Specimen stamps, postal stationery, proofs, etc.

By:
James Bendon

Aste Terminate
Jan 01, 2018 Europe/London

James Bendon Specimen stamps, postal stationery, proofs, etc.

Monday Jan 01, 2018 08:45 to Saturday Sep 01, 2018 09:00 Europe/London

Specimen stamps, postal stationery, proofs, etc. of the world for sale at fixed prices, subject unsold.

Payment in GBP may be made by PayPal, Bank Transfer or Personal/Banker's Cheque.

RECEIVING AUTHORITY SPECIMENS

This subject is discussed in Chapter 5 of my UPU Specimen Stamps 1878–1961 that includes much information not published elsewhere, in particular regarding the more recently ‘liberated’ archives from the Portuguese Colony of Goa and the French Colonies of Mauritania and Tunisia.

An aspect that is perhaps not generally appreciated is that the majority of these receiving authority specimens are unique and that the opportunity to acquire any particular example may occur only every ten to fifteen years, the typical time that any one stamp remains in the same collection.

The Bechuanaland (except during 1912 to 1913) and Natal archives contained only single stamps. Although the Bechuanaland (in 1912 to 1913), Madagascar and Mauritania collections were composed of strips of three, few if any of these have been separated. In the case of Tunisia only four instances have been noted of duplicates with the local SPECIMEN handstamp or cancellation.

The only significant exceptions are specimens received by the Portuguese Post Office in the late 19th and early 20th centuries destined for the Portuguese Colonies that were handstamped ULTRAMAR. Whilst five copies were received for each colony only single examples were forwarded to the colonies and the remainder accumulated in Lisbon until dispersed in the 1970s.

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