Canadian Stamp Auctions

26 February, 2008 - R. Maresch & Son

The stamp auction business seems to be doing well these days. Maresch comments “Our last auction confirmed that demand continues to grow for all areas of stamp collecting. The prices realized exceeded our pre-sale estimate by an astonishing 30%, the highest we can recall, in large part due to so many out-of- town collectors and dealers who attended the sale in person”.

Indeed things are going well. This Maresch sale had six new record prices. This only happens when the market is active and the demand is strong, but you couldn’t do it unless you had quality stamps to offer.

The new format adopted by Maresch in its catalogues is a noticeable improvement. Instead of showing all the images in one place in the catalogue, so that one constantly has to flip back and forth, they have now placed many of the images throughout the catalogue nearer their listings.

Large Queens - Interesting varieties

Described as the “rare showpiece”, the top pairs in this block had hinge remnants while the bottom stamps were NH. According to Maresch, the cracked plate variety was found through the oval at the left LL. Try as we might, we couldn't spot it with our trusty magnifying glass. But, when we looked at it on the internet, we could, by enlarging it, see the very faint crack plate line on the left hand side of the oval surrounding the Queen’s image.

Other Large Queen varieties also did well. Here are some examples

Images of all the above stamps are shown in the highlights section.

2¢ Small Queen

Lot 815 Unitrade 36viii Estimate $750 Realized $600

What was special about the above stamp is the fact that it showed a latent re-entry. Maresch noted that, while it was mint, the Unitrade catalogue does not show values for mint copies. This must mean that there aren’t very many mint copies in existence, making this one quite rare.

The highest catalogue value for a used copy in Unitrade is $650. So it was actually conservative for Maresch to put an estimate of $750 on it. For a stamp of this rarity and quality, it was probably a surprise that it then sold for less than its estimate, once again proving how hard it is to second guess what the bidders will do!

Lovely Jubilees

Lot 996 Scott 54 Catalogue $125 Realized $280

The Maresch sale had a couple of gorgeous Jubilees. The 5¢ pair was exceptionally well centered, NH, and a delight to look at. The 50¢ single seemed equally excellent, but a close examination showed it was centered very slightly to the left which may explain why the price wasn’t higher.

1¢ Numeral with strong Re-entries – as good as it gets!

What can one say about a stamp like this, it just seems perfect. Look at the centering, the colour and the perforations. The stamp is NH and shows strong re-entries at the bottom.

As we looked through the Maresch catalogue, we noticed a great number of re- entries. This is an area that is enjoying increased popularity these days.

1¢ Numeral – Plate strip

How well this plate strip from the Numeral set did is indicative of how many of the other plate strips did in the sale. Here are some examples:

5¢ Admiral - New record price

We end up our commentary by looking at this beauty. The regular colour for the stamp is blue while this variety is gray blue. It was NH and nicely surrounded on two sides by wide sheet margins. Maresch described as the nicest copy the firm has ever handled. We couldn’t agree more.

Please click on the highlights button for further information.