Where To Start Looking For Early Russian And Soviet Stamps?

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Hi braintrust! I was hoping you can help me here, so about a decade ago I started collecting soviet stamps then stopped due to getting busy at work. I recently started looking into that collection again and realised that it was incredibly weak till about 1958, almost all medium rarity to rare stamps are missing which means it'll be a somewhat painful exercise (i collect mint only but I don't mind hinged or even without gum if it means it can save me some money!)

My question is, what would be the smart financial approach here? should I look for near complete collections until the late 50's? And if so where do I find those? I had a look on ebay and stamp auction network, the former has a couple of astronomically expensive sets and the latter has collections with very very concise descriptions and sometimes no photos whatsover.

Or should I go down the Delcampe / Hipstamps etc road and buy missing stamps one by one?

I tried to share scans of my Russian album stored on Google photos to give you an idea on what im missing but unfortunately this wasn't allowed ..

The first person to talk to here is ROGDCAM . He known early Russia .

There are two auction firms you should be looking at they are RARITAN STAMPS and OLDLOUIS AUCTIONS LLC

When any country like Russia is now, having both political and economical turmoil ,with millions of people looking for a exit. There is always a way to move or hide money . Stamps could play a role .

Do you want to own a Russia collection (that someone else assembled), or do you want to collect Russia?

If you wait for the right collection, you're almost certainly going to spend less than what you'd spend assembling it yourself. I know which way I'd rather go, but this is a personal choice.

https://www.russianstamps.com/

Floortrader and Redwoodrandy both referenced the key places to get those stamps and postal history, Loral (russianstamps.com), Raritan and Old Louis. I highly recommend them all.

The only note I would add is in regard to Old Louis. They shipped from Ukraine even though the auction is US based, and it could take a while to get the goods. That may have changed now though. They were talking about shipping from the US.

I would also add Cherrystone Auctions to the list. The owner Paul is a world-class expert on Russian material and his certificates are legit.

They all stand behind their material.

I DO NOT recommend the larger ebay dealers of Russia. One offers certificates that frankly are worthless. I strongly suspect shill bidding and other games with at least one seller and a lot of MNH items I purchased were found to be regummed when I sold my collection through Raritan. Stick to the non-Ebay venues and you should be very satisfied.

https://www.raritanstamps.com/

I've had the best success with Russia buying collections in albums or on pages. Of course many collections are post 1958 when there seemed to be endless, but some very beautiful issues. There's so many Russian stamps that one has to look pretty close at any collection to find the pre 1950 ones and there are plenty of those too. If you can get to a stamp show it would be interesting to see what you can find.

I genuinely can't thank everybody enough, I've reached out to all 3 firms and will see how they can help me - thank you so so much!