1875 (29 Sep) 5k stationery card from Krasnoyarsk to London, sent by John Milne (a mining engineer, geologist, and the father of modern seismology. In 1875 the Japanese government offered him a position as Professor of Mining and Geology at the Imperial College of Engineering in Tokyo. He left home on 3 August 1875 and traveled for seven months across Siberia, Mongolia, and China. During his 20 years in Japan, Milne became one of the leading experts on earthquakes and co-invented the Gray-Milne seismograph). The message, written in Krasnoyarsk reads, "My dear Mother, I am now en route for Irkutsk with General Smirnikof and Baron Stackelberg. We muster 4 carriages in all. At every station now we are in Eastern Siberia (which is the General's territory). The post horses and drivers neatly dressed are in waiting when we stop at a village to take tea or supper". The 5k postcard was sold for the current rate of 4 kopecks and could not be mailed abroad until 19 June 1875, some ink discoloration, illustrated in BJRP No.107, ex-Wortman (Image)

Est.US$250

1892 (26 Mar) 4k stationery card sent from Kola to Berlin, with "P.O.V+G Kola", with hand-drawn map on back, showing sender's route from Norway to Kola, skirting Lake Enare in Finland. The message, datelined Kola, reads, "Greetings from 69th north, 52nd east of Ferro, where I arrived in the following manner: ("picture of reindeer 1 pulling the guide/interpreter in a sleigh, followed by reindeers 2 and 3 each pulling luggage, reindeer 4 without a sleigh, and reindeer 5 pulling the writer, sometimes like this (picture of the writer falling off the back of his sleigh after his reindeer is frightened by a wolf). The day after tomorrow I will journey back and tell you more."). Kola had a population of 600 at this time (Image)

Est.US$150

1896 (9 Sep) postcard sent from Vladivostok, via Nagasaki and Yokohama to Munich by a sailor on the German armored cruiser SMS Kaiser, part of the German East Asia Squadron. The message reads, "On board SMS Kaiser, Greetings from Siberia", with arrival pmk (Image)

Est.US$100

1897 (18 Aug) 4k stationery card sent from Vladivostok, via Nagasaki and Yokohama to Schleswig, Germany by a sailor on the German cruiser SMS Arcona, part of the German East Asia Squadron, with arrival pmk (Image)

Est.US$100

1901 (12 Oct) picture postcard mailed from Vladivostok, via Nagasaki and Yokohama to New York. The message reads, "On the deck of Graf Ignatieff. Now I am on the steamer named G. Ignatieff and am near Blagoveshchensk. Wonderful to tell you that the Amoor River is going very sandy year after year, and so often our steamer lost its movement." The Graf Ignatiev transported passengers on the Amur River from 1894 until 1957 (Image)

Est.US$100

1902 (31 Aug) a folding postcard with a panoramic view of Vladivostok, sent from Vladivostok to Tsingtau, China, postmarked "Postal Wagon No.265" (3.9.02, earliest recorded postmark from the Harbin to Port Arthur direction), Port Arthur transit and Chefoo arrival pmks; also included is a 1903 cover from Khabarovsk to Vladivostok, stationery of Enoch Emery, an American merchant with general stores in Siberia, sent in care of American Commercial Agent Richard Theodore Greener (who was the first African-American to graduate from Harvard and was US Commercial Agent in Vladivostok from 1898-1905) (Image)

Est.US$200

1906 (1 July) folded panoramic view card of Vladivostok mailed on a Chinese Eastern Railway train and sent to France, franked with 1k and 3k Arms, tied by oval Vladivostok-Harbin pmks, with St. Die, Vosges arrival on back (Image)

Est.US$100

1907 (10 June) 3k stationery card uprated with 1k Arms, written on an eastbound Trans-Siberian Railway train "near Omsk". When the sender reached Vladivostok he posted it on the ship "Baltica" of the Russian East-Asiatic Steamship Co. which was sailing to Tsuruga, Japan. The card was then transported by rail to Yokohama and placed on a ship to Seattle. Postmarked "Paraxod Ob. R. V. A. P." and Yokohama (23 June), with framed "Paquebot" applied in Tsuruga (Hosking 3441 "very rare"). The sender was Samuel Vestey, whose family was one of the richest in England. The message reads in part, "My address will be British Post Office Hankow. These are the new Russian cards. I will try to get the whole set at Vladivostok but doubt whether they will have them there yet." (Image)

Est.US$150

1908 (25 Sep) U.S. picture postcard from East Orange, New Jersey, via Tsuruga to the American Consul Lester Maynard in Vladivostok, with transit and arrival pmks. Maynard was consul in Vladivostok from 1908 to 1911 (Image)

Est.US$100

1909 (14 July) picture postcard franked with 1k and 4k Arms, sent from Vladivostok to Dresden by sailor Karl Ernst Wilhelm Apelt on the German armored cruiser SMS Scharnhorst, part of the German East Asia Squadron. In December 1914 she was sunk by the Royal Navy near the Falkland Islands. The Russian cruiser Askold can be seen (with five funnels) in the photo of Vladivostok harbor on the back of the postcard (Image)

Est.US$100

1911 (3 Aug) 4k stationery card with additional franking (1k-14k Arms, paying total of 45k) sent from Vladivostok to Leipzig by sailor Alfred Hahndorf serving on a German warship. The SMS Scharnhorst, Emden, Leipzig, and Nurnberg were visiting Vladivostok. Hahndorf was taken prisoner in 1914 when the Japanese captured Tsingtao. He returned to Germany in 1920 (Image)

