Tag Archives: Bechuanaland

December 28, 2017 · 8:00 am

December 2017 Auction Report

Grosvenor managed to come up with a couple of Jubilee gems in their November 29th sale, which unfortunately I got outbid on. Lot 214 was a complete pane of the Bechuanaland Protectorate overprint on the 4d. This is the third example I have seen so far (ignoring the different settings) and it sold for £500 plus commission. Lot 232 followed soon after; a complete pane of the British Levant 4pi on 10d which sold for £920 plus hammer and is the only example I have seen so far (so I should have probably bid more…).

Elsewhere, David Feldman in their Jubilee auction on December 9th had a scarce Mafeking cover (lot 60136) with a pair of the 6d on 2d green & red Jubilees which sold for £1’300 plus 20% commission.

And lot 2126 in Cavendish’s December 6th auction was a group of Boer war covers which included a scarce 1s green & carmine franking with two examples along with a 5d pair on a cover (the 83rd cover I have recorded with a 1s green & carmine franking). It realised £480 plus commission.

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May 24, 2016 · 6:33 pm

April 2016 Ebay Report

Top 5 Items of the Month

81.76April seemed to be a quiet month and didn’t bring any particularly interesting items but I’ve managed to find a few to write about.

First up is an attractive parcel post label sent registered from Ilfracombe with a reasonably high franking of 1s7d, which sold for £81.76.

27.25This Niger Coast Oil Rivers 1s green has a neat Benin River cds in red, but what is of more interest is the break in the first “R” of “RIVERS”. Whether it is constant or not I’m not sure. I’m currently a member of the GB Overprint Society, but have a backlog of journals to go through to glean more information on the overprints on Jubilee stamps. It sold for £27.25.

 

123.00This stamp was a bit of a surprise at how much it realised. Obviously the “TATI / BECHUANALAND” cancel is scarcer than I realised. It realised £123.

Another item of cancellation interest is the cover below with a machine cancellation. Not the scarcest type by any means, but it sold for a solid £35.65.

And finally only 1 bidder was interested in the cover at the bottom at£25.74. Sent underpaid by 1 1/2d, it was sent to Munich then redirected to Paris before being sent to Glasgow. The colours in the 1/2d vermilion are slightly faded which put me off, but a collectable item nonetheless.

35.6525.74 (1 bid)

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January 31, 2016 · 5:57 pm

November 2015 Ebay Report

Top 5 Items of the Month

37.78Yikes. Doesn’t time fly over Christmas… Back in November there was a few items that I would like to have added to my collection but managed to miss out on all of them for various reasons. First up is a Penny Postage Jubilee insert sent with a 1/2d vermilion and cancelled by the special South Kensington cds. Not only is it uncommon for the insert to have been used as a postcard, but the added interest here is the manuscript “Nature of a letter / 1d to pay”. I think a collector of Exhibition items would have been willing to pay more than the £37.78 it realised.

18.93iNext up is a cover sent during the Boer War with a 2d green and carmine tied by the Field Post Office British Army South Africa cds. It was sent to forwarding agents Holt & Co showing their cachet and redirected within the UK. A good buy at 18.93.

30.50Uprated newspaper wrappers and postcards with the Bechuanaland 1/2d are reasonably common, but nevertheless this attractive example sent from Ramoutsa only sold for £30.50.

The cover below is a scarce usage of the Board of Trade departmental perfin. Strangely still not listed by Stanley Gibbons, these official stamps are particularly difficult to find on complete cover as they were often used for printed matter resulting in fronts being more easily available. I was hoping that no one would notice the perfin from the thumbnail image but alas, it sold for £128.80.

128.80

And finally we have a quite scarce single franking of the 4d green and brown paying 2d internal postage and 2d registration fee. They are much more often seen paying the foreign letter rate to South America. It sold for £11.59.

11.59

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September 6, 2015 · 3:03 pm

July 2015 Ebay Report

Top 5 Items of the Month

Baltasound mailbag sealWell I hope you have been enjoying the summer as much as I have. Holidays and stamp exhibitions (and some work in between) have taken up a lot of my time and energy, so excuse this post for being over a month late.

I start with a 6d purple on rose with a cancel I have featured before on my blog; the Baltasound mail bag seal. As it was meant to stamp wax, the strike in ink on the stamp creates negative impression. As far as I know, no covers exist, so it is likely that stamps like this were created by favour. I’ve only ever seen it on the Jubilee issue, and even so, not on the values issued after 1887 such as the 4 1/2d, 10d, 1/d blue-green and 1s green & carmine. This example sold for £42.00.

