1899 (24 Sep) registered cover franked with 14k carmine & blue, sent from Port Arthur, China to Moscow, postmarked in Port Arthur, with Moscow (14.11) arrival, fine. Stated to be one of two known examples of the 1899 provisional registration label (Image)

Est.$500

1901 (4 Apr) cover sent by the "Grunberg and Reilly" firm in Port Arthur, China to New York, franked with 10k "Kitai", tied by Chifu Russian Post Office cds, with Chinese "Chefoo" and Shanghai (8.4) transits, additional Russian Post Office in Shanghai, sent via Yokohama and Nagasaki, with New York arrival on back, fine (this cover, stationery of timber importers Grunberg and Reilly, was posted on a ship at Port Arthur and postmarked upon arrival in Chefoo, where it received the violet PAQUEBOT handstamp. Sidney George Reilly, known as "Ace of Spies", was a Russian-born adventurer and secret agent employed by Scotland Yard's Special Branch and later by the Foreign Section of the British Secret Service Bureau, the precursor to the modern British Secret Intelligence Service. He arrived in Port Arthur in early 1901 in the guise of a timber company owner. He remained there for four years, acting as a double agent for the British and the Japanese governments. Ian Fleming used him as a model for James Bond in his novels set in the early Cold War) (Image)

Est.$500

1904 (1 Mar) registered cover from Tsitsikar, Manchuria to Germany (addressed to the mother of a German officer serving in China), franked with 20k carmine & blue, tied by "Cicikar Polev. Pocht. Tel. Odp. Priam. Okr" cds, repeated alongside, with Registry label in Cyrillic, Darmstadt (4 Apr) arrival and complete wax seal ("Clerk 6th Class of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs") on back, minor cover faults and repaired internal tear along the franking, otherwise fine. (The Tsitsikar field post establishment opened in October 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion. This cover was sent by Nikolai Gotfridovich Poppe (1870-1913), an interpreter for the Russian occupation forces in Tsitsikar. He was later consul in Tientsin from 1907 to 1909, then consul general in Harbin. In September 1913 he took sick leave and left Harbin for St. Petersburg but died in transit at Ufa railway station) (Image)

Est.$750

1905 (11 May) registered picture postcard (Harbin railway station boulevard) from the head fieldpost office in Harbin to Grand-Bassam, Ivory Coast, then forwarded to Assinie, franked with 20k carmine & blue, tied by "Glavn. Polev. Pocht. Kont." postmark, repeated below, with corresponding Registry label in Cyrillic, violet censor cachet of the Manchurian Army headquarters, Funchal, Madeira and Grand-Bassam and Assinie Ivory Coast arrival pmks, fine registered usage of a ppc to uncommon destination (Image)

Est.$250

1911 (13 Nov) 20k stationery entire envelope, registered from the Kyakhta telegraph office to Copenhagen, postmarked "Kyakhta Zabaik. Ob. Tel. Kont.", with "Troitskosavsk" transit and Registry label handstamped with a "K" for Kyakhta, backstamped on arrival in Copenhagen (11.12.11), some overall toning, otherwise fine and rare usage Kyakhta, on the Mongolian border, is a suburb of Troitskosavsk. The Kyakhta post office moved to Troitskosavsk in 1881, leaving just a telegraph office in Kyakhta (Image)

Est.$1,000