Some Interesting Latvian Postmarks

I collect Lithuanian stamps, not Latvian... but while collecting Lithuanian stamps, I also acquire lots of Latvian stamps as well, partly because lot of people get confused between Lithuania and Latvia, even professional dealers often list their items with the wrong country name. I think Latvian stamp collectors know what I'm talking about as well.
I usually get rid of most of those Latvian stamps but however, I have kept the ones that have interesting postmarks on it and I thought I would share with you guys.




This is a postmark of Riga on a Russian stamp dated 20 May 1919. It is a postmark during the Latvian Socialist Soviet Republic, not to be confused with Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic that existed from 1941 to 1991 as part of the Soviet Union. The Latvian Socialist Soviet Republic was a short lived puppet republic created on 17 December 1918 and ceased to exist on 13 January 1920. Riga was the capital of the state until 22 May 1919 (2 days after the postmark!) when the Germans captured the city and forced to evacuate the capital to Daugavpils. They did not issued their own postage stamp and used the stamp of the Russian Soviet Republic instead.



This is a hand written provisional cancel of Matisi, a village in the northern part of Latvia, dated 14 December 1919. According to the Latvian philately site of Juris Moris (an extremely well done site!), Matisi is listed among the town that used hand written cancel of this type. I'm not so aware of the Latvian case but those hand written provisional cancels in Lithuania during the independence period are pretty rare so I would assume that it also applies to Latvia as well. Let me know if I'm wrong.



The first generation of definitive postmark of Skrunda dated on 1920. Skrunda is a small town but pretty famous in this region because of the secret Soviet town not shown on the map known under the name "Skrunda 1" located nearby. The town of Skrunda itself is an old town mentioned already in 14th century by the its German name Schrunden.



Unfortunately the stamp is not in excellent condition but it has a nice clear postmark of "II Lauka Pasta Nodala" the 2nd Latvian Field post". On Juris Mors's site, it is called the II Field sub-Office. It served mainly the Latvian 2nd Livland Division and 3rd Latgale Division during the war. The post office ceased to be "mobile" on May 1920 and operated inside the post office of Vikala until 29 October 1920.



to be continued...

I like the manuscript provisional from Matisi. I have a lot of provisionals from Estonia around this time. Manuscript and straight line cancellers. If I remember, I'll post a page or two tomorrow. This was a very busy time in Baltic history.

Tim H
Some Estonian manuscript provisional? Wow, that's really awesome! I'm looking forward to your post then!




This is the first generation postmark of Dagda, a small town near the border with Belarus, dated 1921. I guess I like small towns and villages lol.






A postcard sent from Riga in 1904 during the imperial Russian rule. The Riga postmark of this type is not rare at all but I kept the card because of the nice picture on it.


to be continued...

Ultra rare Higgins & Gage #11 postcard from Mezciems, Latvija to Lithuania that I had the honor to have in my collection for a number of years. It now resides with a collector in Latvia. What makes it so rare is the purple boxed slogan "Mezciems gada par veselibu un atputu'(Mezciems provides for health and relaxation). There are only a handful known to exist in collections. Plus it should have never been applied to a piece of mail going outside of the country....the slogans were meant for local mail only. Then what also adds to the rarity is the straightline manuscript cancel 'Mezciema p.n. 1939.22.VIII'. The normal CDS was out for repairs during that date. The text on the reverse is in Yiddish.

John Freibergs,
Amazing stuff you've got here! These provisional are so much fun to collect but also could be a nightmare due to rarity and price...

I was lucky enough to pick that up from a dealer at Chicagopex some 25-30 years ago for $10. I wasn't sure what it was at the time since that slogan didn't show on the list I had. I knew that you didn't see those types of cancels very often either. I always enjoyed the serendipity of finding something in a dealer's stock where you least expected it.

A pretty block of 6 of Sc. 2 possibly a philatelic creation.

John Freibergs,
I have seen this "Riga" overprints before. What are these exactly? Is it listed somewhere?




Postmark of a small village Berzpils during the 1941 Soviet occupation.






Ostland used stamps and covers are not so rare but a TPO cancel is not so common. This one is Riga - Dunaburg (today Daugavpils).

Harry v. Hofmann has a series of books "Lettland Handbuch Philatelie und Postgeschichte". There were 2 on Die Briefmarken and then one Die Stempel. The one on cancels has about 85 pages discussing all of the provisional cancels. Along with 228 more pages about the cancels after that and pre-WW 2. The only catch is that they are in German so you wind up having to translate. He also has a book "Baltische Postorte 1958-1916" which helps figure post offices since it covers Estonia, Lithuania, along with Latvia and does it in multiple languages of the time.

Here are 2 adjacent pages from "Die Stempel" on Riga.

Correction to one title above....Baltische Postorte 1858-1916. An excellent reference if you are trying to figure out what the Cyrillic postmark you have translates to what town name in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.

The block of six map stamps with the combination of a Riga CDS cancellation and two straight-line Riga cancellations is from a CTO sheet.

Thank you for interesting topic Prahanoaki
I'm from Estonia and very familiar with this matter. Many many collectors mess up Lithuanian/Latvian listings indeed. In some cases it can be really tricky to be exact however. If we get into occupation issues etc.


I have few of those in my personal collection aswell. Even though I focus mainly on Estonian MNH 1918-1941 issues.

It is actually good idea to keep latvian examples which are less common! I know quite some collectors in US for instance love collecting WII latvians. I like Matisi cancel on first example very much aswell.

Regards

John Freibergs,
Thank you for posting such precious information on provisional postmarks! It's just awesome! I happened to have a Latvian stamp with an Imperial Russian perfin cancel and I was wondering for a long time why would they cancel this stamp with that... Now the mystery is solved, thanks to you! Now I see, it is a provisional!


Ragner,
Yes, I totally agree with you, it could get super tricky. I always check Latvian and Estonian listings on the auction because of it.

Estonian prewar MNH are also nice. Some are visually very attractive and I kept few sets as well.

Here's a sample page from "Baltische Postorte 1858-1916". It's helped me a lot with the older postcards and covers from Latvia pre-independence.

Prahanoaki, the date on your perfin cancel should give you a clue that something odd is going on, but John has (I assume) got the philatelic handbook which is as always, the ultimate authority on these things.

John, that's a super card! A collector's dream :-)