The pandemic has many of the 2020 spring stamp auctions on hold. The few slated will be online only and no floor bidding. My favourite Canadian auction houses – Sparks, Vance and Talman’s have postponed everything right through May, although they still have single sales available.
I confess, I can’t wait to see Sparks offerings. Their #33 auction is going to have some delicious Indian airmails from Leon Victor Pont collection. Pont was a friend of Stephen Smith, the man who pioneered Indian rocket mail. Some of the items will include correspondence with Smith along with signed stamps and other items. I call sales like this “dream auctions” because most items tend to be on the high end. I enjoy flitting through the catalogues creating wish lists. Half the fun of collecting is window shopping.
Canadian Stamp Auctions
There is no word on any auction from Talman Stamps here in Toronto. They tend to spring the auctions on us when they have enough stock ready. I imagine we won’t see anything until late summer or possibly fall. Vance is always a good bet for some early Canadian airmail and semi-postals, but they announced a postponement as well, with no date available. It’s hard to set dates when no one is sure when this pandemic will subside.
R. Maresch & Son Auctions Ltd., in Toronto, is going ahead with their auction on the 22 – 23 of April. You can see their catalogue here. There will be no live floor auction (for obvious reasons). The auction will be live via the internet instead. They have used some ingenuity in allowing people to see some of the lots. Because of social distancing, potential bidders can’t drop in and preview lots. Maresch have posted videos here. Scroll down below the videos for the catalogue.
If you’re an airmail collector check out lot 621. It’s a rare offering of cachet proofs. It’s 5 pages of Flight Cachet proofs from between 1928 to 1932. In all the auctions I’ve watched, this is the first time I’ve seen cachet proofs. A bit exciting.
International 2020 Spring Auctions
Looking beyond Canada, Cherrystone has a few interesting auctions coming up. I occasionally lurk around their site because they have wonderful high end items that make my palms itch. They have two auctions – April 22, US stamps & postal history and May 12, rare stamps and postal history. I’m not a big collector of US stamps so it’s the second one that I find interesting. You might want to take a look at their PRC Cultural Revolution stamps.
1041 ww 1967 Thoughts of Mao Tse-tung, single and set of se-tenant strips of five with imprints, unfolded, exceptional quality, without any tarnish, n.h., v.f., cat. $4,825 ………………………………..(938,943a,948a) 2,500.00 1042 ww 1968 Literature & Art, complete set of nine, n.h., fine-v.f., cat. $1,440………………………………..(982-90) 750.00
I haven’t seen these come up before. Though I don’t collect PRC (aside from airmails), the 1960s propaganda stamps are amazing pieces of Chinese history. They are also fine examples of philatelic propaganda. It’ll be fun to watch the prices on this trio. Expect them to go in the thousands. Although with the severe economic downturn, we might be surprised.
If you collect Canadian semi-official airmail, then check out the grouping of Patricia Airways in the same auction. These are all pretty affordable (depending on who wants to compete for them). Again, with the economy in turmoil, they might go for far less than expected.
1926 10c on 50c purple overprint inverted, upper left sheet corner margin vertical pair
Scattered throughout the May auction are other airmail lots, so a careful search of both catalogues will be rewarding.
I’m still looking around other auction houses, so I’ll post an update on them soon.
Sometimes you can look at a stamp over and over and not spot an error. This happened on the weekend when I posted a set of plate blocks on the Facebook group Stamp Collecting. I’ve owned a full set of Suzor-Cote’s “Return the Harvest” (1969) for at least 10 years now and love looking at them. Imagine my delight when someone pointed out I owned the line from knee error – Suzor-Cote #492i (thanks Michael!). Gobsmacked would be a better description.
Canadian Stamp Suzor-Cote #492i – Return from the Harvest Field
Return from the Harvest Field LL plate block 492i
I dug out both the plate & the scan and peered closely and thought “son of a …” Suzor-Cote #492i – line from knee variety (pos.41). “How could I miss it after all these years?”
Up close look at the line from knee error
Just goes to show, there’s always something new to find in your own collection. I missed it for so many years because I assumed there were no errors. The stamp auction house I purchased them from never spotted the error either and sold the 4 plates as a full set, no errors. Bonus!
I have a classic for you, Canada’s last airmail stamp issued 73 years ago on Sept 16, 1946.