Est.US$100

1911 (5 Aug) an illustrated Japanese envelope, franked with 10k Arms, sent from Vladivostok to Hamburg (by Chief Stoker Sandberg on the German light cruiser SMS Nurnberg, part of the German East Asia Squadron. The Nurnberg was sunk by the Royal Navy at the Battle of the Falkland Islands on 8 December 1914), minor cover creases and wear, otherwise fine (Image)

Est.US$100

1914 (20 May) registered 7k stationery entire envelope additionally franked with 3k and pair of 10k Romanovs, sent from Vladivostok by Nikolai Vasilyevich Kuener to Oberhofen, Switzerland, with a domestic registration handstamp and an international registration label. Kuener was professor and chair of geography and history at the Oriental Institute in Vladivostok. The enclosed letter contains an extensive want list for Kuener's stamp collection, fine cover, with 16 June arrival pmk on back (Image)

Est.US$100

1917 (8 Sep) cover franked with 5c U.S. regular issue, sent from Cleveland to YMCA secretary Donald Alexander Lowrie in Novo-Nikolayevsk, Siberia. The cover first traveled to Petrograd where it was censored on 26 October (the first day of Communist rule). It arrived in Novo-Nikolayevsk on 9 November and was forwarded back to Petrograd to the American Consulate. It was postmarked at the government and diplomatic mail delivery section of the Petrograd post office on 19 January 1918, and at the American Consulate on the same day (1 February new style). The handstamp "Unclaimed" was applied at the consulate (Lowrie provided aid to German and Austro-Hungarian POWs in the Tomsk area (including Novo-Nikolayevsk) from September 1916 until the United States entered the war in April 1917, when he became the General Secretary of the Odessa and Moscow YMCA branches) (Image)

Est.US$150

1893 (27 Apr) 10k stationery entire envelope sent from St. Petersburg (27.4.93) to executive officer K. P. Jessen on board "His Imperial Russian Majesty's cruiser Admiral Korniiloff" in Hong Kong (14.6.93), forwarded to Nagasaki (22.6.93) and Vladivostok (29.6.93). With two strikes of "Vladivostok" forwarding mark applied by the Russian consul in Nagasaki, fine and scarce routing (Karl Petrovich Jessen served as executive officer on the Admiral Korniloff from 1891 to 1893. During the Russo-Japanese War, Rear Admiral Jessen commanded the Vladivostok cruiser squadron. He was executed by the Bolsheviks in 1918) (Image)

Est.US$150

1895 (22 July) cover (HMS Edgar stationery) franked with pair of 3k and single 4k paying 10k from Aleksandrovsk De Kastri, via Nagasaki and Yokohama to Colne, England, sent by Roger Baron, assistant engineer on the British cruiser "HMS Edgar", part of the China Station Squadron, fine cover, illustrated in Rossica No.122, ex-Adler collection (Image)

Est.US$150

1898 (24 Jan) cover franked with two 10k Arms (one defective), paying 20k from St. Petersburg to the Russian consul in Hong Kong (14.3) for transmission to midshipman Vladimir Mikhailovich Rykachev on board the battleship "Navarin", inscribed "please forward in case he has left." (the Navarin was the first battleship in Russia's Pacific fleet. She arrived in Hong Kong on 9 March and stayed until the 24th. Vladimir Rykachev was the grandnephew of Fyodor Dostoyevsky. On 26 June 1903, Lt. Rykachev was executive officer on the survey ship "Opisnoi" in the Gulf of Finland near Helsinki when he fell overboard and drowned) (Image)

Est.US$150

1913 (22 Aug) picture postcard franked with single 3k Arms, sent from Aleksandrovsk De Kastri to Irkutsk by a sailor on the cruiser "Askold". The sender writes, "Greetings from Sakhalin, from where we returned yesterday. While we are at sea far from Vladivostok I will have more free time to write." The Askold (the only ship with five funnels) was the flagship of the Siberian flotilla based in Vladivostok. In June 1918 she was seized by the British in Murmansk and renamed HMS "Glory IV" (Image)

Est.US$150

1914 cover (stationery of Otto Lagerfeld) posted on a ship sailing from Vladivostok to Tsuruga, Japan, from where it was sent overland to Kobe, franked with 10k Arms, postmarked 20.8.14 Tsuruga, with Kobe (21.8.14) on back, violet framed "Paquebot" (Hosking 3442, "scarce") applied in Tsuruga, minor cover faults, tape reinforced, otherwise fine (Lagerfeld, a German national, arrived in Vladivostok in 1907 and established a business selling Carnation canned milk. On 3 August 1914 he was arrested on espionage charges and was sent to Verkhoyansk for the duration of World War I. His son Karl was a famous fashion designer) (Image)

Est.US$150

1914 cover (stationery of M. J. Sterelny) posted on a ship sailing from Vladivostok to Tsuruga, Japan, from where it was sent overland to Yokohama, then by ship to Seattle, franked with 10k Arms, postmarked Tsuruga (12.11.15), with Yokohama (13.11), framed "Paquebot" (Hosking 442, "scarce") applied in Tsuruga, fine (Sterelny took over Otto Lagerfeld's canned milk importing company when Lagerfeld was arrested for espionage on 3 August 1914) (Image)

Est.US$150

1916 (23 June) Japanese picture postcard sent from the Vladivostok railway station to Petrograd by a sailor on the Russian cruiser Peresvyet. The Vladivostok postage due mark was incorrectly applied and later crossed out, with handstamp "Cruiser Peresvyet 3rd Company." The Peresvyet was scuttled in 1904 during the siege of Port Arthur. The Japanese salvaged the ship and sold her back to the Russians in March 1916. After repairs the ship was ordered to the White Sea. She struck German mines near Egypt on 4 January 1917 and sank (Image)

Est.US$100