Info On Overprints On 1991 Soviet/Russia Issues?

My second id request of the weekend. Hope I'm not overdoing it ...


I know there were quite a few overprints done on the 1991 issues of the former Soviet Union that reflected the instability and often the emerging independence of new republics. Scott documents some of these, but here are two sets not mentioned.

Does anyone have any info about these?





If it's helpful, I purchased these directly from a major US-based new issue wholesaler in the 1991-92 timeframe, along with some of the others that were catalogued by Scott. (I wish I could find my purchase information from that time, but it's not surfacing.)

I've tried to do a little Googling, but couldn't find anything that talked about these particular overprints.

Does anyone here know anything about these?

As always, in advance, thanks very much!

-- Dave

The bottom two stamps show the common generic acronym for "St. Petersburg," Russia. This suggests they are [semi-postal] locals of some kind.

The top four stamps spell out "St. Petersburg" instead of using an abbreviation.

Doug: Thanks for that! That's a lot more than I knew before! I really appreciate it.

Starting in late 1991, large amounts of former Soviet Union low denominational definitives became available thus giving the opportunity for private organizations and forgers to print thousands of different bogus or Cinderella stamps.

Many of the forgeries were done with the wrong colors, ink and denominational values; complicating matters, many of there forgeries were sold by postal workers at the Post Office to the public.

Some of these bogus were done with a home computer and printer.

Hi Dave,

These six (and another two surcharges with "Len. obl") are official issues and are listed in SG "for use in St Petersburg".

The first four are SG SP6354-6357 (April 1992) priced at £5.00 each mint (in my 2008 SG Part 10) and the other two are SG SP6350-6351 (March 1992) priced at £1.50 each mint.

I just noticed that the top 4 stamps have surcharges 200 / 353 / 450 / 500.

Seems odd! Is "353" an error?

Thanks to Timm, Doug & Nigel!

Nigel: That's very encouraging that you found those first four listed! (And at not a bad catalog value, either.)

Knowing that both sets are associated with St Petersburg may be helpful in doing some additional Googling. I'll report back if I find anything.

I did notice that odd overprint value of "353". Nigel, were these specific overprint values referenced in SG?

Thanks again to all!

-- Dave

This may help.

http://www.linns.com/howto/refreshe...rcourse.aspx

Hi Dave,

Yes, these are the surcharge values listed in SG.

A long time ago, I thought an interesting (U.S.) topical would be to obtain one stamp of every possible denomination, postage or revenue, and present them in order.

That would include the fractionals, the decimals in the transportation coils, and the multitude of odd values in revenues, like the Wine Stamps, etc., etc., where oddities like the 40 4/5 cent stamp (#RE-190) are very inexpensive. And, every time you had a rate increase, you would add a bunch of new denominations in areas like bulk-rate stamps and express mail stamps. Never did it, but it sounded cool at the time. Part of the preparation is closely reading at least half the pages of the Scott Specialized, item by item; the collection would be used, of course, so that lets you search not just for a certain stamp denomination, but a copy with a terrific cancellation...

Regarding the odd "353" overprint:

from February 18th to July 6th, 1992 the international (surface) letter rate from the Russian Federation was 3R 60k. So the 3R 53k stamp could be used to supplement the 7k Soviet-era postal stationery envelopes to make up the correct rate.

Flyinlo: Thanks very much for posting that link to the Linn's article. I had actually skimmed it when I started my Googling quest, but find it more helpful now that I have learned a little more about the situation. Thanks for the refresher!

Nigel: Thanks for the clarification -- very much appreciated!

Vasia: And thank you very much for the explanation as to why those overprinted values are correct! I would never have guessed why "353" would be a legitimate value without your post. Thanks!

Doug: That is an interesting collecting idea. Did you ever even get started on it? -- I had thought about a tangentially-related topic: collecting stamps whose primary design is the denomination. Unfortunately, many of them are the early classics, so a bit beyond my budget, and I never did really actively develop it, although when I come upon a stamp that would qualify, I set it aside for a future time.

Back to the overprints: This seems like the type of subject where some enthusiast would have created a webpage (or site) dedicated to exhibiting the variations. I haven't tracked down such a site yet -- does anyone know of one? (Or can find one?)

Thanks again!

-- Dave