Tajikistan

Tajikistan, Tadjikistan or Тоҷикистон, is a former Soviet republic in Central Asia.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Tajikistan declared independence in September 1991. 
 * Its first issue was released in May 1992, a single 50 kopeck stamp showing a carving of a rider on horseback. It was inscribed bilingually ТОҶИКИКСТОН and TADŽIKISTAN.
 * Later in 1992, both Tajikistan stamps and old Soviet definitives were surcharged with new values. To this writer, the Soviet surcharges with Тадж. are doubtful as being genuine since they are in odd values compared to the others in the time frame and the abbreviation is in Russian. Two surcharged Soviet definitives with ТОҶИКИКСТОН make much more sense.
 * In December 1995, the roman letter inscriptions were changed to read TAJIKISTAN.
 * 1997 saw the first issue with coded rates, "A" resurcharged on the previously 1995 surcharged carpet design.
 * In 2001, stamps reflected the currency change to dirhams/somoni with values often expressed with stop/periods or commas in the denominations.



Bogus issues
Beginning about 1998, topical sheetlets and souvenir sheets appeared. They are inscribed and denominated much like genuine stamps. Differences include that genuine stamps generally to have "ТОҶИКИКСТОН" larger than "TAJIKISTAN" while bogus issues are generally the other way around. Also, genuine stamps involve topics and subjects related to Tajikistan and bogus issues nearly all do not. You may be shocked to find that Ally McBeal and Marilyn Monroe were not natives of Tajikistan. Nonetheless, there are also disputed issues like the 2010 Bangkok Exhibition sheetlet.

See: The Golowes site pages covering Tajikistan bogus issues. 

