Russian Stamp

Although the early Russian stamps of the 1850s were printed on woven stock paper, the Russian postal authorities were extremely concerned about counterfeiting and forgery. Thus, in 1866, the Russian Postal Service introduced watermarks for all Russian stamps. These watermarks included wavy lines and a series of letters in the Cyrillic alphabet. Stamps from this era tend to be worth a lot of money.Russia officially joined the burgeoning world postal organization, the Universal Postal Union (UPU), in late 1874. The following year, the government set up production of its stamps, producing two kopek, three kopek, and seven kopek stamps. The 1879 kopek stamp featured a strange accidental design. If you can find one of these 1879 Russian stamps in good condition, you can probably sell it to collectors for at least $2,000.As the Russian postal system matured, it began issuing new, higher priced stamps, including 14 kopek, 70 kopek, and eventually 3.5 and 7.0 ruble stamps. These later stamps were very large, and common citizens often couldn't afford to purchase them. In 1889, in keeping with the Russian national tradition, the post office produced a very imposing stamp, featuring a double headed eagle haloed by a lightning strike.In 1904, partially as a result of catastrophes within its own borders and partly as a result of a philanthropic push by some Russian bureaucrat, the country created its first ''semi postal'' or charity stamps. The revenue from these stamps went primarily to pay for the orphans left behind as result of the Russo-Japan War of 1904-1905.