Russia Revenues: Imperial Moscow Police residence permit stamps, first issue

St Petersburg and Moscow police departments began using adhesive stamps to record payment of residence permit fees in the 1860s. Most St Petersburg stamps are common, though one is a great rarity, but Moscow’s are not common even though they remained in use until at least 1881 when new stamps prepared by the State Printing Works were issued.

Nothing about the first Moscow issue suggests it was printed by those State works. The gum, the variable paper, the wide variation in colour, the deterioration of the printing plate, the lack of alignment of individual stamp clichés – all this is well below the standard achieved by the State works. The stamps look like a job which might have been done in-house by the Police department itself. To me, the stamps look as if printed by lithography, the plates retained over a long period and the quality of the print greatly deteriorating.

It is quite difficult to study the issue for four reasons. First, the scarcity of large mint multiples for plating purposes. Second, the impossibility of dating the use of stamps which have been taken off document, where they were always cancelled by a simple pen cross. Third, and connectedly, the difficulty in distinguishing printings when there appears to be wide variation within printings and not just between them. Fourth, the scarcity of stamps used even on a fragment of a document. In addition, lacking access to the relevant sources I do not know what the fee structure was or how it changed.

On the pages illustrated below I have assembled over 100 Moscow stamps now in my possession. About half of them have pencil notes on the reverse which indicate that they are from Agathon Faberge’s collection. These notes are dated between 1900 and 1907, though some notes do not give a date. It is my belief that Faberge annotated stamps that he bought individually but that, in addition, he bought bundleware or kiloware of these stamps for research purposes and only annotated those where he noticed something unusual. My guess is that in the 1900 – 1914 period Faberge owned and studied many hundreds of these stamps, now dispersed across many collections.

My assembly does not include two varieties listed in the John Barefoot catalogue: an error of colour on the 5 kopeck printed in blue instead of the correct green; and a perforated version of the 5 kopeck green. I have never seen either and would be pleased to illustrate them here if anyone has either of them. Added: John McMahon has kindly provided the following scan of his error of colour stamp. This appears to be the only recorded copy,from the Marcovitch collection. However, to my eye, the blue would be more convincing if it could be matched to the same blue appearing on a 3 kop stamp (the 3 kop stamps were printed in blue). 

I can show two varieties identified by A Faberge: bisects on the 2 kopek and manuscript revaluation of a 2 kopek stamp to 3 kopeks.

On my very provisional pages, I have copied back-of-stamp A Faberge’s notes and written them underneath the stamps on which they are found. Any notes above the stamps are mine. Click on Images to Magnify.