9 February, 2002 - Ron Leith Philatelic Auctions.
This is our first review of one of Ron Leith's auctions and we liked what we saw. While the offerings seemed to be primarily of Canadian postal history, we saw a number of fine and rare early stamps. Our viewers will enjoy looking at a small selection of the five cent Beavers (Scott 15) that were well illustrated in the catalogue:

Lot 8 with Re-entry

Lot 10 Thick paper variety

Lot 11 Bottom plate inscription

For those who specialise in the early Canadian classic material, there were two rare imperforates from the 1859 issue:

Lot 24 Scott 18b Catalogue $3,000 Realised $1,000

Lot 26 Scott 19b Catalogue $2,000 Realised $500

As usual, both of these imperforates came without gum. Charles Firby noted in an earlier auction "I do not believe that the imperfs of this issue were issued with gum - all the gummed copies I have ever seen were regummed" (Firby sale of March 18, 1992, Lot 200). We are often warned to only collect pairs of imperforate stamps because of the fact that a single stamp with large borders could too easily be trimmed and turned into an imperforate stamp. Despite this, singles of this early issue are acceptable. In commenting on the imperforates of Scott 19b, Bill Maresch stated in his May 27, 1987 auction catalogue (at lot 143)…"most examples exist as singles only, with a few pairs or blocks of four recorded". The key in the case of lot 26 illustrated above is that it came with a Philatelic Foundation certificate authenticating the single copy.

For the lovers of Small Queens, and there are many, the Leith sale had many lots containing multiple copies. Lot 47 had a 840 copies of the one cent sorted by dates, lot 48 contained 700 similar copies, lot 49 had 720 copies of the three cent sorted by dates and lot 51 had 3000 copies of the three cent described as "a study lot for perfs + papers + cork cancels." There were similar lots for the five and six cent issues. Good stuff for study and research. These lots went for $150 to $300 on average.

In the attached Highlights, we feature some of the top realisations. You will note that many of them sold for prices that were at or close to their catalogue values.