72.18 julThis usage of the 1s green and carmine and 1/2d blue-green on a parcel address label sold for £72.18, despite the fact that it’s a bit grubby and not particularly nicely cancelled. A strong price in my opinion even in view of the scarcity of 1s usages.

British Bechuanaland postal stationery card VryburgVying for bargain of the month is this British Bechuanaland postal stationery card sent from Vryburg and uprated with a 1/2d vermilion. By no means scarce, it’s certainly more valuable than the £18.65 it sold for.

Office of Works with chamfered O varietyThis was another good buy. This Office of Works overprint on the 1/2d vermilion is showing the variety “chamfered O” on the O in OFFICIAL. Catalogued by Stanley Gibbons at £220 , it sold for only £10.51.

And finally we have one the only item I have bought off eBay in the last couple of months. Destination mail definitely seems to be a favourite of mine (as my tag cloud on the right hand side will prove). Sent to Grenada, I bought this stamped to order postal stationery envelope uprated with Jubilees for £18.65. Bargain!

Destination mail to Grenada

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April 7, 2015 · 7:36 pm

March 2015 Ebay Report

85.20I hope that everyone who had the opportunity had a pleasant Easter holidays. We start this month off with a couple of items where I was unsuccessful bidder. First up is an 1890 Uniform Penny Postage Jubilee envelope sent to Canada, unusually uprated with a 4d and a 4 1/2d Jubilee paying three times the UPU rate plus registration fee. Apart from being an attractive franking, it has the added interested of a Canadian customs instructional label. It sold for £85.20.

69.50Next we have a rare usage of a “Manchester Philatelic Society War Fund” charity label which I believe was to raise funds for the Boer war. It’s actually the first example I have seen on cover and it’s extra nice that it has the 1/2d vermilion and the 1/2d blue-green. It has some little faults, but I should have bid it up past the £69.50 it realised. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it in a dealer’s stock at £150+.

1887 3d purple on yellow offset varietyThis interesting variety sold for only 40.62. It shows an offset, caused by freshly printed sheets being stacked on top of each other and the wet ink being pressed into the reverse of the sheet above. This is not a common variety on the 3d but would have sold for much more if a complete impression of the stamp could be seen.

69.95

 

 

 

 

 

 

This Bechuanaland Protectorate 1/2d vermilion with double “Protectorate” overprint sold for a strong £69.95

46.94And we finish off with an item that I featured in my June 2012 eBay report; a 1s double rate single franking to New Zealand. Back then it sold for £50.29. This time it sold for £46.94.

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January 27, 2015 · 9:56 pm

December 2014 Ebay Report

Top 5 Items of the Month
27.00 mmNow that it’s the end of January, I’ve finally had the time to catch up with what I should have done at Christmas time. So without further ado, we kick off this month with “the one that always gets away”; the British Bechuanaland overprint on the 1/2d vermilion with control letter. This was bought for nothing. Only £27 for this unmounted mint example. Not only did I miss it on eBay, but it was bought by the dealers Deverell & MacGregor and was sold before I even knew it! Aaagh! One day…

17.80Next up is this rather scruffy looking cover is only the second cover I have found with a Jubilee franking going to Trinidad (there’s also a parcel tag going to Trinidad worth a mention). £17.80 was all that this one fetched because of its condition.

295.95Although this next cover just about qualifies for this blog because only one of the five stamps are a Jubilee, I couldn’t let this beautiful cover pass by without mentioning it. For a little extra interest, there is even the manuscript “Posted out of course”, which means it would have been dropped in a letter box instead of being taking to the post office to be recorded. It sold for £295.95.

16.24There’s nothing particularly special about this cover, but I just thought it was worth a mention because it’s something I should have added to my collection because it’s a nice example of the 4oz letter rate and the registration fee paid by two 2d green and red which is not a common rate at all. It sold for £16.24.

9.34This 2 1/2d has a rather fine strike of the Aden squared circle ds. This stamp would have been attached to a cover posted on board a ship and cancelled when it was sorted in Aden. It sold for £9.34.

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December 10, 2014 · 12:30 pm

November 2014 Ebay Report

Top 5 Items of the Month
November was an interesting month for Jubilees on eBay. Unfortunately I missed all of it due to work commitments. So I cheated and spent an hour or so searching through the “Sold” listings.

