These stamps are definitely from someplace where they use the Cyrillic alphabet! Maybe Russia! And they are pretty old. I suppose I could try to learn more, but nah... Maybe somebody will just do to the identity of these stamps what Ben and Jennifer did to the flag of Sao Tome and Principe -- which is to say, perform a dazzling feat of internet research.
6 comments:
Like I'm going to fall for that trick and spend all morning looking for stamp info for you, Tom Sawyer!
Thank goodness I already completely knew, just off the top of my head and without in any way taking it from the sources I have painstakingly tracked down and scrupulously linked at the end of this note, that these are (apparently) Russian imperial stamps, printed around, oh, 1902-05. I don't quite, um, remember the information for the 1-kopek stamp, however, but the 15-kopek may correspond to Scott catalog #62. (I haven't found a good image of the other, but it may be Scott 25 or 25a.)
15 kopek stamp
1 kopek stamp (click on 19-25 and then on S 25 and 25a--though it looks a little too carmine lake for what you have, perhaps)
(This is fun!)
Thanks, Jennifer. I just wasn't up for this today.
Jen's right, I even have a few of these in my own collection! The coat of arms in the middle gives it away.
I wasn't going to do any research per se, just tell you that they're in pre-revolutionary Russian (before the spelling reform), depict the imperial double eagle, and proclaim nothing more interesting that they are postage stamps with a face value of 15 kopecks and 1 Markka respectively.
Markka is a Finnish currency. Is there any chance this is from Russian-occupied Finland?
Oh, cool! That explains some things. I did come across a few links talking about Finnish use of Russian stamps during that time, so that actually would make a lot of sense.
It fooled me for a moment, because marka happens to also be the Russian word for stamp, as in postage stamp. I suppose both a common root in physical marks made on something as tokens of payment.
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