Klaipėda 1958

This is a full set of the Soviet souvenir sheets commemorating the 100 years of Russian postage stamp, cancelled in Клайпеда /  Klaipėda, Lithuania SSR. Both souvenir sheets still have gum on the back which tell us that all the postmarks on them are actually CTOs most probably privately ordered since there wasn't any commercial mass production of CTO in Klaipėda as far as I know.

Recent Acquisitions

As the face value of the recent Lithuanian souvenir sheets go up, it is more and more difficult to get nice cancelled copies. Some of them have a total face value of 5.36 Euro / 18 Litas, which is more than a oversized priority registered mail exceeding 20 g sent to Asia or America. I recently got some nice modern cancelled souvenir sheets so I thought it would be nice to post it here to refresh a bit from old items I usually post.

2012 Year of the Museums, postmark: Vilnius 2013

2012 Baltic Railway Bridges, postmark Vilnius 2013

2009 1000th Anniversary of Lithuania, postmark: Vilnius 2010

2007 1000th Anniversary of Lithuania, postmark Vilnius 2008

2007 Nature of the Sanctuaries of Čepkeliai and Kotra, postmark: Vilnius 2008

Vilnius 1985 - J.S. Bach

It took me a 4 years to find a copy of this souvenir sheet cancelled in Lithuania buried among millions of Moscow CTOs

Today I saw an article on a newspaper talking about an iconic portrait of the German composer J.S. Bach being returned home to Leipzig, Germany. Conveniently, I actually do have a Bach related cover so I thought I would post here on this blog. This is a registered cover sent in 1985 from Вильнюс / Vilnius, Lithuania SSR to Warstein, West Germany. The souvenir sheet of J.S. Bach has been issued on the occasion of the 300 years anniversary of the artist's birthday. The curious thing is that the sender's last name Finkelšteinas, the Lithuanian -as ending form of the German noun Finkelstein, sounds rather more German than the recipient of the letter. I'm wondering if this person is somehow related to Ozeris Finkelšteinas, a Lithuanian Jewish politician during the prewar republic.

The 25th anniversary of the Baltic Way 2014

Issued on 23 August 2014, 30000 copies

I'm not a big fan of modern Lithuanian postage stamps but this one caught my eyes because the attractive design. It is a souvenir sheet commemorating the 25th anniversary of the 1989 Baltic Way (Baltijos Kelias in Lithuanian), also called the Baltic Chain. It was a peaceful mass demonstration involving over 2 million people forming a human chain of 670 km stretching from Tallinn, Estonia to Vilnius, Lithuania via Riga, Latvia. This has been one of the major event that drove the political atmosphere towards the independence of the three Baltic Republics.
This souvenir sheet is a joint issue with other Baltic Republics. The denomination of the stamps are in Lithuanian Litas and Euros because Lithuania has joined the Euro in 01.01.2015, 3 months after the issue of this sheet.

Prienai 1994

This is a small souvenir sheet commemorating the 100th postage stamp of Lithuania, cancelled in June 16 1994 in Prienai main post office. It is a small town just 40 km south of Kaunas, according to Wikipedia, first mentioned in historical record as early as 1502. The face value of the sheet is 10 Litas but it was sold at the price of 12 Litas which you can see on the right upper corner of the sheet. The design of the stamp has also been used for the first set postage stamps after the restoration of the independence of Lithuania in 1990.

Naujoji Vilnia 1940

A souvenir sheet commemorating the return of Vilnius from Poland in 1939. It is cancelled in 1940 as "N.Vilnia2", which is the post office of the postal district 2 of Naujoji Vilnia. This town is just about 5km east of Vilnius along the Vilnia/Wilija river.