115.48First off we have a rare multiple of the Mafeking surcharge on the 1/2d vermilion. Not expensive at all at £115.48.

Secondly we had these two Zululand 1/2d pairs on pieces with near enough complete cancellations of Nondweni and Nkandhla. Very scarce. Sold for £45.01 and £53.51 respectively.45.01 + 53.51

398.90Which is nothing compared to this Bechuanaland Protectorate 1/2d. Catalogued by SG at £50, the clean strike of the Tati cds is the reason this sold for £398.90. Astonishing.

66.00I tried by best to do a 1/2d vermilion “clean sweep”, alas this 6d pair was too interesting to pass up. Cancelled by two strikes of the Ben Nevis cds, intense bidding saw this sell for £66.00

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August 18, 2013 · 8:09 pm

Spoilt For Choice At Spink

Bechuanaland 1889 4d on 0.5d vermilion with rpence omittedSpink’s Collector Series auction in London on 9th to 11th of July 2013 had a plethora of items of interest for the Jubilee collector. Lot 239 was a Bechuanaland Protectorate 1889 4d on ½d vermilion with “rpence” omitted. Catalogued at £6’000, the upper estimate was at full catalogue (when commission is taken into account) at £4’000-5’000. Not surprisingly it sold for less, but £3’200 hammer (or 64% of catalogue incl. commission) is still a good price. There were many other items of interest from Bechuanaland including a nice selection of covers not too often seen.

Niger Coast cover with Old Calabar rubber cancelThe sale also featured the “Dunrovin” collection of Niger Coast. There were many of the provisional overprints, but the highlight for me was lot 1085; a cover with a ½d vermilion, 1d lilac pair and 2 ½d purple on blue all tied by Old Calabar rubber cancels, which according to the description is the only known example of this cancel on cover. It sold for £1’400 (plus commission).

And the items of interest concluded with a several lots of Zululand Specimen and Cancelled overprints, with the Cancelled overprint set (lot 2017) selling for £1’200 (plus commission)

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February 28, 2013 · 11:50 pm

February 2013 Ebay Report

Top 5 Items of the Month

66.00This attractive philatelic cover sold for £66. What drove it to this price was the use of fiscal stamps, although more likely than not they aren’t paying for the postage for the envelope to Germany. Still, they are uncommon on cover and quite collectable.

71.09Another attractive cover was this one to Mexico. Franked with four 4d green & brown and a 1/2d vermilion, the stamps are paying four times the single rate as well as a 1/2d late fee. Multiple usages of the 4d are pretty scarce. It sold for £71.09.

59.55

22.45

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These 9d and 5d Zululand overprints sold for £59.55 and £22.45 respectively. Nicely cancelled examples aren’t scarce by any means, but covers are very rare (very few bearing Jubilee overprints have come to the open market in the last 10 years).

32.00This cover from Gaberones in British Bechuanaland fetched a measly £32.00. Most probably due to the toning on the envelope, and the fact that the 6d is probably the easiest to find on cover as it was the rate to England.

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January 31, 2013 · 12:14 am

January 2013 Ebay Report

Top 5 Items of the Month

165.95We start of this month with Bechuanaland Protectorate. This attractive example has the larger and scarcer “Protectorate” overprint (19mm wide). In used condition, it is catalogued by Stanley Gibbons at £425. It fetched a good price at £165.95.

 

 

82.62Next is this registered British Levant cover. It features a pair of 5d Jubilees cancelled by the “REGISTERED / SMYRNA” oval ds, which is much scarce than the standard cds. Even though it is slightly toned and has a portion of the address crossed out, it sold for £82.62.

91.59This 1s green single franking is one of the more scarce (only the 1s green and carmine and 9d purple and blue are more so). This one is paying four times the UPU rate of 2 1/2d to France plus a 2d registration fee. It sold well for £91.59.

28.51This attractive cover quite appealed to me, but not enough to pay more than the £28.51 that it realised. As you can see, it commemorates the anniversary of the accession to the throne of Queen Victoria and the Coronation of King George VI, and bears stamps from Queen Victoria, King Edward VII, King George V, King Edward VIII and King George VI. A very attractive souvenir.

216.08As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, ALWAYS BUY OFFICIALS WITH A BPA OR RPS CERTIFICATE!! I have my doubts about this one, but someone still paid £216.08…

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