$1M Stamp Album

Tuesday, 11 October 2016

Page 85 - iii- Mauritius "Post Office" stamps on cover

Previous
This was sold on 1st December 2016 for €2M ($2.1M).
Described in LIFE as, "Stamps on $75,000 envelope … issued in 1847 by Postmaster of British island of Mauritius."

Printing plate

Image from Feldman

Looking first at the individual stamps, there were two values, the one penny red-brown and the two pence blue. There was a single printing plate with just one of each value and Wikipedia suggests that 500 copies of each stamp were printed.

Feldman states that there are only six known examples of the stamps on cover:

"Three of the covers are single frankings of the 1d value; one is in the British Library (Tapling Collection),
another in the Royal Collection (since 1904).
the third, known as the “Ball Envelope,” is ex Kanai, and was sold by [Feldman] in the last decade.
A single franking 2d cover to Bordeaux is in the German Postal Museum, [The French dealer Théophile Lemaire bought the Bordeaux letter bearing a single two pence stamp for £1,200, and sold it to the German dealer Philipp Kosack for £1,400. Kosack then sold it to the Reichspostmuseum in Berlin, Helen Morgan blog] while
the famous 1d + 2d franking, also to Bordeaux, was the highlight of the Kanai collection, and achieved the highest price ever obtained by a philatelic object, CHF 6’250’000, still the record for any philatelic cover.
Finally the Bombay cover" which Feldman is selling and prompted their post. This is the cover featured in the LIFE article.

Images for four of the six covers have been found so far.


1. Tapling Collection	2. the Royal Collection
image from the British Library	image from the Smithsonian National Postal Museum

img	img
3. the Ball Envelope	4. single 2d Bordeaux
image from	image from


5. 1d + 2d Bordeaux	6. the Bombay cover
image from Wikipedia	image from Feldman

Feldman provides a history of the Bombay cover,

"Its provenance includes its discovery in 1897 in an Indian bazaar, soon passing through the hands of dealer W.H. Peckitt to Vernon Roberts, later owned (1906) by Worthington, who sold it to Alfred F. Lichtenstein in 1917. It was considered one of the most important items of his collection.
When this cover was sold in 1968 as Lot 1 of the Dale-Lichtenstein collection, it brought an astounding $380,000 and ended up, a year later, in the hands of Raymond Weill.
Offered again at auction in 1989 as part of the Weill Brothers stock, it was bought in for CHF 2’600’000
and subsequently sold to Dr. Chan Chin Cheung, who held it until its sale in 1996 to Guido Craveri, who exhibited it in New York at Anphilex ’96 as one of the Aristocrats of Philately.
Subsequently sold to an unidentified private collector, and
soon to be offered by Private Treaty though our company, the “Bombay” cover remains the “ne plus ultra” of condition for this very rare classic issue, and offers as well a great deal of pride (and fame, if desired) for its next owner !"

The cover sold at Feldman for €2M ($2.1M), against an estimate of €3-5M.
The copper plate was also sold for €1.1M, estimate €2-3M.

Revaluation

I'll keep the score here.

Page 85 - ii - British Guiana 1c magenta

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To recap, LIFE describes the two entries on Page 85 as,

The face and the back of a $100,000 stamp, and
Stamps on $75,000 envelope … issued in 1847 by Postmaster of British island of Mauritius.

This page will deal with the first of those, the British Guiana 1c magenta. The image, right, is from the Wikipedia page on the stamp, as are most of the following details.

LIFE valued it at $100,000 in 1954, therefore making up 10% of the $1M Stamp Album.

It was last sold on 17th June 2014 for $9,480,000.

To quote Wikipedia,

"Only one copy of the 1c stamp is known to exist. It is in used condition and has been cut in an octagonal shape. A signature, in accordance with Dalton's policy, can be seen on the left hand side, along with a heavy postmark.

