This brief article is dedicated to a series of very interesting stamps, that was purchased by me within the big collection of revenues in the 90-th. It is the series of entertainment duty stamps. Their history started at the Tsar time when the first series of VUIM stamps... >>>
Philatelists have the following hobby - collection of postcards, envelopes and other postal papers. Collectors of revenues have the same one, but subject of collecting is a set of documents: account sheets, tickets, cards, and others... >>>
It's a well-known fact that stamps are the brand of engraving art. It should be mention that many of stamps collectors collect prints of postage stamps on the envelopes and post cards. There are a lot of articles and researches in this area in the magazines and journals. But prints of postage stamps never to be compared with the prints of revenue stamps from the point of view of beauty and variety
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It seems that this is the best article of author. It has been pablished in one of the most authoritative journal for collectors - "Antiquariat" and dedicated to the most colourful revenues - stamps of WWI >>>
We can approximately say that the total amount of Russian Revenues is about 11-13 thousands. And about one third or a half of them are the rare stamps and labels because of two things: (1) collecting of revenues in Russia in the first half of XX century was a very seldom hobby; (2) at that time Russia has a lot of tests of destiny. Rich and middle classes of our society were destroyed, but only these classes had enough time and money for collecting. A great number of paper documents was demolished, fire had eat municipal and private archives. The winner class didn't see the profit and needs in that archives. At the first decades of the Communist government rule a huge amount of vignettes (poster stamps), labels, cinderellas were issued without any control. That's why we have frightening variety of issues, overprints, and versions of soviet stamps.
Rarities cost money, but there exists one or two "but". In the first: it makes no sense try to get all rarities within Soviet vignettes and labels and pay for it due to huge amount of it. In the second: many times we saw such event - at one lucky day there arised a big amount of some rarity. It means the following: someone have found and open old archive or pack of papers for recycling. It was an good example event then there arouse a lot of Fellin WWI cinderellas (together with varieties) on a Moscow market. Of course, before that stamps were consider as a very rare stamps (.
Anyway, in some divisions rarities got a deserved status. These are the divisions where stamps carefully investigated and catalogued. For instance, tax duty stamps or WWI charity stamps.
The author of this article has a lot of rarities. About one lot I just issued the article in "Filatelia" journal. To answer what is the rarity - let's make a brief review.
As for WWI charity stamps and vignettes situation is clear. Just first issue of St.Petersburg WWI charity stamps gives us two rarities - 3r. and 5r. stamps (with and w/out dent.) ().
Next, we have such situations: either whole series of stamps is the rarity (¹2316-2320 , ¹253-306 , ¹2358-2361 ), rarity or rarities are the stamps of big values (ended stamps) (¹1652-1669 ). ). A lot of rarities were given by mention above Fellin charity stamps (¹2860-2889 ), and stamps of "Military loan" (¹456-755 ), and many others.
On the top of hill you can find the big format poster stamps of St.Petersburg due to limited addition or problems with storage (¹436-437 , 2331, 2341, 2343, 2352, 2362, 2338, 2395 è äð.).
From my point of view, fiscal stamps of Tsar time give us more rarities then charity stamps. Charity ones are the nice souvenirs and people preferred to save and collect it. On the contrast, the destiny of fiscal stamps was to be in the pack of paper for recycling or in deep archive. But it's a local fiscal stamp that is the basis for rarities.
However, try to find common excise stamps "Vine and vodka production" () " with the value more then 1k. Or there exists a series of suburban policy stamps of St.Petersburg, but who can find value of 25k. in their collections? () Besides, this capital city after beginning of WWI changed the name - Petrograd instead of St.Petersburg and some series of stamps were issued with a new name of city (). Of course, such stamps are rare.
Another example. Address registration duty of St.Petersburg. A lot of values, you can easily find these stamps, but it's very hard to get stamps of 1 category ()!
At last, it seems that all is clear within the division of tax duty stamps, but... there exists highlights here. The first and the second series of Tsar time tax duty stamps with the horizontal watermark are highest rarities. Of course, these are the varieties. More simple example, last series of Tsar time tax duty stamps: value of 2r. with dents ().
It's enough hard to collect local stamps even without varieties. Too much series, but a small share of it was saved. Moreover, some of them hard to detect as a stamp, for instance - water pipe stamp, value in one bucket ()!
These divisions of revenue can be considered as rare and very rare: advertising stamps (), exhibition and educational stamps (), excise banderole labels (). It's hard to explain this fact, but, really, it's true.
As for stamps issued after revolution, we have the similar situation. Civil War time gives us a lot of puzzles. Here is the theatre fee stamp of Vladivostok (), unknown for many famous elder collectors of revenue. By the way, such format of VUIM stamps was used for other series of stamps. For instance - Kharbin (Russian China), this series is very rare (). There are a lot of other rarities between Tsar time cinderellas and vignettes ().
Further: Soviet age. This one gives us a possibility to get many rarities, especially in vignettes. I should mention that the prices are modest here.
There are three well-catalogue groups of soviet revenues: (1) Tax duty, (2) Charity stamps for disabled soldiers and orphans, (3) ODVF stamps (voluntary fee to development of aviation forces). Here we can highlight the 50k tax duty stamp with dentals and some other tax duty revenues. As for ODVF stamps - it's very hard to collect it because these stamps are very popular in Russia and most they lie in the collections without movements. There are a lot of As for rarities here too, but other average stamps are hard for collecting.
As for Charity stamps for disabled soldiers and orphans, these collecting items are easy for gathering, except two moments. The former is the local overprints on central series, the later is the some local issues of Caucasus and Central Asia.
In other divisions of revenues the situation is unclear due to lack of investigations and catalogues. I mean member fee stamps, co-operation stamps etc. It seems that we have a lot of rarities here, but prices are enough low here because of low demand.
Here is the end of our brief review. Note - there exist hundreds and hundreds of the rare revenue stamps and unique. The value of it depends on level of demand and catalogue. It makes no sense to ask 10$ for Tuberculosis protection cinderella, but local ordinary ODVF stamp costs a lot of money. And again, collection of revenue rarities is a question of fortune.
