$1M Stamp Album

Tuesday, 11 October 2016

Pages 86-87 i

PICK OF THE GREATEST COLLECTIONS

Here, in one spectacular display, are 53 of the rarest gems picked from the world's great stamp collections. LIFE's estimate of values is given, but because stamp economics is highly volatile the actual selling price might be higher or lower. Below, with the identification, are the names of owners or custodians (three owners who prefer anonymity are listed as " Atlanticus," "Pacificus" and " Arcticus"):

1 - Mauritius (British island east of Madagascar), 1848, earliest impression; Pacificus.
2 - Sweden, 1855, rarest stamp of Europe, error, should be bluegreen instead of yellow; Dr. Hans Lundberg, Toronto, Canada.
3 - Honduras, 1925, world's rarest airmail; Oscar Lichtenstein, Rumson, N.J.
4 - Great Britain, 1864, plate 77; British Museum.
5 - Mauritius, 1847; Queen Elizabeth.
6 - St. Louis, Mo., 1845, greenish paper, Postmaster Provisional (a stamp issued by a local U.S. postmaster before government -issued stamps); Raymond H. Weill Co., New Orleans.
7 - Switzerland, 1850, with complete frame around central cross not on later printings; Dr . Hans Leeman, Geneva.
8 - Moldavia, 1858; Philip Ward Jr., Philadelphia.
9 - Western Australia, 1854, Inverted Swan; Ward.
10 - Naples, 1860; Theodore Champion, Paris.
11 - Canada, 1868, on laid paper (on wove paper same stamp worth only $2) ; K. Bileski, Winnipeg, Canada.
12 - New Zealand, 1855; Maurice Burrus, Strasbourg, France.
13 - Newfoundland, 1919; Arcticus.
14 - Mauritius, 1848, with "pence" misspelled "penoe," earliest impression; Burrus.
15- Baden, 1851, color error, should be rose instead of blue-green; Champion.
16- Transvaal, 1869, dark-green tete-heche pair; Br itish Museum.
17- Great Britain, 1902; Robert J. Gill, Baltimore.
18- France, 1849, vermilion block, with tete-heche pair; Champion.
19- Hawaii, 1851, unused, Missionary (so called because it was commonly used by missionaries); Burrus.
20- Uruguay, 1858, tete-heche pair; Atlanticus.
21 - Zurich, 1843; Leeman.
22- Geneva, 1843, strip of three doublestamps; Leeman.
23- Uruguay, 1858, tete-heche pair; Atlanticus.
24-Bavaria, 1849, tete-heche pair in block of 12; Atlanticus.
25- British Guiana, 1852, block of four; Stolow, New York.
26- Egypt, 1926, block of four from sheet of 25 (price quotEll: l is for all 25); ex-King Farouk.
27- New South Wales, 1850; British Museum.
28- Moldavia, 1858, tete-heche pair ; estate of ex-King Carol of Rumania.
29- Natal, 1902; Champion.
30-Uniontown, Ala., 1861, two cents, Confederate Postmaster Provisional ; H.R. Harmer Inc., New York.
31 - Austria, 1856, 6-kreuzer, newspaper stamp; Champion.
32- Cape of Good Hope, 1861, four-pence blue, with one-penny error; Atlanticus.
33-Reunion, 1852; Champion.
34-Portuguese Guinea, 1881, overprinted Cape Verde stamps with one, through Portuguese post-office error, printed "Mozambique"; Champion.
35- Moldavia, 1858, unused; Champion.
36- Honduras, 1925, red air-mail overprint; Lichtenstein.
37- Basel, 1845, first stamp printed in multicolor; Leeman.
38- France, 1869, five francs, value omitted by error; Champion.
39-British Columbia, 1865; Atlanticus.
40- Saxony, 1851, error, should be gray instead of blue; Champion.
41 - Canada, 1851; Atlanticus.
42- British Guiana, 1856, printed on sugar wrapping paper; J. & H. Stolow.
43- Brazil, 1843, 30 reis pair together with 60 reis; estate of Y. Souren, New York.
44-Newfoundland, 1927, De Pinedo ; Mrs. Caroline Cromwell, New York.
45-:-Mauritius, 1847, unused; Champion.
46- Gold Coast, 1883, one penny on four pence; British Museum.
47-Spain, 1851, error, should be red instead of blue; British Museum.
48- Millbury, Mass., 1846, Postmaster Provisional; Weill Co.
49-Tuscany, 1860; Champion. 50-France,
1850, tete-heche pair; Champion.
51-Newfoundland, 1860, orange-vermilion; British Museum.
52-British Guiana, 1856, four cents, magenta, unused; Stolow.
53-Ceylon, 1859; British Museum.

Front cover iii

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8. Victoria, Australia, 1901;
9. South Australia, 1883;
10. Norway, 1925;
11. Liechtenstein, 1927;
12. Belgium, 1941;
13. Queensland, Australia, 1903;
14. Libia, 1930;

8. Victoria, Australia, 1901
Sc203 SG392 6d emerald $18 / $2

9. South Australia, 1883
Sc76a SG 1889 red-brown in Scott $1 / $2

10. Norway, 1925
Sc106 SG $8 / $16

11. Liechtenstein, 1927
Sc-B3 SG $6 / $5

12. Belgium, 1941
Sc-B291 SG 40c / 40c

13. Queensland, Australia, 1903
Sc125a SG There are two versions, the difference being the size of the "Queensland" inscription, either 18mm or 17½mm. Both are priced at $30 / $7.

14. Libia, 1930
Sc-B25 SG78 $2 / $11

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