It was eight years before they were heard of again. To the surprise of the philatelic world, the Romanov Collection unexpectedly appeared for display and sale in New York in 1926. In the mid-thirties, it was put on exhibition again, this time in a restaurant in London’s High Holborn and then at Selfridges, the Oxford Street store. There, a twenty-four-hour security guard had to be established because of Bolshevik threats to destroy it.

Before the outbreak of the Second World War it again went to New York, once more to be sold. It was broken up, large sections going to individual buyers.

It was not until after the Russian Revolution that the second 925-item collection of proofs and essays of the Imperial collection had been found to exist. Richard Zarrins, Director of the Imperial State Printing Works and the man who had supervised the Romanov issue, formed it from the material left over after the Tsar had had his collection assembled. In 1967 – like the Tsar’s collection before them – the Zanins stamps reached America, to be sold by a New York dealer. After that, like Tsarina Alexandra and her four Grand Duchess daughters forty-eight years before, it vanished.

For the avid philatelist, it is a fascinatingly unique collection. For some, even worth committing crime to possess.

1

On the day that his attempted destruction began, Giuseppe Terrilli ordered the killing of three people. One had to be allowed to die slowly, as an example to other recruits who were not careful enough. It took five hours, for the last two of which the man became insane. It was a good example.