Russia Covers

As per my other topic on my latest purchase of a large Russian specialized collection, here is a link to a small portion of the covers. Any info at all on anything is greatly appreciated as I am just starting to learn about this material and I really am a novice in this area!

http://s1141.photobucket.com/albums...ia%20Covers/

Included are notes left by the original owner (a long-time Rossica member) who seemed to specialize in covers/postmarks. Some of the more interesting ones, imo, are the pre-postage stamp ones and the disinfected mail. Also the USA embassy in 1914 is quite cool.

*Edit - 1915, not 1914. Also, the images are high-res so you can expand them quite a bit.

Since we already talked (in your other recent thread) about Busk, Russian Poland and the temporary post office there, let me start with this category of postmarks in your collection.

Temporary post offices were postal establishments that operated for only part of the year or on specific occassions. They can be roughly divided into 3 categories:

1. Post offices that opened only for a specific event occuring only once, mostly exhibitions.
2. Post offices in localities which experienced an influx of people for a few months during the year (the annual Nizhnii Novgorod Fair, summer resorts, military camps, etc).
3. Establishments aboard ships that operated only during the summer months when ice did not prevent navigation.

All these postal establishments used unique cancellers which are highly collectable. Post offices in the second category sometimes (but not always) used cancellers that identified the temporary status of the office by the designation VR.(VREMMENOE=temporary)P.T.O.

One such temporary post office of the second category is ASSERN, a bathing area / resort in Liflyand province in present-day Latvia:



Assern was the westernmost bathing area on the Rigascher Strand, a stretch of beach west of Riga, on the coast along the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland. In the Rigascher Strand there were four bathing areas that at one time or another hosted temporary postal facilities: Assern, Majorhof, Dubbeln and Bilderlingshof:



Notice that in this case there is no mention of the temporary status of the post office in the postmark, although up to 1915 the Postal Lists / Guides designated it as a temporary office. Naturally, this postmark is found used only during the summer months.

A second temporary post office in the covers you show is that of Brest-Litovsk Lager (lager=camp) in Grodno province:



A military camp that had its own temporary postal facility at least in the 1912-1916 period.

Your postal card is addressed from Kiev to Brest-Litovsk Lager (arrival marking of the temporary post office of 3rd July 1913). The arrival postmark reads: Brest-Litovsk Lag. Grod. - here we have another case of a tempo without an indication of its status in the postmark.

Presumably (information about your card was published in Rossica Journal #108-9 back in 1986) this card is addressed to Nina Sveritso, wife of a staff captain assigned to the Vladikavkaz Infantry Regiment in Brest-Litovsk.

That is a very detailed history! Wow

Now to a third (indirect) case of a temporary post office: that of Staraya Russa, Novgorod province.

Staraya Russa, the third largest city in Novgorod, is well-known for its health spas / baths, located on the eastern edge of the town. During the summer months (starting sometime around May) when large numbers of people came to the baths, the town post office of Staraya Russa operated a temporary postal facility on the grounds of the health spas.

Mail to and from this temporary post office was marked with the following postmark, bearing in its inscription the status of the postal facility - VR.(BP in Cyrillic, see above for the meaning) GOR.P.O:



The collection of stamps101 includes the following fragment from a parcel card from 1920:



The card is cancelled at the regular (i.e not the temporary) Staraya Russa post office - note the difference from the postmark of the temporary office above. Therefore, the little note with the indication that this particular post office used to be a temporary one is most probably incorrect. In Staraya Russa there existed a fully functioning post office throughout the year, being supplemented by a temporary facility during the summer months.

As a side note, let me mention that the lack of paper supplies and the adversities of the civil war, still made necessary in 1920 the use of imperial Arms issues. These had by now been revaluated to rubles for the kopeck values (up to 20k). Thus, in the postal card above, the total franking is 44R (4x7R + 2x5k=2x5R + 3x2k=3x2R).

This is definitely a topic that would require in-depth study to piece together and properly label everything. Ultimately I am hoping to sell this material to make room and funds for purchases in my areas of interest. Any idea what my best avenue for doing this is, given my very minimal knowledge in this material? Are there certain dealers or auction sites that can facilitate this without charging me an extreme percent?

The first picture are Money Transfer Forms. First one looks like general one, and it is blank. Second, looks like private for some magazine.

I'm not a specialist in Russian stuff, I just can read it :)

I assume these are sort of money orders of some sort. Back in the days in Russia you can transfer money to someone through post office, like Western Union.

