Russia And The Grand Duchy Of Finland Postmarks

I'd like to show you these two stamps from Russia and the Grand Duchy of Finland. What's so interesting about them as a pair is that the Finnish stamp has a Russian postmark, while the Russian one has a Finnish postmark. I'm very happy with them, as I've fallen in love with classic Russian stamps, and this pair adds a special touch to my modest collection.

I haven't tried to puzzle these out, but bilingual (and even tri-lingual) postmarks on old Finland are typical, with Russian in the bottom arc.

The Russian stamp initially has postmarks in two languages, one Swedish and one Finnish, presumably to refer to the same city: Tampere in Finnish and Tammerfors in Swedish. Cjd You are probably correct about the Finnish stamp; it likely refers to the Berghäll/Kallio district of Helsinki, written in Cyrillic.

Have you ruled out

in the bottom arc of the ring?

I'm not ruling anything out... but most of the Cyrillic stamps I've seen tend to be cruder. That's why I thought the Cyrillic on the Finnish stamp was definitely a Russian postmark, since the Finnish cancellations I've seen are usually finer and more elegant. Now I'm going to check my Russian stamps to see if any of the Cyrillic cancellations correspond to Finland...

Just watch out for two and three language cancels.

I don't know what you have in your possession, but, generally speaking, these aren't uncommon.

That said, this isn't a knock on your stamps, because 90% of the people who own that stamp have no idea what the postmarks are doing. This whole time in history is very interesting.

Many (most?) collectors don't have all that much interest in postmarks, so you're ahead of the game.

I collect Russian and Finland stamps as well, Its a very challenging area to collect and its nice to see other people collecting them. I have a pretty large Russian stamp collection that I haven't even researched yet because of the difficulty level.

The truth is that Russian stamps are very beautiful; I've been lucky enough to get hold of a Solovyov catalog and a specialized Michel catalog, and I'm really enjoying them... I had some trouble dividing the 1908 issue among the three types that exist, but in the end, I think I did a good job.

I'm sending you some quick photos; it's still a modest collection, but I hope it will continue to grow over time. I'm currently working on Ukraine and will extend my collection up to approximately 1930.

Wow nice murasama! Nicely organized - I love how you keep them in stock books. I love using stock books or album stock pages (vario sheets) - the stock books help keep my stamps housed, safe, protected, and in good order until each stamp has been identified or I can see if I have a duplicate of the stamp or stamps in my collection. Eventually I would like to buy stamp albums in the future to put all my stamps in....someday maybe I suppose.

Since I acquire stamps little by little, meaning I haven't completed any collections yet, and I also really enjoy trying specialized classifications by color or variant, stock books are my best option at the moment. Albums are quite limiting, even when I make my own pages... although, like you, I aspire to put together a beautiful album someday...