Canadian Stamp Auctions

This Eastern public auction offered a number of beautiful stamps and the bidders were clearly interested. It included 10 new record prices plus many prices at close to record levels.

Some collectors might be shying away from offering their stamps at auction these days, fearing a lack of demand because of the financial troubles in our economy. But this auction shows they have nothing to worry about when choice items from their collections are offered. The demand is clearly there.

We begin our review with one of our favorite stamps:

This is one of the few stamps that had a noticeable increase in value in this year’s Scott catalogue. Mint copies went from $8,500 to $10,000. We have noticed, in recent years, that there are only a very few Scott 9s with large margins like this. The only thing holding this one back was the fact that it had no gum (NG). Otherwise, we believe the price realized would have surpassed the catalogue value.

Are NG copies unusual? Not at all. From 2001 to date, 8 out of the 17 copies recorded in our pricing records had no gum.

Rare 1¢ Large Queen on Bothwell paper

We see many used Large Queens stamps offered at auction these days. But most of them are off center, have short perforations, or are badly cancelled. The above stamp avoids all these problems. As well, it is a variety of the 1¢ brown red Large Queen that is printed on Bothwell paper. This is the paper the watermarked stamps of the Large Queen set are printed on. If any portion of the watermark had shown up on the stamp, its catalogue value would have jumped from $250 to $600.

If we had a full sheet of stamps on this special paper in front of us, we would see that some of the stamps printed on it received the watermark and some, like this one, had none. It all depends on where they are situated on the page as the watermark only covered a portion of the page, hence only some of the stamps.

We have recorded only one other Scott 22ii. It was a lovely mint copy that sold at a J.N. Sissons sale in Toronto in 1998 for $230.

Outstanding Jubilees

Lot 1130 Scott 53 Catalogue $45 Realized $170

Lot 1132 Scott 56 Catalogue $275 Realized $625

Collectors love the Jubilee set and they like to chase well centered examples like these.

A year ago, in the 2009 Scott catalogue, the Jubilee set in NH condition jumped 20%in value. Individually, the 3¢ went from $37 to $45 and the 8¢ from $160 to $275. Those were pretty exciting days. In this year’s catalogue, there were no increases. In fact, the value of many of the stamps declined. You’d never know it from the above results.

High Value Numerals

Lot 1169 Scott 83 Catalogue $550 Realized $2,100

Lot 1173 Scott 84 Catalogue $800 Realized $2,200

Nice prices! But it surprised us that the price for the 10¢ should be so close to that for the 20¢. In the past ten years, we have recorded the sale of 24 Scott 83s versus 16 Scott 84s. So one cannot say that the 10¢ stamp is any scarcer than the 20¢. Both of the above stamps are NH and seem to be of the same quality and have about the same degree of good centering. One could perhaps get picky about the perforations on the top of the 20¢, they don’t seem to be as good as the 10¢. This may explain why the prices for the two stamps are so close.

But, one thing we’ve noticed in recent years is the amazing demand for the 10¢ stamps in each of the early sets, from the Small Queens to the Admirals. Many record prices have resulted.

Admirals – in demand, as usual

Lot 1195 Unitrade 104ii Catalogue $90 Realized $150

Lot 1197 Unitrade 105iv Catalogue $75 Realized $350

Lot 1199 Scott 109c Catalogue $90 Realized $230

Lot 1200 Unitrade 110d Catalogue $200 Realized $300

The Admirals in the sale were outstanding. Featured were sets, re-entries, blocks, some with pyramid guidelines, some with lathework, coils and imperforates. Something for everyone!

We concentrate on single NH VF copies, since their prices can be recorded and compared and they include most of the varieties. The four examples shown above beautifully illustrate this and, judging from the results, attracted strong bidding.

1928 to 1932 – Keep an eye on these stamps!

Lot 1252 Scott 157 Catalogue $110 Realized $250

Lot 1271 Scott 175 Catalogue $85 Realized $130

Lot 1277 Scott 190 Catalogue $30 Realized $90

Lot 1280 Scott 200 Catalogue $90 Realized $130

In this sale, we noticed that Eastern featured some rather outstanding copies of fairly ordinary stamps. These were found in the sets issued between 1928 in 1932. Sometime in the past two years, bidders have begun to pay more attention to very fine copies in these sets for stamps above, say, the 10¢ level, and are bidding more seriously for them. The results are evident in the prices realized above.

War Tax – An outstanding new record price

One of the few areas that showed good appreciation in the new 2010 Scott catalogue were the “back of the book” stamps and few did better in this category than the War Tax stamps. Earlier this year, the record price for the above stamp jumped from $800 to $1,037. Now in this sale, the record price has jumped to $2,000. What a way to end an auction!

For more details of the sale, please click on the highlights button.

Eastern’s upcoming mail sale will be held on July 8, 2009