An Arpin Philately initiative – Dealing in Quality Stamps since 1969
One of the world’s most famous and valuable stamps will soon be up for sale. Sotheby’s New York recently announced that it will be auctioning off the 1856 British Guiana Magenta to the highest bidder on June 17th, 2014. This «Holy Grail» of philately is expected to go for an estimated $10-20 million USD! Why, you may say, would anyone pay so much for an itty, bitty piece of paper?
Last february 22nd Brigham sold their Large Queens collection, which was in all likelihood the most complete collection of its kind. In it was the infamous Scott #32, the green 2¢ Large Queen on laid paper. There is only 3 known copies of this stamp (the third copy was discovered last year) and the one in question is so far the finest known. The 2014 Unitrade catalogue estimated this Used Fine copy at $250,000, Brigham Auctions were estimating that the copy would sell for $900,000. The winning bid was finally $475,000, not so bad for a single stamp!
In our last article we learned that engraving was the method of choice for printing early Canada stamps. However, in the 1950’s, Canada Post also introduced printing by lithography. While lithography has been around for a long time, it was only in those years that it started becoming really popular in commercial printing-mainly because it was fast, less expensive than engraving and produced a crisp, clean image.
One way lithography differs from engraved printing is that it is a « planographic » printing method. In other words, printed from a flat or smooth printing plate surface, as opposed to the recessed, grooved lines that engraving produces.
If you examine the description of each Canadian stamp in your Unitrade Specialized Catalogue of Canadian Stamps, you will notice that the printing method of each issue is always stated in the heading. Many different printing methods exist; this article will explain how engraved stamps are printed. However, let’s start with a little history lesson!
One of the biggest challenge in philately is to find the stamps to fill your album pages. Practically every albums (Lighthouse, Davo, Unity, etc.) list their stamps by year and they can’t use the Scott classification, because the copyright belongs to Scott. We do get a lot of request like: “I need all the stamps of the year 1996 to fill my Lighthouse album”. So this can be quite a challenge to retrieve every stamps you need and then pick them one by one.
That’s why we felt the need to create Year Sets. So now it can as easy as one click to retrieve all the stamps you need for a given year.
On July 16th, 2013, the Vincent Graves Greene Foundation announced that it had issued a certificate of authenticity for a newly discovered 2¢ Large Queen on Laid Paper (Scott #32). Previously, it was thought that only two examples of this rare Canada stamp existed.
According to the VGG Foundation: “The submitted stamp was purchased by the collector early in 2013. It came from a sales circuit book (a book containing stamps for sale which is passed among prospective buyers in a geographical circuit). “The cost was very modest” (thought to be $5).
It seems that one of the most interesting subjects in the world of philately is the value of rare stamps. Many articles have been written on the subject, including one by our own company president in 2007, entitled, What are the most famous rare and valuable stamps? However, since then, a few new sales and records have been made. This article lists the 5 most valuable single stamp issues in the world according to the latest research we could find.
So you’ve inherited a stamp collection from Uncle Bob and you don’t know what to do with it? How to sell my stamp collection? Well, don’t despair! This article will help you to decide the best way to go about selling the stamps (if you decide you don’t want to become a collector yourself, of course).
In addition to collecting individual stamps, many people also specialize in collecting different forms of postal material. One form of postal material is a First Day Cover. Although interest in collecting modern First Day Covers has somewhat diminished nowadays, it is still quite popular in many circles. So, what is a First Day Cover (FDC)? What is the difference between a FDC and a regular cover?