Having Trouble Identifying This Stamp - Appears To Be Imperforate

Hope I am not asking too many questions. I sit each evening going over stamps and always seem to have questions.

I believe this must be an imperforate stamp.

Tonight, I ran across this stamp:

I can't even figure out the country, I did an image search, no luck - used a stamp finder at a findyourstampsvalue.com, no luck. I will continue to look...

Thank you, Julie

The letters at the top right transliterate as RSFSR, which was the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic (which became the USSR in 1923).
The stamp is one of a set of 4, issued imperf for famine relief in 1922. The denomination was 20 roubles + 5 roubles, not shown on the stamps. You should find them under Russia or USSR, depending on which catalogue you consult.

This has come a few times before. See

https://goscf.com/t/7527&SearchTerms=famine+relief

Listed in Scott catalogue. Stamp is inscribed "For the Hungry." Semi- postal stamp for postage and charity catalogue #B34 the low value from a set of four. Counterfeits exist.

R.S.F.S.R. (Russia) 1922 Famine relief issue. was a set of 4.
MI #193
Y&T #186
SG #285
SC #B34

Some scans from the 1922 set.

Thank you for the identification, I appreciate it very much. I just looked it up in the Scott catalong, and as RedwoodRandy notes they state that counterfeits exist - make me think this might be one of those counterfeits after discovering those fake Sarjah stamps. I am not sure how I would ever find out if this one is counterfeit. I like the stamp though, it is a nice stamp.

Julie

I am suspicious of the stamps I am getting out of these packets so I have been researching fakes, counterfeits and forgeries. I found the wikipedia entry on this very interesting. Here is the link if you are interested:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phila...nd_forgeries

This is bit in the wikipedia article was interesting to me as a new stamp enthusiast and makes me wonder about the stamps I have from these packets:




and another from the same entry:




For further reading on the famine stamp and how to tell a counterfeit I read Scotts Monthly Stamp Journal dated March 1922, here is the link if you are interested:

https://books.google.com/books?id=k...tamp&f=false

I just love the stamps and learning new things. This was very interesting, what I am taking away from this is that I should be suspicious of every stamp.

For this Russian Rostov famine stamp, I don't think there is any way for me to tell if this is a counterfeit or not. Looked it up in the Scott catalog again, there are no dimensions or anything else listed in the 2009 catalog for this stamp. So, with this I will move on to other stamps - if anyone else has some method of detecting whether these Rostov famine stamps are forgeries, please let me know.

Rod222, do you know if you very lovely set is real or not? If you know they are real, how did you find that out? I am curious, and would be so grateful to hear just a little more about this if you would be so kind as to tell me.

Thanks, Julie

No idea, sorry Julie.
Like other stamp collectors, I have thousands of Russian stamps, lying unsorted in a stock book, "for when I retire"
I doubt that is going to happen, there is a time when all collectors come to the realisation, there is not enough time, in one's lifetime to address all stamps.
They lie there "just in case"

Thank you for your reply Rod, I am going to stop worrying about it and chalk it up to a great lesson in a bit of Russian history and move on now.

Thank you for your help, Julie

You will find answers to your forgery question and many others here. No other site goes into this much depth.

http://stampworld.ca/Website/europe...fsr-1918-23/

Thank you nl1947, I tried several times to use the link but am having trouble, am using Hughesnet satellite to connect to internet, sometimes it has trouble - looks like that may be going on now, will come back later and try to access stampworld. From what I saw it looks like a great link, thank you so much :) Julie

StampWorld harvests email addresses, but I think you can use a few times before they require you to send them your address.
Don

Thanks for letting me know Don, not for me then - don't like giving up my email address, I flinch every time I have to - I think we have done this once before, I will try to remember this time, sorry I had forgotten you told me that once before. Julie