Most 1918 Ukraine
Trident overprints were applied by hand. Machine printed Tridents were applied to
make Kiev/Kyiv type 3 and Odessa/Odesa types 1, 2 and 3. Since Ukraine was a
big country even in 1918 (population between 25 and 30 million) dozens of
clerks were kept busy overprinting sheets of Imperial stamps. It must have been
very boring, the boredom perhaps relieved by alcohol when it could be obtained
or at least tea and tobacco.
But inverted overprints
from handstamps are really very uncommon. This is surprising. I think there may
be three explanations:
1.
If a clerk started overprinting with the
handstamp held upside down, he (always he,
I suspect) would probably notice and correct the error. It would require real
carelessness to work through a whole sheet using the handstamp upside down. It’s
true that in poor light, some stamps don’t obviously self-identify as the right
way up, so if the sheet , not the
handstamp, was upside down this might be missed. The pale yellow of 1 kopek is
the most obvious example of a stamp which does not shout out when it is the
wrong way up and it’s true that inverted overprints on the 1 kopek are generally
more common than on other values.
2.
The work of individual clerks was
supervised and checked. This may explain the use of “correcting handstamps”
applied over poor examples of a trident overprint or onto stamps which had
somehow missed an overprint. Correcting handstamps are found, for example, on
stamps of Poltava.
3.
Dealers and speculators of the time no
doubt wanted to have inverted overprints
to sell at a premium. Asked for such varieties, postal officials may not have
been as co-operative as they sometimes are. The Trident was a symbol of new
independence and national pride. To apply it upside down at this early stage of
a political revolution may have been thought disloyal or, at least, lacking in
seriousness. In contrast, varying the colour of the ink may have been more
acceptable. So-called Svenson varieties on things like Kiev 2gg are ink
varieties; inverted overprints are still not common on these varieties. Only for
Odessa/Odesa ( a very Russian city) do you get lots of inverted overprints, clearly
made to order. In addition, it may be that handstamps were taken away from post
office premises and used by dealers like Trachtenberg who did their own work
and created their own varieties.
Catalogue listings of
the inverted overprints are not systematic. Dr Seichter tends to give a general
guide, suggesting premiums on the normal valuation. Bulat lists some inverts
but not others, as I was reminded when I looked up this little group of Kharkov/Kharkiv
I. Bulat lists several values with inverted overprints but not this one, even
though these postally-used stamps (ex the Schmidt collection) have very old UPV
guarantee marks. It seems likely that they are all from the same sheet and with cancellations of what I read as BOGODUKHOV KHARK - now the small Ukrainian town of Bohodukhiv.
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