7th January 2015 Auction Report

8th January 2015

Bidders returned to the first stamp auction of 2015 on the 7th of January full of New Year spirit. The auction got off to a fine start with the first 7 lots, comprising a superb British Colonial King George VI mint collection broken alphabetically, selling for a total of £14,661 (realisations include buyers premium of 18%) against estimates totalling £10,800.

Not everything went to plan however. A fine range of rare Balloon flown postcards that had attracted a great deal of interest pre auction, went down like a lead balloon, with 2 collections of 11 cards & 12 cards being snapped up by a delighted phone bidder at reserve. The single cards were unsold.

Of particular note in the Commonwealth section, a rarely seen St Vincent 1938-47 10/- UM with inverted watermark sold for £6,785, an impressive price bearing in mind the catalogue of £11,000.

An increasingly popular area for foreign stamps collectors is the Baltic States countries and collections from Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania were all well received, particularly a range of Estonia flown covers.

The auction boasted a particularly fine early GB section, virtually every lot sold and many achieved prices well above estimate. Lot 565 a mint QV collection, described as having ‘huge catalogue value’ sold for £11,210 (estimate £4,500), a collection of 120 early covers sold for £4,366 (estimate £2,000), a 1958-79 1d plate 225 used sold for £678 (estimate £300), and a 1929 PUC £1 used block of 4 sold for £1,534 (estimate £1,200).

The ‘back of the book’ lots threw up some seasonal surprises with a QV to QE collection of Cinderellas including Exhibition labels, Railway stamps, revenues, etc, receiving the full  glass slipper & ball treatment, with a realisation of £3,540 (estimate £300), and an unusual collection of College Stamps were sent up to a total of £4,484 from the estimate of £50. After that, who would claim that stamp auctions are predictable?

By Phil Stowe

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