It was discovered in 1873 by a 12-year-old Scottish schoolboy, Louis Vernon Vaughan, in the Guyanese county of Demerara (whose postmark the stamp bears), amongst his uncle's letters. There was no record of it in his stamp catalogue, so he sold it some weeks later for six shillings to a local collector, N.R. McKinnon.

In 1878 McKinnon's collection was sold to a Liverpool stamp dealer, Thomas Ridpath, for £120.

Shortly afterwards, the same year, Thomas Ridpath sold the 1c to Philipp von Ferrary for about £150.
His massive stamp collection was willed to a Berlin museum but following Ferrary's death in 1917 the entire collection was taken by France as war reparations following the end of World War I.

Arthur Hind bought it during a series of fourteen auctions in 1922 for over $36,000 (reportedly outbidding three kings, including George V); on 6 April 1922, sale 3, lot 295, the stamp sold for 300,000 franc + 17½% tax (@48 frs to £1 = £7,343).

On 30 October 1935 it was offered for sale at Harmer Rooke & Co auction 2704, lot 26, where a bid of £7,500 was received from Percival Loines Pemberton. However the lot was withdrawn and returned to Mrs Scala (formerly Mrs Hind). In 1940, she offered it for private sale through the philately department of Macy's department store in New York City. It was purchased for $40,000 by Fred "Poss" Small, an Australian-born engineer from Florida, who had wanted to own the stamp since he first heard about it as a boy. In acquiring it, Small completed a full set of stamps from British Guiana.

In 1970, Small auctioned his entire stamp collection (estimated to be worth $750,000), and the 1c stamp was acquired by a syndicate of Pennsylvanian investors, headed by Irwin Weinberg, who paid $280,000 for it and spent much of the decade exhibiting it in a worldwide tour.

John E. du Pont bought it for $935,000 in 1980, setting the world's record for a single stamp price again. Subsequently it was believed to have been locked in a bank vault while its owner was in prison. Dupont died while still incarcerated on 9 December 2010.

It was sold from the DuPont estate on 17 June 2014 at a Sotheby's New York auction, sale number N09154, for $9,480,000, including buyer's premium. It took only two minutes to sell to an anonymous bidder, and was the fourth time the stamp had broken the world's record for a single-stamp bid; this time, the sale broke the 1996 record of $2,300,000 for the Treskilling Yellow, an 1855 Swedish stamp. The purchaser has since identified himself as shoe designer and businessman Stuart Weitzman who collected stamps as a child."

[Wikipedia accessed 11th October 2016]

Monday, 10 October 2016

Front Cover ii

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I'll pursue identification one row at a time.

1 Yeman, 1948;
2 unrecognized South Moluccas republic, 1952;
3 Latvia, 1932;
4 Eritrea, 1934;
5 Barbados, 1906;
6 Indonesia, 1946;
7 Armenia, 1921;

1. Yeman, 1948
Both Scott and Gibbons note that this stamp is part of as set designed to commemorate Yemen's admission to the UN but that it was not actually issued and they do not number it. A set of five stamps was found on ebay for $30 citing Michel #109-113.

2. unrecognized South Moluccas republic, 1952
Scott states, "It appears that stamps of the so-called republic of South Moluccas were privately issued and had no postal use. Accordingly, they are not recognized as postage stamps". Gibbons lists a set of Netherland Indies overprints but is similarly dismissive of any other issues. These stamps are on sale on ebay: the issue depicted is denominated 5r and that has not been found but a set of six stamps of the same design is priced at $5.

3. Latvia, 1932
Sc-B86 SG213 Semi-postal, $4.

4. Eritrea, 1934
Sc158 SG 199 $2 / $5

5. Barbados, 1906
Sc106 SG152 $13 / 30c

6. Indonesia, 1946
Sc15 SG? 30c

7. Armenia, 1921
Sc292 SG- $2

no. text
Sc SG narrative

Friday, 7 October 2016

Page 85

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Turning now to the expensive stamps, here's the first page of the article,

And here's the text,

"STAMP ALBUM WORTH $1,000,000

FOR FIRST TIME 'LIFE' BRINGS WORLD'S CLASSICS TOGETHER

For its size and weight the postage stamp above is the most valuable single object in the world. Costing only one cent when it was issued in 1856 by British Guiana, this stamp today could probably not be bought for less than $100,000 - 10 million times its original price. The envelope below, which has only two one-penny stamps on it, has a valuation just as incredible: $75,000.