Sept 16, 1946 Scotts C9, Sanabria (for those lucky enough to have one) 18, SG 407
It was part of the post WW2 issues highlighting various peacetime scenes from around Canada. The set (all released Sept 16) included:
8c Farm Scene of Eastern Canada
10c Great Bear Lake in NWT
14c Quebec Hydro-Electric Station
20c Tractor Drawn Thresher
50c Loggin in BC
$1 PEI Train Ferry
7c Canada Geese near Sudbury, On (airmail)
Herman Herbert Schwartz (1885-1962)
The set was designed by artist Herman Herbert Schwartz (1885-1962), the same man who designed one of Canada’s great classic stamps, the 1929 Bluenose. He was one of the first Canadian artists hired by Canada to design stamps. Prior to 1920, American artists were generally used. Schwartz was also responsible for the design of all Canada’s airmail stamps. I tried to find information on him but came up embarrassingly short on details. One sparse entry popped up in Archives Canada:
Herman Herbert Schwartz (1885-1962)
Herman Schwartz, who was of Dutch origin, showed little interest in the family spice business founded by his grandfather in Halifax in 1841, W.H. Schwartz & Sons. He was more interested in art and, in August 1909, he was hired as an apprentice by the American Bank Note Company of Ottawa.
He is credited with the design of many Canadian stamps issued between 1927 and 1954. The most famous work of this Nova Scotian artist continues to be the Bluenose issued in 1929. As well, he designed all the cachets used for the first postal flights made between 1929 and 1941. He also designed foreign postage stamps and Canadian bank notes.1
I found one photo of Schwartz in the Canadian archives.
Herman Herbert Schwartz using magnifying glass to inspect stamp material 1942
National Postal Museum (Canada) philatelic collections
And that’s about all I was able to source. For someone who played such an important part in Canadian postal history, it’s shocking to find so little about him.
Canada’s last airmail stamp the C9 “goose in flight”
The Canada goose airmail was the last airmail stamp issued by Canada. Cancel collectors will be richly rewarded in their search with hundreds of different ones used over the years. I have about 40 so far but am always on the look out for new city or slogan cancels. I find the used stamps far more interesting than the mint.
Two used C9 stamps from my collection
Covers with interesting cachets are also another fun area to collect. I was a bit surprised to realise I have many C1s and 2s but only 1 decent C9 in my collection. No idea how I slipped up so badly. This is a nice cover, but i dislike the boring wavy line cancel across the stamp. Give me a good slogan cancel anytime.
First Official Airmail – Jetliner Toronto to New York 1950
The stamp remained in use for many years, so the chance for finding interesting cancels and markings is huge.
Collectors have 2 plate (1& 2) to acquire, as well as OHMS and G varieties. The first airmail official stamp (Scott #CO1), overprinted “O.H.M.S.” (On His Majesty’s Service), was issued in 1949. And last, but not least – booklet panes.
Full booklet pane of C9 Canada goose airmail stamps
I get a kick out of sellers who label them “rare” and “rarely seen”. I have about 50 I picked up for a song at an auction years ago. Not particularly rare but delightful to own. Alas, not one has an error despite looking over and over for any. Error collectors should be happy with C9. A couple of major re-entries in plate 2 UR blocks can be looked for. If you have a few interesting airmails you want to swap for a pane, drop me a line in the comments below.
I’m going to keep looking for more info on Herman Schwartz. If I dig up anything, it’ll make a great addition to this page. Happy collecting everyone – one small stamp and tons of collectible material.
NOTES:
1 – Postal Archives @ Collections Canada https://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/postal-archives/08060203_e.html and https://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/postal-archives/08060203_e.html
I’ve been sorting through random boxes, clearing stuff I’ve been hanging onto for no particular reason. You know the boxes, they go from move to move, apartment to apartment because you can’t bring yourself to make a decision. Nested deep in one of the boxes was a little tin of UK stamps. Not a clue why they were shoved into a junk box, but I’m glad I found them. I vaguely remember getting them in an auction lot over 10 years ago. I guess because I don’t collect modern UK stamps, I shoved them away thinking I’ll check them later.
What’s in the Tin Box?
What’s in the tin?
Inside, I found this:
Lots of loose stamps, packs and little white boxes
Royal Mail presentation packs, loose stamps, including quite a few Machins
Something odd popped out of the box and intrigued me.
2 ½ x 3 ¼ size cartons. Sealed with either a red or blue label
One pack was open, so I took a closer look at it and found more Machins.
Opened Royal Mail carton showing 4 little Machins
That’s a lot of packaging for 4 tiny stamps. In the dim recesses of my brain, I remember looking for info when they first landed in my lap and tossed them back into the tin after coming up empty. Ten + years on, I decided to give it another kick.
The big problem was pretty basic – I wasn’t sure what I was looking at. I wasn’t even sure the Machin stamps belonged in the boxes or if they had been randomly thrown in. The boxes weren’t listed in any catalogue I searched. I didn’t want to open the other boxes and assumed they were Machins as well, so I rolled through the Machin listings in various catalogues and came up empty.
