1931 N.Z. HEALTH STAMPS SELLING AT £18 A PAIR

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 15, Issue 74, 26 July 1950, Page 7

1931 N.Z. HEALTH STAMPS SELLING AT £lB A PAIR

Bay of Plenty stamp collectors will probably with enthusiasm greet the news that the red and blue boy New Zealand health stamps which were issued in 1931 are now bringing high prices overseas. Many collectors have the pair in their collections but a larger number have not, and the stamps are becoming more scarce every year.

According to the latest issue of the Stanley Gibbons catalogue, these stamps have been fetching £lB a pair. However, the price in New Zealand at the present time is not so high. According to one Whakatane collector the price in the Bay of Plenty would not be any more than £l2. The latest price he had heard of was between £lO and £l2. For years these stamps have been keenly sought by discriminating

philatelists in many parts of the World. Their judgment has been borne out by the steady advance in prices, especially over the past 10 years. Apart from the "full face” Queens, the 1931 health stamps are now the most elusive of all major modern issues of New Zealand stamps, the next rarest, based on catalogue values, being the 1913 over-printed Auckland Exhibition issue, the set of four being priced at about £9, mint or used. These two health stamps have made a remarkable increase in price in recent years. They have a face value of sd—3d fox; postage and 2d for heath camp funds —and until about 12 years ago were listed in some catalogues at about double the face value.

Last year’s health stamps were the most popular of all the health stamps. When the issue was made available to the public, philatelists with magnifying glasses were busy discovering innumerable dots and dashes that should not have been there and dozens of the stamps were sold because many buyers assumed that they might become “rarities.”

Gibbons catalogue, however, has treated all ixcept one of them as of no particular philatelic significance. The rarity included is the one with no stop below the “d” of the Id stamp, the price of which is 12s 6d. Several other recent New Zealand issues have come back into favour on the London market. These include the Otago Centennial set, which slumped owing to activities by speculators and over supply of used material. The current George VI issue, which are not regarded with any enthusiasm by New Zealand collectors, are also wanted by London dealers.