Why anyone would pay such fantastic sums for such seemingly worthless scraps of paper is something that can be completely understood only by those avid hobbyists called stamp collectors, of whom there are 12 million in the U.S. alone. Rarity of a stamp together with its physical perfection are general basic standards of value. The rarity in many instances has been caused by inadvertent printing mistakes or "errors"- the wrong color of ink, an inverted center, a tete-beche (a single stamp upside down in relation to another on the same sheet). But rarity alone is not enough to give great value. To become one of the world's premier classics a stamp, like a woman, must have that ineffable some thing called "desirability" which, when a man sees it, makes him willing to give up his money, risk his reputation, commit theft or even murder to possess it. The British Guiana, for example, is not a beautiful stamp. It is dirty, its corners have been clipped off, the penned initials of the postmaster scar its face. True, the stamp is unique, the only one of its kind known to exist. Yet other more attractive stamps are unique. Its irresistible fascination for collectors is an enigma.

On the back (right, above) of the British Guiana are the marks of three owners, the fleur-de-lis of Count Philippe von Ferrary, the clover of Arthur Hind, the comet of the present owner. The name of the present owner is one of the world's best-kept secrets, anonymity being an idiosyncrasy of many collectors. He bought the British Guiana in 1940 through an agent, Finbar Kenny of J. and H. Stolow of New York. According to Kenny, not even the man's wife knows that he possesses it and LIFE had to negotiate through Kenny for permission to photograph it. LIFE does know who owns the Mauritius envelope below but has promised not to tell. It is the collector identified on the following pages by the pseudonym "Atlanticus."

The assemblage of rare and valuable stamps shown in this article is unparalleled in publishing and philatelic history. Never in the 114 years since the postage stamp was invented has such a collection been seen, even at the great exhibitions in London, Paris and New York. Because of a U.S. restriction, most of these stamps have never been seen in color reproduction in this country. Some have never even been photographed before, even in black and white. In 1952 the U.S. lifted some of its restriction on reproducing foreign stamps in color, and LIFE spent two years making up this album. All of the stamps, except those of the U.S. are shown here in actual size. LIFE' s estimate of their value is over a million dollars, based on past sales as well as present retail prices. But each stamp is so treasured by its owner that no one man could buy all of them at any price."

There are two items on the page, described as,
"The face and the back of a $100,000 stamp", and
"Stamps on $75,000 envelope were issued in 1847 by Postmaster of British island of Mauritius".

Front Cover i

Next

This improved scan of the front cover is courtesy of Photoshop's ingenious stitching of two A4 scans,

Page 102 explains the cover,

GUIDE TO THE COVER

LIFE's cover, crammed with 118 stamps, shows the universal scope of' the subject matter of stamps-war and peace, heroes and villains, religion and sex. With one exception these stamps can be bought by schoolboy collectors-the Falkland Islands Penguin costs $25, but the average cost for the others is about 30¢ apiece. Above is a reproduction of the cover with stamps keyed by number to the identification below.

These 118 stamps at a stated average of 30c are not part of the $1M album, but given that they include a Penny Black (they start at £50 and catalogue at several times that), it will probably prove necessary to identify and price them all. Here's the full list (thanks again to Adobe for Acrobat's OCR).