It took a lot of detective work to find anything. How do you search for this? Small condom sized boxes of Machin stamps? Or small boxes of UK stamps? Those produced frustrating results, so I went to eBay and scrolled through pages and pages and pages of UK stamps, hoping to spot one. Bingo! One popped up. I had a name to work with – Scotland’s Experimental Vending Machine Post.
There really isn’t a lot out, even with a working title. I found a couple of sites that talked about them, but nothing substantial was offered up about the who, what and when. I trolled through the UK archives, checked the usual postal sites and information is sparse. Finally, I found a gold mine of information, courtesy one Glen H. Morgan and the Stamp Printer’s website. [http://www.stampprinters.info/Cartons.pdf] And it’s a quirky little story.
Scotland Experimental Postage Packet 1977-1978 Production
Between 1977 and 1978, 6 cartons were designed, holding between 4 to 8 stamps per pack. They were manually filled and put together by a local post office authority. This was an unsanctioned act by the Edinburgh depot, leaving the postal authorities a little unimpressed with the initial experiment
‘I am concerned (as I know that you are) that we did not know that this work [making-up the cartons] was being undertaken by your depot in Edinburgh. I would be grateful if you could make it clear to the officer in charge that P&SD should deal with postal regions through PHQ on all matters of policy and not take instructions directly.’ Mr. Hutton, the Manager of the Supplies Depot at Hemel Hempstead
http://www.stampprinters.info/Cartons.pdf
The first vending machines went into business March 7, 1977, in Dundee, Scotland. Followed by Aberdeen and Paisley on Mar 9, Kilmarnock the next day and Edinburgh a month later, on April 15. Initially 2 books were put together and sold via vending machines. The first two used the Scottish Regional stamps. When rates changed, 4 more books were created, using regular Machins.
Denominations:
First issue:
30p – Red Print – 2 x 6 ½ p and 2 x 8 ½ p Scottish Regional stamps
60p – Blue Print – 4 x 6 ½ p and 4 x 8 ½ p Scottish Regional stamps
Second issue when price increases took place in June 1977:
30p – Red Print – 3 x 7p (with 2 phosphor bands) and 1 x 9p Machin stamps
30p – Red Print – 3 x 7p (1 phosphor band) and 1 x 9p Machin stamps
60p – Blue Print – 6 x 7p (with 2 phosphor bands) and 2 x 9p Machin stamps
60p – Blue Print – 6 x 7p (1 phosphor band) and 2 x 9p
The project was shelved in 1978. Costs coupled with a pragmatic look at the bulkiness of the little cartons doomed them:
‘A variable denomination machine which sold counter-sized books containing stamps made from sheet cylinders would be the ideal from our (PMK3) point of view. I am sure the public would also prefer it as books go into wallets and handbags more easily than boxes, and also take-up more room in vending machines and so reduce the capacity and increase the empty time.’
http://www.stampprinters.info/Cartons.pdf
Over production of existing stitched booklets and comparative high costs for the little cartons kill off the idea. UK post printed 70 million stitched booklets yearly but sold only 46 million, leaving a substantial surplus of stamps. Creating a more expensive type of book/package would not help the oversupply situation.
“The cost of cartons versus the cost of stamp booklets was revealed in a letter from Mr. Hutton to Mr. Burn. Counter books of ten stamps apparently cost around £7.93 per thousand booklets, while the smaller SVM booklets of six stamps came in at around £8.67 per thousand. The proposed Scottish cartons would be £140 per thousand due to the making-up by hand and, although this would reduce if packed by machine, the capital costs of the new equipment to undertake this task would be considerable. Mr Hutton further wrote: ‘It seems crystal clear, therefore, that, having already acquired the Libra machines, there is no case financially for the introduction of the proposed vending machines on a large scale” Glen H. Morgan
http://www.stampprinters.info/Cartons.pdf
When the trial completed, the remaining cartons were bundled into lots and sold off. In a couple of searches online, I found individual cartons sold for anywhere from $5 (Cdn) to $12 (Cdn), depending on the seller. I’m not sure how many cartons still exist but they seem to be a bit rare. It might be that most people gave up looking for info on them, like I did initially, and tossed them into a bin of unwanted stamps.
A few websites I found thought the vending machines were old re-purposed condom machines. Although not true, it’s not a hard stretch to see the rational, when you look at the size and shape of the boxes. I thought the same when I first looked at them. I also thought it was a collector’s method of storing Machins. According to Glen H Morgan (http://www.stampprinters.info/Cartons.pdf) this is an apocryphal twist on the story. As fun as the idea is, the machines were Vendador cigarette machines, www.autonumis.co.uk which were already setup to accept 50p and 10p coins.
