Spotlight: The oldest stamp in my collection, Part 2

After Hebrew, English and Russian, the most popular language in my stamp collection is Armenian. There are a number of reasons for Armenian's popularity, but the main one has to do with my place of employment for the past eight years. This place has engendered an appreciation not only of the local Armenian families with whom I interact almost daily but of their homeland, their history, their culture -- and most recently, their stamps. If last month the oldest stamp in my collection was the 1927 "Zamenhof" from the U.S.S.R., this month that distinction has passed to four stamps dating back to 1922 from the Armenian S.S.R.

The stamps are part of a series identified by Stefan Berger as the "Erivan pictorials" and, having been printed with postal intent but never surcharged for actual use as postage, correspond to the second of the series' three 1922 subsets. Where I acquired the stamps was at a weekly meeting of the Jerusalem Stamp Club. It was my second time attending, and the club chairman, remembering that I had a special interest in Armenia from a conversation we had at the first meeting, brought the stamps from his home for my personal consideration. I snatched them up without a moment's hesitation, along with several other Armenian-themed stamps culled from one of the chairman's Soviet albums. What I paid for the Erivan pictorials I don't recall exactly, but it was around ₪4.00-5.00 ($1.15-1.45). All four stamps are in MH condition.

The years 1918-1922 were an exceedingly turbulent period for Armenia and its neighbors. In that five-year span, Armenia went from a territory divided between the Ottoman and Russian Empires to a member of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic to the Democratic Republic of Armenia and to the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic before being absorbed into the Soviet Union as part of the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. The abbreviation ՀՍԽՀ -- Հայաստանի Սոցիալիստական Խորհրդային Հանրապետության (Hayasdani Soʦialisdagan Khorhrtayin Hanrabedutian), meaning "Armenian Socialist Soviet Republic" -- began appearing on Armenian stamps in 1921, reflecting Armenia's transition from full independence to quasi-independence as a Soviet republic, and the communist motto ՊՐՈԼԵՏԱՐՆԵՐ ԲՈԼՈՐ ԵՐԿԻՐՆԵՐԻ, ՄԻԱՑԸ՛Ք -- Broledarner Polor Yergirneri, Miaʦek, Armenian for "Proletarians of All Countries, Unite," i.e. "Workers of the World, Unite" -- made its debut the following year with the Erivan pictorials issue.

Transcaucasia Transition Chart (property of Dead Country Stamps and Banknotes)

The first stamp in my Erivan pictorials collection has a face value of 300 Armenian rubles, that being the currency of the Armenian republics between 1919 and 1923. It depicts a five-pointed star over two snow-capped peaks of Mount Ararat with an expanse of cultivated fields stretching out toward the mountain. Now, if the political turmoil plaguing Armenia circa 1920 weren't enough to make a person dizzy, the philatelic turmoil is arguably even more complicated owing to a staggering abundance of forgeries masquerading as genuine stamps. The forgeries are so pervasive, some have made their way into the albums of respected collectors and are featured as images in official catalogs. All of which begs the question, "Are the stamps I acquired genuine?" As far as my Erivan "300R" is concerned, having compared it to confirmed fakes, I can declare with confidence that it is indeed genuine.

On the other hand, I'm a lot less confident in the genuineness of my Erivan "400R." This stamp features a hammer and sickle over a five-pointed star and a double line border with a geometric pattern between the lines. The stamp was printed dark blue and partially shaded red, with red dots filling in some of the area between the border and the star. The problem with "400R" is that the genuine stamp is itself known for its inconsistent printing; such that if the conventional method of identifying potential forgeries is to compare them with confirmed fakes and contrast them with confirmed genuines, here that doesn't work well because the genuines themselves vary substantially among each other. Specifically, the red shading is often poorly aligned with respect to the main design -- in my case shifted slightly up and to the right. Still, based on the forgeries I have examined online, I give my "400R" a good 75% probability of being original.

The third stamp is the "3000R," featuring a barefoot farmer sowing seeds in a field with Mount Ararat's two peaks partially obscured by his backside and a five-pointed star half obscured by his head and upper chest. This time the design was printed black, with the whole rest of the stamp shaded off-white save for the star, the top left and right corners where the face values appear, and the text box at the bottom. My stamp has an unfortunate printing flaw in the top right corner, as though the printing plate were chipped there. That's not necessarily an indication the stamp is a forgery, but it doesn't help its case either. A potentially more suspect discrepancy can be found where the seeds dropping from the farmer's hand fall to the ground. Here my stamp might be missing a couple of furrows, which bears closer scrutiny and reduces my confidence in the stamp's originality to 50%. Regardless of the foregoing, "3000R," with its heroic, larger-than-life depiction of the farmer, lone master of the vast expanse, his traps and pecs bulging out of his shirt, his head tilted up and turned away from the seeds just enough to reveal the knot of his bandana, and stout columns flanking him on either side, is a compelling work of art.

Finally, the fourth stamp is the "5000R," featuring a peasant toting a scythe and a factory worker swinging a hammer as the five-pointed star shines between them and Mount Ararat rises in the distance. As with the preceding stamp, the design here was printed black, though the internal shading is blush red. The density of black lines makes the image too dark and compressed to appreciate without straining the eyes, which in turn makes its authenticity harder to judge. Add to that the discoloration my stamp's paper has suffered, and even if I can't point to a single detail that's off, neither can I confer on the stamp an authenticity score higher than 80%. As for the stamp art, it is another reason to lament that the image isn't clearer. What the aproned factory worker is about to bring his hammer down upon, and what he holds over the anvil in his other hand, is none other than a sickle. Credit the artist for their creativity in subtly alluding to the symbol of the Communist Revolution. I come away from "5000R" moved by its artist's passion but conclude this analysis puzzled over two points relating to their style: Why the gargoyles atop the support columns holding up the arch? and Why, in the interest of symmetry, did the artist not center the shining star and have its point align neatly with the space between the "50" and "00" of the 5,000-ruble face value?