“CAN YOU SELL MY STAMPS”

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 49, 4 July 1947, Page 2

“CAN YOU SELL MY STAMPS”

AUCTIONEER’S STARTLING REPLY A well-known titled woman in London who will not reveal her name is trying to recover from her astonishment, states the Sunday Express.

On May 31 she sent a big card board box to a London firm o: stamp auctioneers. Two men car ried it.

It contained many stamps, which had belonged to her husband. The men asked, on her instructions: “Are these worth offering for auction?”

Mr J. Webb, manager of Harmer Rookes, the auctioneers, promised to look them through. He did so. Then he reported to his chief. Mr Guy Harmer immediately phoned the owner:—-

“Nine of the stamps you sent us are worth £4OOO or £sooo—possibly more. I offer you an advance of £IOOO now.”

Mr Webb had found among the stamps a folded strip, badly creased, of nine unused 10s stamps of King Edward VII. overprinted “I.R. Official”—one of the rarest of British stamps.

Mr Harmer, who has a photograph of one similar stamp—the only one that his firm has ever sold —said: “This one we sold fetched £950.

“The woman’s stamps are badly creased and are without gum. Undoubtedly they will fetch four figures at the start of the autumn season when they are put up for auction.

“The world’s rarest stamp fetched between £7OOO and £BOOO. “Experts have found only 14 of the 10s I.R. stamps, and the nine represent by far the biggest block known today.”

A block of four of these stamps is believed to be in the King’s collection.