk became part of independent Poland in 1919.

There is another Busk in the Ukraine in Lvov oblast, which also became part of Poland in the inter-war period, but I do not think that it belonged to Keletskaya guberniya during the russian empire period.

So the mystery about the presumed scarcity of the cover remains: maybe the previous owner throught that it originated from the temporary post-office in Busk, or maybe in 1887 there existed only a temporary office in Busk.

Found one aditional piece of information about the Busk temporary post office. It presumably operated (at least in the 1912-1916 period) as a temporary TELEGRAPH office and had a clear designation in its postmark of the resort area: BUSK KURORT:



The postcard is from the excellent exhibit of David Skipton in the Samovar of Rossica Society of Russian Philately:

http://www.rossica.org/v_gallery/mu...mayflies.php

So is the 1887 postmark of Busk an early precursor of this tempo postmark or is it the postmark of a regular post office in Busk? As I mentioned before, in the 1916 Postal List there are 2 postal establishments under the general name Busk: a regular post office and a temporary one, Busk Kurort.

Speaking of Skipton, included in the collection is a huge binder of post stations in reverse sort that he compiled in the 80s. If only I could read it...!

These threads on stamps101's Russia bonanza should be a wake up call to us all.

When we are thinking about our collections, it is a little bit helpful to make a note on the more-interesting items, such as "Rare," but how much more helpful would it be for the future caretakers of your collection if you included even just a few more words? "Rare - temp resort PO" or "Rare obliterator <5 known" would do so much to preserve the assembled knowledge.

The thread on Tasmanian perfins reminds me of my purchase of a bunch of them, out of a larger collection...I probably purchased half, or less, because I was choosing for nice cancels. I posted several of them here, and plateflaw responded with the known perfin configurations. I could've kicked myself...did the dealer and I unwittingly break up an intentional collection of the perfin varieties, because we didn't know that that is what it was?

We don't have to go all the way to rod's write-ups (but how great would it be if more people did?), but many of us could do much better. I, for one, am going to try to start now.

My 2d. Now back to your regularly-scheduled programming.

stamps101, the Reverse Sort is an important attempt by Skipton to provide the Russian-area collector with a tool to decipher a postmark on a loose stamp if only portions at the end of the placename are visible. The "Forward Sort" direction can be solved through the use of the various Postal Lists of the Imperial Post that are available.

I think that for both one does not need a perfect or even good use of the Russian language. After some time one familiarizes oneself with the Cyrillic alphabet and can read postmarks.

(By the way I have started commenting on your Russia covers in the other thread on SCF)

I completely agree with Cjd about write-ups of our collections. I try to do that with my postal history collection. It is really a pity in the case of stamps101's collection, even more so when the person who initially owned it was a member of a specialist society and he had contributed information about temporary post offices in the Rossica Journal.