1 Yeman, 1948;
2 unrecognized South Moluccas republic, 1952;
3 Latvia, 1932;
4 Eritrea, 1934;
5 Barbados, 1906;
6 Indonesia, 1946;
7 Armenia, 1921;
8 Victoria, Australia, 1901;
9 South Anstralia, 1883;
10 Norway, 1925;
11 Liechtenstein, 1927;
12 Belgium, 1941;
13 Queensland, Australia, 1903;
14 Libia, 1930;
15 Siam, 1929;
16 Isle of Coo, 1930;
17 French Equatorial Africa, 1942;
18 Austria, 1922;
19 Spanish Morocco, 1928;
20 Spanish Guinea, 1909;
21 Horta, Azores, 1896;
22 Salvador, 1895;
23 Ethiopia, 1947;
24 Hawaii, 1894;
25 Marshall Islands, 1915;
26 Ionian Islands, 1859; 27 Indochina, 1942;
28 Azerbaijan, 1919;
29 St. Vincent, 1888;
30 Newfoundland, 1897;
31 Egypt, 1914;
32 Helgoland, 1876;
33 Panama, 1906;
34 Slovakia, 1944;
35 Bavaria, 1911;
36 Mexico, 1875;
37 Switzerland, 1930;
38 Fiume, 1920;
39 Bulgaria, 1937;
40 Netherlands, 1949;
41 Bolivar, department of Colombia, 1863;
42 World's first stamp, Penny Black, 1840;
43 Spain, 1854;
44 Saar, 1925;
45 North Borneo, 1894;
46 Poland, 1932;
47 Russia, 1913;
48 Persia, 1880;
49 North Ingermanland, short-lived anti-Soviet country, 1920;
50 Greece, 1937;
51 Portugal, 1928;
52 Curacao, 1942;
53 Jhalawar, India, 1887;
54 Guatemala, 1881;
55 Finland, 1941·;
56 Papua, 1938;
57 Paraguay, 1939;
58 French Congo, 1900;
59 Madagascar, 1942
60 Croatia, 1944;
61 Hejaz, 1916
62 Liberia, 1896;
63 Zanzibar, 1896;
64 Falkland Islands, 1933;
65 Palestine, 1941;
66 French India, 1942;
67 Honduras, 1903;
68 Lithuania, 1921;
69 Zelaya State, Nicaragua, 1912;
70 Virgin Islands, 1899;
71 Germany, 1928;
72 Malta, 1899;
73 French colonies, 1862;
74 Gambia, West Africa, 1886;
75 Kishangarh, India, 1904;
76 Papal States, 1867;
77 Danzig, 1921;
78 Spain, 1930;
79 Sweden, 1891;
80 Sarawak, 1875;
81 Argentina, 1858;
82 Nova Scotia, 1860;
83 Niger Coast, 1891;
84 Uruguay, 1897;
85 Hungary, 1946, 500,000,000,000,000,000 pengoes, highest denomination stamp ever issued;
86 Mecklenburg-Schwerin, 1864;
87 Iceland, 1930;
88 Mauritius, 1858;
89 Turks Islands, West Indies, 1889;
90 Sierra Leone, 1933;
91 Bosnia Herzegovina, 1912;
92 Oltre Giuba, Italian Somaliland, 1926;
93 St. Lucia, 1902;
94 Estonia, 1928;
95 Navanagar, India, 1880;
96 Aitutaki, 1920;
97 Jind, India, 1882;
98 Brazil, 1854;
99 Bahamas, 1875;
100 Cochin, India, 1933;
101 Modena, Italy, 1852;
102 Peru, 1873;
103 New Guinea, 1939;
104 Confederate States of America, 1863;
105 Luxembourg, 1935;
106 Nyassa, 1901;
107 Romania, 1937;
108 Costa Rica, 1863;
109 New Brunswick, 1860;
110 Italy, 1933;
111 Ukraine, 1923;
112 Crete,1905;
113 Zululand, South Africa, 1894;
114 Tripolitania, 1933;
115 Mozambique Company, East Africa, 1937;
116 Sirmur, India, 1899;
117 Japan, 1919;
118 San Marino, 1944.