New exhibition reveals ground-breaking technology that revolutionised Britain and the post forever28/2/2022
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The world of philately in all its splendour - Heinrich Koehler's spring auction has many unique collections and valuable rarities (21-26 March 2022).
The time will soon come again: from 21 to 26 March 2022, Germany's oldest stamp auction house Heinrich Koehler invites you to its traditional spring auction. The programme includes an exceptional range of rare and valuable stamps, covers and collections. In addition to an impressive variety in the main catalogue, another seven special catalogues offer highlights with rarities of national and international philately and postal history. Collectors from all over the world are eagerly awaiting the starting signal and one can assume that the noticeably high demand in recent auctions will continue in 2022 with such excellent material being offered. Tony Shields from Shields Stamps shared his passion for the Antarctic and philately in the recent PTS Handbook, you can read it here. He will also be heading to the Antarctic convention in Hobart later in the year where he will be one of the only philatelic retailers and you can hear more about this from his on our new PTS Trade Vlog which is set to launch this week. Sign up to the newsletter here.
Judit Szendrei stamp artist’s new exhibition titled MoCoMo will be opened on January 29, 2022 in the Stockwood Gallery, Luton under the auspices of Culture Trust Luton and with the support of Liszt Institute Hungarian Cultural Centre.
“The world’s most valuable stamp has been bought for $8.3m by Stanley Gibbons, which plans to offer investors a chance to buy fractional ownership of the unique asset.” Financial Times (9 June 2021)
On Monday 8th November the world’s most expensive stamp, the 1c Magenta, will be going on display as part of a free exhibition hosted by Stanley Gibbons, the world’s longest standing stamp merchant. Stanley Gibbons has created a series of exhibits around the 1c Magenta and its history displayed on the gallery floor of its head office at 399 Strand, London. Visitors can discover the full story of the stamp, and its owners, from schoolboys to shoe designers via governments and murderers. They will also be able to discover other members of this rare stamp’s philatelic family tree and join in the trend of signing the back with our communal wall mural. The exhibition will also introduce a limited-edition artwork of the 1c Magenta, by London-based sculptor Guy Gee. Renowned for exploring the merging boundaries between design and contemporary art Guy Gee has been working with Stanley Gibbons on a number of projects as an extension of his “Terrence Stamps” series. The Magenta piece will be the first exclusive launch from this collaboration. The exhibition will be open to the general public every Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 8th November to 17th December. There are also Saturday openings on November 20th and the 4th and 18th December. Opening times are 11.00 – 18.00 and the full address for Stanley Gibbons head office is 399 Strand, London, WC2R 0LX. ABOUT THE 1 CENT MAGENTA There are any number of 'unique' philatelic items, but only one which is accepted as being 'The World's Rarest Stamp'. The 1856 British Guiana ONE CENT black on magenta is indeed unique in that all other contenders for the title are errors or varieties of more widely available stamps or have been rendered 'unique' by their postmarks or postal use. It was first discovered by a local schoolboy, 12-year-old L Vernon Vaughan, amongst some family papers in 1873; he soaked it off and placed it briefly in his collection, before selling it to a local collector Neil R McKinnon for the sum of six shillings. Vaughan was apparently convinced that he would be able to find a better example of the stamp, but no one ever has. A few years later McKinnon sold his collection to a Liverpool stamp dealer Thomas Ridpath, for £120 and Ridpath subsequently sold the ONE CENT on to the renowned collector Philipp la Renotière von Ferrary, an Austrian living in Paris, for an undisclosed sum, believed to be around £40. Ferrary died in 1917, intending to leave his collection to the Postal Museum in Berlin. However, it was confiscated by the French Government as part of Germany’s war reparations and sold in a series of auctions between June 1921 and November 1925, with the ONE CENT going under the hammer on 6 April 1922, when it was bought by Arthur Hind, a British-born American millionaire for a total sum of £7343 including taxes, making it the highest price ever paid for a single postage stamp and leading to it being widely regarded as 'The World’s Rarest Stamp'. Hind died in 1933 and after a legal battle between his wife and his estate, the stamp passed to Mrs Hind, who attempted to sell in London in 1935 when it failed to reach its reserve. It was finally sold for a sum believed to be around $45,000 in 1940 to an anonymous buyer who was eventually revealed to be Frederick Small, an Australian living in the United States. His name did not become known until the stamp was next sold in 1970, but it was exhibited on a very few occasions, most famously at the Stanley Gibbons Catalogue Centenary Exhibition at the Royal Festival Hall, London, in 1965, the programme for which quoted a valuation of £200,000. This proved to be reasonably accurate, because when the stamp sold in New York on 24 March 1970 as part of the ‘Great’ collection it reached the equivalent of $280,000, the buyer being an investment syndicate one of whom was stamp dealer Irwin Weinberg. Ten years later Mr Weinberg, on behalf of the syndicate, again offered the stamp for sale at Robert A Siegel of