2021-03-15
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Who are you, 'Tiflis Unika'?
The Tiflis Unika brand is of great interest to collectors all over the world today. It holds an incredible number of mysteries ‒ and what, no matter how it is, most attracts and excites the blood of connoisseurs of antiquity?
The stamp was printed for the city post office of Tiflis and Kojori and was published in the summer of 1857. It should be noted that residents of many European countries have been paying for their letters with stamps for 17 years. The legislator of such a 'fashion' in 1840 was Great Britain, giving the world the first ever postage stamps ‒ 'black pennies' .
The Russian Empire was not up to it yet. The conservative rule of the Romanovs only in the 30s of the XIX century began to let foreign innovations into the country. The railway and telegraph, which appeared at this time in Russia, became the first sign for the development of operational ties throughout the vast empire.
The Caucasian and Crimean wars played a negative role in this regard, halting the advance of progress and bringing to the fore the issues of military support. However, the leading figures of Russia still have time to study foreign experience in the field of communication. So in 1851, the manager of mail transportation by rail, A. P. Charukovsky, went to Europe to personally get acquainted with the practice of paying for postal items using stamps.
As usual, the case dragged on for a long time. Charukovsky submitted the draft of the future postage stamp only in 1855, and the new postage stamps were put into circulation only on December 10, 1857, by the circular of the Postal Department.
Meanwhile, in Georgia, which has already had the status of one of the Russian provinces for half a century, a postage stamp was introduced for the city mail of Tiflis and Kojori. Its face value was 6 kopecks, 5 of which cost to send a letter around the city, and another 1 kopeck-to make a stamp. The birthday of the 'Tiflis Unika' is considered to be the 20th day of June 1857.
Nikolay Kohanov, the manager of the postal district in the Caucasus and beyond the Caucasus, succeeded in this respect. The energetic official initiated the innovation and achieved the implementation of his plan, 'beating' the metropolitan authorities in this.
The stamp itself is of great philatelic value today, not only because it was, in fact, the first postage stamp of the Russian Empire. For the first time in world practice, the product was completely made by stamping on paper. The toothless stamp has a square shape, the color is yellowish, and the back side is marked with stationery glue.
The image contains both the city symbolism in the form of the coat of arms of Tiflis, and the heraldic symbol of the Russian Empire ‒ the double-headed eagle.
Looking at a copy from the catalog of the philatelic exhibition 'Moscow-97', where two copies of 'Unika' were exhibited, an interesting feeling arises. It's as if you're looking not at a brand in its classical sense, but at an embossed wafer, which, however, is represented in the original name of the product ‒ 'paper stamp printing, which has the properties of a wafer'.
And in the generally accepted classification, the 'Tiflis Unika' occupies a special position. Some experts consider it a local issue, while others consider it just the first issue of the Tiflis city post. Mr. V. A. Lyapin generally calls 'Unika' 'speculative-fantastic', and only S. M. Blechman believes that 'Tiflis Unika' is the first state brand of Russia. This is indicated by the date of its release and the fact that Tiflis was legally part of the Russian Empire at that time.
One way or another, but at the famous philatelic online auction 'David Feldman' in 2019, one of the four copies of the Tiflis rarity was bought by an unknown lucky person for almost half a million euros.
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