The current auction at Raritan again features several Armenia lots. My impression while scanning: interesting items, some quite nice and not often to see, but also at least two lots where I consider the overprints/cancels as fake (the dangerous forgery as Tchilinghirian would call it) and fishy looking respectively. The collection, as so often, is a mix of obviously fake overprints and also nice (and genuine) looking ones.
No cover this time…
I did some research regarding the Vartashen cancel.
This is what I found in the Ashford “Russian stamps used in Transcaucasia”:
VARTASHEN (Village) (Post Telegraph sub-office)
North of the railway line, Vartashen was an isolated village in the foothills of the Caucasian mountains, about 25 versts to the south east of Nukha. The P.O. was opened after 1893. Apart from a poor example of a cancellation on a stamp of Soviet Azerbaijan, no sightings can be reported. E.S.Voikhansky (sic) lists both an “a” and a “b” double circle script letter datestamps for Vartashen from the Azerbaijan period. Neither of thene, however, can be illustrated.
So I obviously got an impression of the double circle script letter “b” datestamp. Nukha is nowadays Shaki (or Sheki). I could not find a clear information about the village or town of Vartashen on the internet. Most likely it is a village near Oguz called Vartashenkyshlak. Oguz has a 2008 population of about 6.800 inhabitants. The whole area was very remote and sparsely inhabited. The cancel is probably quite rare and we can illustrate it now 
The cancels are from Azerbaijan, but still interesting area not far from Armenia. Some areas changed jurisdiction.
A)
“…OGRAD” and long tailed serial “a”.
B)
“…SHIRI BAK.” and I think there is a “G.” Which stands for “gorod” which means town.
C)
Baku?
D)
“SALNI BAK. G.” A part of Baku town?
E)
“BALACHA…”?
F)
?
G)
“VARTASHEN” which is nowadays the Oghuz rayon.
H)
“PETROPAVLO…” ?
Now on to the star overprints with cancellations.
A)
Starting with “A” On the left fragment is “LIS” – perhaps Elisavetpol Gubernia or Tiflis? Long tailed serial “a” – I’d say.
B)
“AG?” “ELISAV.” Some town in the Elisavetpol gubernia. And long tailed serial “a” here too.
C)
Again starting with an “A” and ending with “BUL”
D)
Beats me…
Two more fragments.
A)
“ERIVAN. 3″ can clearly be read. There is some word before. Also, could not find the specific cancel serial letter in Zakiyan.
B)
A difficult one. Perhaps an “B” at the beginning. The cancel serial letter is not clear.
Suggestions, please
The stamps issued and used during the time of the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (1922 – 1936) are interesting because the cancels of the first republic saw further uses. Also, the bolshevists did not allow private dealers or other persons to create and deal with philatelic material. They did it centrally through governmental institutions. There was no Serebrakian or Melik Pasha possible. Still I have found some stamps with seemingly CTO impressions, gum and dealer markings.
The idea is to collect stamps with republic cancels for comparison use, since there almost no forgeries of cancels during this time. Only two drawbacks: clear impressions of provincial cancels are rare (!) and forgeries of those cancels appeared on the market in the last years. I bought some from dealers in Armenia though delcampe und ebay.
While sorting through my collection I stumbled over these cancellations (see image). If you can read or identify any of them, please leave a comment.
Thanks in advance and happy hunting.
PS: Feel free to post images of your cancel fragments!
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The 173. Corinphila auction features a lot (in comparison) of Armenian items. Many of which come with short opinions made by me.
Browse Armenian lots of the 173. Corinphila Auction
Lot 823 shows a genuine (in my opinion) overprint on a postal saving stamp. This truly is a nice and rare item. Both, Tchilinghirian and Ceresa had doubts that genuine items of this type exist.
Cherrystone is another auction house where Armenian items can be found from time to time. This time six covers were offered. Two registered covers and four money orders. When browsing the pictures I thought, I have seen those already a couple of time. And so I begun investigating. The Cherrystone website has a nice feature. You can browse the offerings of the auctions that were being held during the last years.
Lets start with the first cover, number 2260.
A pity they show only one side. But here we go. A nice strip of large framed Z on k60k overprints and a bit hard to see large framed Z on a 5 ruble stamp. Some barbarian made a pencil note at the bottom “ARMENIA (SCARCE)”. Departure was on the 15. of April, arrival on the 18 of April, three days later.
If you enter the following search patterns “armenia alexandropol 18.4″ in the SEARCH AUCTION LOTS input field and press enter you will get a list of 7 items.
The first two letters from 2010 auctions show a different but very similar cover.
The most obvious difference: the Tiflis arrival cancel is not on the 5 ruble stamp.
That leaves four appearances of the same first cover (also subtraction the double without picture). Apparently the cover was on auction and sold on the following auctions:
That makes me wonder. Did they really sell this item? Did it fetch the same price three times in a row? Why did no one keep it for some time?
Lets do some more investigating. Lets enter “armenia tiflis 3.50r” into the search field. Again we get seven results and we have two different covers.
A cover with Mikulski and Romeko signatures, no lilac ink remains and only a few pencil markings, also almost no wrinkles.
And a cover with no signatures, but lilac ink remains, wrinkles and a lot of pencil markings (partly erased).
This cover was on auction and sold on the following auctions:
Now that strikes me as odd.
Similar results yield searches for the four money transfers from Karmaloo.
The last auction from Raritan had some Armenian stuff. Three items and a collection: together four lots. All of them were sold and fetched prices well above the initial listing. This is good news, because it shows the market for Armenian philatelic material is well alive and kicking.
Lets have a look at those four lots.
Number 206
A full sheet of the black 25r surcharge on Romanov Dynasty 4k red. First impression: looks genuine. Sold for 675 USD not including the 15% buyer’s premium.
Number 207
Nice cover with 5 and 10k overprints on Second Essayan issue. First impression: looks legit. The realized price of 1800 USD not including the 15% buyer’s premium seems quite formidable and is far above the initial listing price.
Number 208
A nice money order from Karavasarai to Delishan with Trancsaucasian franking. Very clear cancel impressions. Went for 200 USD not including 15% buyers premium. This seems to be rather low in comparison to the price the letter received. Even if considering that this issues are not “pure” Armenian and this being “just a money order”. On the plus side, the item seems to be not philatelic inspired, this issue was not forged and it is a chance to buy a nice item for few money. First impression: genuine.
Number 209
A collection of about 2000 stamps. I did not count them, the figures are from the description of Raritan. They also note “The Collection contains some reference material, forgeries and stamps of questionable status”. This is obviously the case. I marked – without spending much time – the stamps of the first page that are looking forged. An exclamation mark is for the real stinkers – overprints that are so crudely made, it brings water to the eyes. The collection brought 2000 USD (again you have to add 15% buyers premium), starting was at 1300 USD. While this is just a bit more than 1 USD per stamp, I am still unsure if I would have bought this… Still a nice achievement for Raritan and the seller.
