Iran-Persia, Ghajar Covers and Postal History, Classic Specialized Catalogue 1868-1925
By Iraj Eftekhar, 2003


The author has collected Iranian (Persian) stamps and postal history for over 50 years and he always marvelled at their rarity, value, quantity, variety, reprints and forgeries, and wondered which stamp and cover should be his buying priority. He had many other questions that could not be obtained from any experts at the time.
It is a part of Persian culture that certain experiences and knowledge that cannot be learned in school or read in a book were kept secret, and were only passed from father to son, or from a master to an accepted student who gained acceptance through hard work and by winning of the trust of his master.
This practice and belief made him study of Persian stamps almost impossible for collectors, especially those who were not from Iran. Also as part of Persian tradition, especially in the 19th century, hardly anything was documented or kept on record.
Keeping a comprehensive record of the quantity of stamps was the last priority of the disorganized and corrupt governments’ employer and employee menu, especially if the printing had been done locally and was not assigned to a foreign printer outside the country.
Another problem was the scarcity of materials from time to time, such as paper and dye for the variety of colors. For example, five thousand of a certain issue of ten stamps in a set was ordered by the postal authority. After two or three thousand issues were made, some of the imported dyes may have run out when other colors were still plentiful.
Due to the lack of an additional budget for purchasing dyes, the available colors were mixed and used for other denominations: some good examples are the early Lions issues, especially the 5Krans bronzes, for which the initial order was about two to three thousand of each, but due to the lack of selected original colors it is not clear how many were really printed. Therefore, red and violet bronze seem to be issued much less.
This type of practice misled many Iranian postal historians, especially those who found the original documents showing the order of certain quantities by the post Ministers. In reality, those number issuances, for one reason or the another, never materialized, but most historians always refer to those numbers, and have passed the information to the new generations without any thought to their accuracy (or lack thereof).
The best rule is, if you are monitoring a certain stamp, and you have a hard time finding it mint, used, on waybills or covers for a long period of time, but it is mentioned in books or bulletins as a proof referring to the recorded documents for its large quantities of issuance, it is better to tear out that page and dispose of it.
A few times in the past, the total ordered issues were not delivered by the European printers due to a disagreement between Persian postal authorities and printers regarding the inconsistency of the ordered stamps quality, color and so on, or internal disturbances and war, which caused a few issues to only be partially delivered.
Also, a change of government or lack of a budget for payment forced the unpaid printers to stop short of the total ordered quantities, which caused the total number of stamps not to be unequal to the number recorded in the documents within the postal archives.
In addition, the invasion of cities by foreign forces or local rebellions caused the destruction of the stock of the captured post offices between 1911 to 1922, which greatly effected the total of the quantities recorded and the real quantities left for postal usage. A good example is when in September 1911 the Russian took over the city of Tabriz and Tabriz post office, and the most of Ahmad Shah stock of small pale face issues disappeared. These stamps never showed up in any markets for sale and are very hard to find. They were probably burned and destroyed.
All of the above factors, plus many reprints and forgeries of Ghajar's stamps and the lack of comprehensive books (except recently the Lions of Iran and Standard Philatelic Catalogue-Iran Qajar Dynasty by Mr. Mehrdad Sadri, Revenue stamps of Iran by Mr. Sasan Baharaeen and Mr. Gordon Brooks, and Postal Marking of Iran by Mr. F. Farahbakhsh, and Mr. Hassan Shaida, which are a great credit to the Persian Philately and caused a spark of collecting Persian stamps) discouraged almost all foreign dealers and collectors to collect or buy and sell Persian stamps, and consequently Persian philately does not receive the recognition it deserves and their true values have not yet been discovered.
Also after 1980, Iran’s poor economy and lack of adequate budget for collecting classic Persian stamps by Iranian collectors in Iran (which are about 93% of the total of the collectors) kept the prices in check, and compared to many other countries, Persian stamps and covers are a hidden treasures and a bargain which sooner or later will be discovered.
In this book, the value of each cover is mainly determined by the rarity and importance of that particular cover in Persian postal history in replacement of the recognized and highly publicized popular covers by a few very well known collectors and the dealers in the past. In this way it makes the collector aware, instead of being misguided, and also they will find out that there are still many undiscovered valuable covers which have not yet been rounded up by only a few privileged and the "known expert" collectors.
In the past, those "known collectors" only publicized their favourite issues, which were kept out of reach of the general collecting public. They only changed hands in closed circuit, which prevented the recognition of other rare and important stamps and covers in the eyes of many other collectors.
This kind of practice and manipulation depressed the demand and the value of many other rare and more important stamps and covers, and again aroused confusion and mistrust in many collectors.
A good example are the Reza Shah Zeppelin covers, which at the time were flown out of Iran, and thus out of reach of "known collectors" for bargain prices to begin, regardless of their importance in our postal history and their great rarity (only about ten exist) eliminated from known collectors collections. Many collectors do not know much about them, and so far they have been collected by foreign collectors at auction prices of $3500.- to $4500.- which is a fraction of their real value if compared with other country's Zeppelin covers of the same rarity.
If this book guides the collectors of the Persian philately in the right direction for the collecting of rare Persian covers, then the cost, time and effort I put into producing it has not been in vain. I would like to say that regardless of many years of collecting, studying, and intense research, I am still a student of Persian philately and there are bound to be some mistakes and have shortcomings which I hope will be understood.