Latvia -- Unissued Western Russian Army Stamps

Subject line changed for improved future Search.

We all have those mystery stamps awaiting identification. This one was filed in Russia for a while



Then yesterday, in a kiloware box I am working on, another similar one popped up



Still no ID but by random serendipity, I had another stamp from Latvia and there at the end of the (Scott) Latvia listing is the note that
"Eight typographed stamps of this design were prepared in 1919, but never placed in use. They exist both perforated and imperforate. Reprints and counterfeits exist"
Note the differences in printing on these two examples - frame around denomination for example.
All part of the terrible convulsions at the end of WWI in that part of the world.. So I have 2 of the 8 so far and look to find more. Strangely, the Latvian sites - very few of them - seem to ignore these (because they were unissued presumably).

On the contrary, the country and that particular set is well-covered on SCF. There are at least half a dozen comprehensive threads on that set alone, not to mention several dozen comprehensive threads on Latvian stamps.

Here is just one of them. You can do a simple search on "Latvia" and find many more.

https://goscf.com/t/27030

I stand corrected; thank you khj.
I did a search on "Latvia" and what I missed was that there were 8 pages of threads. I didn't spot the the page "pull-down".

No problem. I agree, it is pretty easy to miss the multiple page pull-down, and the most of the items on that first page are not useful search hits.

The search on SCF is not very advanced. So we rely a lot on the thread title reflecting the actual content of the thread.

You might consider going to your first post in the thread, where you can actually edit the thread title to something practical for users of the search function. For example: Latvia -- unissued Western Russian Army stamps.

This brings up an interesting general topic. I had no idea that first stamp could be found under Latvia; it was only simple chance that I spotted the catalogue entry.
I'm still new at this hobby but see a need for an image recognition database.
If such an application existed, we could offer our mystery stamps for comparison to that database. If it could give only the country, we could use regular web resources to get the stamp details.
Do the SCF moderators consider such a possibility? (Google Images tries to do this but I have had little success so far with stamp images. Even though Google claim they have over 2 billion images to date!) All you need is a stamp image database of about 500,000 type number images!

Hi Conker,

If you have access to a Scott catalogue you'll find some useful stamp identification pages at the back of the book. I've just had a look again and I see it has a picture of one of these eagle stamps with a note saying that they're mentioned in a footnote under Latvia.

Ironically the stamps are inscribed "Russian Post" at the top, and there is no indication for use in Latvia, though it is widely understood that they were produced for use there by the Russian Western Army.

Welcome to the hobby! Please clear your schedule for the next several decades -- trust me, it will save you a lot of excuse-making and rescheduling!

Regarding the image database, it can still be useful to search the internet by image. Just use Google image search and drag your image into the Google image search textbox (or approximate area). Doesn't always work well, but it does work well for your particular stamp.

Or, you can always post the image here and pick the collective brain of SCF members.

...and thanks for changing your thread title!

k

Welcome to SCF Conker!

The Worldwide Stamp Identifier at http://www.iswsc.org/iswsc_identpr.html can sometimes get you into the ballpark (but finding home plate can still be a problem).

Steve

Well done Khj!
you get the SCF yellow star medal,
for assisting the SCF searchable database
with advising excellent thread Titles.

I was shooting for the award for longest thread title, but I will gladly accept the yellow star medal.

k