Now we come to the former Soviet Union (FSU) countries. When the various countries gained independence at the collapse of the Soviet Union, all re-plated with their own distinct styles between 1992 and 1996. Nearly all these countries suffered from an excess of mint unused plates going straight from the factory in Germany to collectors in Germany. These were then sold on as the genuine article. Just about all the mint first series after independence plates in collections are samples and they have never been to the country they represent. About half of the samples are of test designs and are wrong, the test design having never been adopted.
There is no such thing as a correct design mint plate that has come from the actual country it is made for as the FSU countries are very strict about not letting any plates out of their hands.
Moral: Mint German made FSU plates are always samples and often of the wrong design.
Georgia.
There are many samples from the first 1993 series with the original country flag and a few from the 1995 series with no flag. Some have no hyphen, some have the numerals before the letters, some have the wrong letters GEO, some have no security hologram and some have the wrong security hologram.
There are probably about 50 such samples in total in collections. This is just a few of them
The easy way to tell if it is an unused sample is from looking at the back of the plate. Some sellers have put holes in the plates and the holes look used.
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