Crete Russian Sphere Rethymnon

That's embarrassing.

Here is a better scan, to show the leaf detail:

rustyc,

Yes, I believe so.

The stamp is genuine although it appears to have some surface damage.

The white leaf test works well for the common trident design forgeries but there are some others that are more dangerous.

You should be particularly careful if you are buying the black stamps given their catalogue values.

I thought you had them all...

Thanks, guys, for looking. I was afraid my control mark looked a little funny.

Haha

The control mark looks fine. They are often slightly blurred and they are always centred to the left within the circle.

Sometimes you get a very different control, a much larger Rethymnon municipal mark, typically used on documents and often cancelling revenue stamps.

There's an example on the 2 metallik rose stamp on ClassicalStamps' link above.

I suspect these were created after the fact as the large control and the Rethymnon cds are in the same ink.

Quite a number of stamps without controls are known and often these have been "improved" with fake controls (usually centred) and fake postmarks.

I am always amazed that Russia printed so many different colors. They printed 7 colors for the non-star issues and 4 colors for the star issues. I am assuming most of them were sold as "remainders" for the philatelic market.

Here are the four colors in the star variety. (I will show a couple non-star tridents a little later.)

Also, does anyone have information about the denomination? According to the catalogues, 4 metallik = 1 grosion. I have never heard of these units of currency before, and in my search over the years, I have only found merest hints that it is related to the weight of silver. However I don't know for sure.

Would love to find out if anyone has definitive information on the currency.

I've found this currency question very confusing as well.

In his "Crete" handbook, Rienk Feenstra stated that the postal rates for the Russian Post in Crete were 2 metallik (1 piastre) for a letter up to 25g, 3 metallik (1 piastre 20 paras) and 1 metallik (20 paras) and that these were taken from an official notice.

I've accepted this until recently and have stated the metallik/grosion/piastre conversions in Wikipedia and other postings.

However, I know think this is wrong and the conversion is simply: 4 metallik = 1 grosion = 1 piastre = 40 paras.

I'm sure the rates are correct but I've not seen the original notice so I suspect that Feenstra added the conversion into piastres himself.

Basically, everyone seems to agree that 4 metallika = 1 grosion but in every other context that I've seen for this period of time grosion, kurush and piastre were different words for the same amount with grosion/grosi being Greek, kurush being Turkish and piastra/piastre being Italian/French.

An article I've seen in Post-Rider (the Rossica magazine) quotes the same rates from the same official notice but states them simply in metallika and notes that, "the metallikon was a small Turkish coin with a value of 10 paras, i.e. ¼ of a grosion, which was the Greek word for the Turkish piastre or kurush."

You take little bits from here and there, and eventually you have something...

Thanks Nigel

That is very helpful. Using this information, I did a little more searching using your information regarding the thought of it relating to a 10 para coin and found a couple of great pieces of information.

In the reference book A Dictionary of Numismatic Names: Their Official and Popular Designations, the definition of a Metallik or Metallique is: "The name given to a variety of low grade silver coins, which constituted a large part of the ordinary circulation, chiefly in Asia Minor. The largest of these Metalliks when composed of fifty-two parts of silver and forty eight of copper, is known as the Altilik, and has a value of five Piastres. When, however, the same sized coin contains only twenty-five per cent of silver, it is known as the Beshlik, and is only equal to two and one half Piastres. As the smaller Metalliks are in the same ratio, the greatest confusion formerly prevailed, which, however, was remedied in 1911 upon the introduction of the nickel coinage."

In a book by William Hall called Reconstruction of Turkey he mentions this tidbit:

"... the ten para coin in Smyrna was generally called a metallik. On account of the predominance of the Greek population, Greek names were used for coins ..."

You can see where I got some of my original thinking when I thought that it had a relationship to weights of silver.

Thank you again Nigel for solving this puzzle.

Michael

A pair, this time the 1g green, with stars:



Catalogue values are all over the board across the colors and denominations. These are not one of the higher-cv items, but they look nice together.

This thread has got me re-visiting the depths of my collection. I bought these as forgeries (fakes, whatever) years ago, but they seem to be of the "clever" or "dangerous" type. The paper is thinner than other legitimate issues, and the whole stamps feels wrong in the fingers. The controls are pretty good, but not quite the same (I assume correct) shade of violet as my others and the postmarks seem to compare well to legitimate ones, at least to my inexperienced eye. The detail on the stamps is nice.

Hi Tim,

These are genuine and two of them show clear type characteristics:

The 2 metallik is type 2.

The 1 grosion is type 4.

I assume the 1 metalik is type 3.

The colour of the control overprints is fine.

These are good stamps as long as they are not thinned.

Nice stamps!