New York and this time, including commission, the sum paid totalled $935,000. At first the name of the new owner was again a mystery but was eventually revealed to be John E du Pont, heir to the Du Pont Chemicals fortune. In 1997 du Pont was convicted of murder and spent the rest of his life in prison, dying on 9 December 2010. For most of its 30 years in du Pont’s ownership the stamp was in storage, but an extensive promotional ‘tour’ took place before it went under the hammer again, this time at Sotheby’s New York salerooms on 17 June 2014. This time the selling price was slightly more than ten times its previous peak, the buyer paying a total of $9,480,000. The new owner was shoe designer Stuart Weitzman. Over the next seven years the ONE CENT black on magenta remained in the limelight, being widely exhibited until it once again returned to the auctioneer’s rostrum, also at Sotheby’s in New York, on 8 June 2021, when it achieved a total price of $8,307,000. The buyer was Stanley Gibbons Ltd. who had proudly shown the stamp at its Catalogue Centenary Exhibition 56 years earlier, stating its value to be £200,000. Announcing the purchase, Stanley Gibbons stated that the ONE CENT black on magenta would once more be returning to the UK, where it would be made available for public viewing at its flagship store at 399 Strand, London. In addition, Stanley Gibbons also announced its intention to make ownership of the item, in part at least, available to a much wider audience through shared ownership – a concept which has become increasingly popular in recent years and will hopefully create greater enjoyment of this rarest of philatelic artefacts for a far greater number of people. For more information see: www.showpiece.com Information supplied by PTS Member Stanley Gibbons David Feldman International Auctioneers announced the upcoming sale by auction on October 14 next of the fantastic Imperium collection of British Guiana, by far the most important and comprehensive assemblage of this famed British colony, one of the great classic collecting fields, ever presented for sale in a single auction. This unique and unreserved offering includes all of the items from the Grand Prix winning John E. du Pont collection sold by David Feldman S.A. in 2014, plus two of the most notable rarities that had been missing and several other pieces added to the collection over the ensuing years from both auction and private treaty purchases. The Imperium Collection was exhibited at the Jerusalem International Exhibition in 2016 where it was awarded the Grand Prix, as well as at Monacophil in 2017. This outstanding selection of world rarities, which are of extraordinary quality, boasts provenance such as, Count Ferrary, King Fuad, Burrus, Dale-Lichtenstein, Champion, Hind, Duveen, Townsend, Hubbard and of course du Pont. The collection is a pre-eminent study of the three key iconic British Guiana primitive stamps; the 1850 “Cotton Reels”, the 1852- 53 Waterlows, and the world-renowned 1856 Provisional stamps both on and off cover. Also included are a presentation of the pre-stamp period, the British Post office in British Guiana, Postage Dues, and the Inland Revenue issues. In particular, the legendary “Miss Rose” Cover, which is one of only two covers that exist with the 2 cents issue, and the unique “error of colour” or “2 cents instead of 12” cover, described by Robson Lowe in the 1963 Burrus auction catalogue as ‘as important as the 1856 “One-Cent on Magenta”’, which was the World’s most expensive stamp when recently sold at auction for $8.3m. Other highlights include a series of the 1852 “Tall Ships” issues of the One Cent and Four Cents in astounding quality, examples of the celebrated 1856 Four Cents on Magenta “Provisional” Issues as well as the rarer 1856 Four Cents on Blue. The Company commented: It is a great honour for the Company to have been entrusted with the unreserved offer for sale of this distinguished British Guiana collection, which is without doubt the most comprehensive we have ever presented, now eclipsing the John E. du Pont collection sold in 2014. It is decorated with great world rarities, including stamps of remarkable quality in the very scarce, and often fragile, primitive issues. It will be an auction of this territory which is unlikely to be equalled again for a generation, and a rare opportunity for any serious British Guiana collector to acquire elusive, unique and world-famous material. Indeed, as a collection at auction it is comparable in both stature and rarity to our offer of the legendary Kanai Mauritius in 1993,another one of the most significant territories of worldwide philately. Promotion in anticipation of the October 14 auction In the run-up to this prestigious auction and the availability of the auction catalogue, which is expected in September, David Feldman S.A. has a dedicated webpage for the Imperium Collection of British Guiana, where you can be kept informed of key information and important dates surrounding this historic sale, as well as high-resolution images of key items. For more information, visit: www.davidfeldman.com/the-imperium-collection-british-guiana The collection will also be presented at the Autumn Stampex Exhibition in London, from September 29th to October 2nd 2021; following the London show, the Collection will be taken to New York for viewing. The Collection then returns to Geneva in anticipation of its sale. The Imperium Collection of British Guiana is currently available to view in the online Museum of Philately website, having previously been kindly loaned for exhibition on this digital platform. Visit the site for further details: https://www.museumofphilately.com/collection/34 |
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