1934 - a New Currency, some new stamps, and new trouble ...

Because of unscrupulous characters, ignorance, and some foolishness in the philatelic media many ridicule Tuvan stamps. This is mostly because of a scoundrel named Bela Sekula who convinced the Tuvan (and Soviet) authorities to print up a a half dozen sets of brightly-colored and interestingly shaped stamps between 1934 and 1936.

These stamps were used to fulfill ALL of the postal needs of Tuva (see the Blekhman book…many many tons of mail each year).   That said, most copies of these stamps were printed, cancelled  and provided to stamp dealers to cheaply sell to collectors and kids around the world. These pretty stamps brought many collectors to our hobby, and the scorn of many philatelists.

If they hadn't been so greedy and had only produced one or two sets of stamps, nobody would have said a thing. If they hadn't put irrelevant words like "registered" into some of the designs, that would have helped the situation too.  But because they issued 100 stamps over this three year period, all the stamp catalogs at that time refused to list these stamps.   The editors of these catalogs  didn't know the history of the earlier Tuvan stamps and the problems that the Tuvan Post Office faced. 

Thanks to wonderful research by some gods of stamp collecting, these facts came to light and all the catalogs of the world properly list these stamps...except for our own stamp catalog here in the USA. 

To put this all in proper perspective, our own country issued more than 100 stamps EVERY YEAR for many years now.  And while these Tuvan stamps met ALL of the postal needs of the nation (for ALL their mail), most mail in the USA is franked with meters, those stickers now printed in the post office, or definitive stamps.   (e.g. those darned "flag over porch" stamps you see all the time).   There is no need for so many commemorative stamps in the US, except that they generate money for the post office, and perhaps some propaganda value.  If you bought the USPS souvenir sheets from PACIFIC 97 can't say anything bad about the 1934-1936 Tuvan stamps.   Still the stigma persists after 60 years! Even worse, legitimate Tuvan stamps made after these stamps are ignored and unknown in the US and recent developments by a new generation of "entrepreneurs" makes this even worse.

But read on, the story gets even more interesting ...and I'll stop preaching!

Back to Scott's Home Page

Back to the Philatelic Album Smith