U.S. & Worldwide Stamps & Postal History
February 2-3, 2021
Our February 2-3, 2021 Auction will be held live via CherrystoneLIVE. This 1,400 lot sale features United States and European countries, including Austria, France and Colonies, Germany, Italy and Colonies, Poland, Russia, Switzerland, Western Ukraine, and many others. Great Britain and British Commonwealth are well represented. Also featured are large die proofs from the American Bank Note Company, issued for various South and Central American countries. The auction concludes with a strong selection of 130+ large lots and collections ranging from single country albums to specialized collections, multi-carton worldwide properties and large cover lots.
| Images | Description | Current Bid |
 | Lot #945 Siberia 1885 (5 Feb) 3k black, stationery card sent from the Kara gold fields (Transbaikal Territory) to St. Petersburg by a political prisoner N. N. Dzvonkevich, canceled "Kariisk", with 23 Apr arrival St. Petersburg cds alongside. Dzvonkevich (1842-1909), a member of the People's Will "terrorist" group, was sentenced to death for his part in the 1882 assassination of Gen. Strelnikov, the military prosecutor for southern Russia. His sentence was commuted to life of hard labor and he was imprisoned at Lower Kara from 1884 to 1890. Prisoners could send one card every two weeks. These had to be written in the third person, as if from the prison commandant, Superintendent of State Criminals, Staff Captain I. F. Burley, who then censored and signed it. Since spelling reform was part of the revolutionaries' agenda, Dzvonkevich omitted hard signs from his message, but the commandant put them back. In his message, Dzvonkevich asks his daughter to prevent her mother from coming to Kara. He also asks for boots and tobacco, instructing that all parcels should be addressed to Eastern Siberia, Transbaikal oblast, Lower Kara, in care of His Excellency, the Superintendent of State Criminals. Parcels sent by ship via Odessa should be addressed to Ust Kara on the Shilka River. The daughter, Ekaterina Dzvonkevich-Vagner, was later involved in the 1905 assassination attempt against Alexander Spiridovich, chief of the Kiev Okhrana, minor staining, fine and rare card  | Unsold |