Love the postcards with kazaks on page 11

Looks like a very specialized collection. If you are looking to sell it, will be hard to find buyer that will fully appreciate it, I think.

Do you mind taking closeups of the two postcards with kozak. Maybe I can trade you something for those.

A fourth (direct this time) case of a temporary post office: that of Pargolovo, St Petersburg. It is this card of stamps101:



Pargolovo was a popular vacation area to the north of St Petersburg. When the wealthy residents of the city flocked to the area in the summer, the post office of St Petersburg would send a small contingent of postal workers to operate a postal facility in Pargolovo.

The office in Pargolovo operated as a temporary one till around 1887 and was then converted into a permanent one. Two different types of cancellers are known used by the temporary office (notice the slight differences in wording and the notation "BP" - I think your example belongs to the second type):





And here is a very nice card used from Pargolovo (from D. Skipton's exhibit):

stamps101,

I will have more observations about some of the covers you posted in the days to come, but let me digress a little on a comment you made yesterday (at 6:04 pm).

It would be my advice not to rush in selling your Russia collection until you are satisfied that you have a relatively firm grip on what you have (at least for the better material). That way your financial remuneration will be much better and the material would be much more appreciated by its eventual owners.

There are semi-specialized auctioneers in the area of Russian philately (Raritan, PAC AUCTION for postal history, etc), but the commission would take a considerable chunk out of the final price. Personally, I would try to sell the better items (for example, the temporary post office material) over the net, properly described and pictured (with scans, not photos).

To conclude our discussion about temporary post offices, let me bring up a final piece from your collection that is NOT a temporary post office, despite the appearances. It is the piece of a postal form cancelled in Krechevitskiya Kazarmy (barracks):



Krechevitsy is an urban-type settlement located about 15km north of Novgorod. From early in the 19th century various army formations were stationed there in permanent military settlements. Regular (not temporary) postal facilities existed for their needs.

Your piece was addressed in November 1919 to Astapov, Ryazan. At that point in time cavalry regiments of the Red Army were stationed in the Krechevitsy barracks. Notice the use of Imperial Arms stamps 2 years into the Bolshevik revolution - these 50k were used at their face value.

Summarizing: I would say that your 3 temporary post office pieces would fall into the category of scarce to rare. One can find a full list of the 113 known temporary post offices in David Skipton's fascinating article in Rossica Journal #100-101 here:

http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00020235/00049/30j

(Addendum to temporary post office cancels)

Yet another card of yours peripherally related to the "theme" of temporary post offices:



Posted on 11/6/1910 from Odessa (mechanical cancel) to Paris (arrival cancel of 27/6). The card is correctly franked at 4k. The sender attached to the card one of the colorful labels released at that time for publicizing the Odessa Exhibition of 1910.

The Odessa Exhibition was held from 15 May to 10 October 1910 as the "Factory-and-Works, Art and Agricultural Exhibition". A similar exhibition was also held the following year (1911). Both years a temporary post office operated on the Exhibition grounds, cancelling correspondence with a cancel bearing the inscription ODESSA VYSTAVKA (=exhibition):



Unfortunately, your card was not cancelled at that temporary post office.

Below is a poster of the exhibition, with the same design that is portrayed on the label of your card:

Thank you for the amazi g write-ups, vasia. I am starting to label things accordingly now!

I enjoy doing this, stamps101, and I will try to give as much information as I can. With the pre-stamp / stampless pieces of mail that you show, maybe a good place for asking questions would be the Samovar of the Rossica Society of Russian Philately (where, as I saw, you got registered). It is usually very slow , but in Rossica you can find some true experts of all fields of Russian philately.

Your disinfected folded letter sheet is very interesting, but, due to the resolution of the picture, I cannot make out some details:



It is correspondence between Odessa and London (or vice-versa, I cannot make out the exact sequence of dates on the postmarks) in 1845. Odessa being a major port of entry into the Russian Empire it was often troubled during the first half of the 19th century by epidemics of plague, cholera, etc. A precautionary measure taken was the disinfection of mail.

Disinfected mail was marked with an appropriate marking. Your cover bears at right a typical such marking of the Odessa border post office used in the period 1844-1846. It carries the inscription in three lines:
CLEANED IN ODES/SSA QUARANTINE/9 MAY 1845

See an example of this marking and of a different one in the pieces below: