Azerbaijan

I always wondered how in the world would I be able to get the more ... countries, all the talk about here in France are the french stamps and the stamps from the colonies.*

And a while ago I went to a small stamp flea market in Senlis and asked the president of the local stampclub to have a look at her worldwide stamp doubles book.

And there they are a bunch of old stamps from one far away country Azerbaijan, 10 cent a piece so a grand total of 1,80 €.

I didn't inspect them closely, I just grabbed them all remembering an article by Jim about Azerbaijan stamps and its forgeries.

So the other evening I spread them out on the table and tried to compare what I have with the theory explained in Jims article.

So what do we have?

The 5 and 10 ruble stamp have the left ornament upside down, so they are russian / soviet made reprints.

A different colour of paper between the 2 ruble and 5 ruble stamp.

Well the 20k  stamp has a bad colouring and together with the 10k in the middle has "heavier" paper than the left 10k. So the left 10k might be an original and the other two soviet reprints. The AZ and the DJ don't seem to touch at the bottom in the 20k stamp so seems to be genuine.

Notice the bad colouring of the upper 1 ruble stamp, both seem to have white paper.

Wouldn't dare to proonounce if they are fake or genuine.

Grayish/brownish paper to me so must be soviet reprints.

The 40k has a dot in the sun, so is genuine.

The points of the star in the 60 k stamp seems to be sharp so must be genuine as well.

Although the colour of the paper is light than for the 1ruble stamps, I can't realy say it's white paper, I suppose they are soviet reprints.

The derricks on the left and the second derrick from the right are intact so it seems these are genuine stamps. Paper shifts a little between the two stamps but can't say the 25 ruble stamp is on white paper.

6 extra's

So in the end what did I buy? 9 out of ten stamps for my Big Blue and 6 extra's. (my son will be happy to add some hinges on them and fix in my Scott International Volume 1 the coming days)

So what am I missing? Only the Baku 2Rub stamp - Scott 6 it seems. If someone would have this one stamp... Thanks in advance !


All my thanks go to Jim Jackson for his excellent article on the Aerbaijan stamps, which permitted me to make this little exercice.

Comments are of course always welcome.

* with the exception of my friends of the France-Russian Philatelic Cercle and Nicolas of Philatélie Hellenique;-)