I’m resisting the urge to open the packs to see if one of them has the rare questionnaire that was slipped inside some. Not all had them and, quite frankly, my curiosity is killing me. But, I’ll be a good collector and leave them unopened.
Read more here on Scotland Experimental Post 1977-1978 Production:
Stamp Printers has a top-notch article on their site that dives deep into the experiment. Scottish Experimental Cartons, by Glen H. Morgan Cross Post Magazine, Autumn 2009 http://www.stampprinters.info/Cartons.pdf
I relied heavily on the article for details about the Scottish Experiment. Mr Morgan’s article has a lot more information if you are interested in finer details about the experiment and the discussions behind the scene regarding it.
Canada Post’s latest release, Canadians in Flight honours 5 significant Canadians and Canadian creations. This has to be my favourite subjects – Canadian history & pioneer flight. There are 5 stamps, a booklet, souvenir sheet and 5 covers to in the set.
Stamps from the Canadians in Flight booklet
Starting at the top left and working across:
Elsie MacGill – The Queen of the Hurricanes
Elsie MacGill, the underappreciated hero of aeronautical engineering, feminist and all around amazing Canadian. She was a woman of many firsts – 1st female graduate of electrical engineering at U of T, 1st woman to earn a Master’s in aeronautical engineering, 1st female practicing engineering in Canada, when recovering from polio MacGill designed airplanes and wrote articles about aviation, rode along with test pilots to observe her designs in flight, chief aeronautical engineer at Canadian Car & Foundry, headed the Canadian production of the Hawker Hurricane fighter planes in WW2, feminist activist, commissioner on the Royal Commission on the Status of Women and tireless advocate for women’s rights1.
How bad ass was Elsie MacGill? She had a comic book written about her in 1942 called Queen of the Hurricanes – Elsie MacGill. MacGill was the Queen of Badass Women. Not enough Canadians are taught about her contributions to engineering, aviation, and feminism so this is a long overdue tribute to a great Canadian.
1942 comic – Elsie MacGill, Queen of the Hurricanes
William George Barker, VC
Next is William George Barker, VC, enlisted as a private in the Canadian army, ended his career as a Wing Commander in the new RCAF. The lad from Dauphin, Manitoba who went on to be a WW1 Royal Flying Corp and RCAF pilot, businessman and the most decorated serviceman in Canadian history. Barker was one of those legendary fighter pilots that emerged from WW1, a small-town prairie boy who became larger than life because of a war they were tossed into. Here’s an excerpt from the Barker’s official military records2:
William George Barker’s service record note about his Victoria Cross win
William George Barker’s service record note about his Victoria Cross win
Memorial to William Barker at Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto
Bush Pilot Punch Dickins
C. H. Punch Dickins, another flier from the prairies, was one of Canada’s great bush pilots. After WW1 ended, many pilots bought decommissioned biplanes and headed north to carry freight, mail and passengers to remote towns and mining camps that dotted the Canadian north3.
In Canada, the word “bush” has been used since the 19th century to describe the hostile environment beyond the clearings and settlements. In bush flying it has been used to refer to flying in adverse, if not hostile, conditions in the remote expanses beyond the ribbon of settlement in southern Canada, into the “bush” of the Canadian Shield and the barren Arctic. By the end of WWI most of southern Canada had been linked by railways, but the North remained as inaccessible as ever by land. Its innumerable lakes and rivers did, however, provide alighting areas for water-based aircraft in summer and ski-equipped aircraft in winter. Bush Flying | The Canadian Encyclopedia
Punch Dickins cut his teeth fighting on the Western Front, serving in the RFC and later RCAF. After the war, he flew to remote locations surveying over 10,000 miles of northern Canada for Western Canadian Airlines.
Western Canadian Airways Semi-official stamp
Western Canadian was one of the companies allowed to print stamps and collect money for the delivery of mail to remote locations. Punch delivered the first mail to the NWTs for WCA. By the end of his career, Dickins flew over 1.6 million miles across the northern Canada.
Avro Arrow
On the second row is the Avro Arrow, continuing Canada’s fascination with the best aircraft that never got a chance. A Canadian designed fighter craft capable of flying 2x the speed of sound, but buried and sunk in Lake Ontario for political reasons. The cancellation of the Avro is still considered a national scandal 60 years later and hotly argued about.
Ultraflight Lazair
And finishing out this set is the nibble twin engine Ultraflight Lazair, a Canadian designed ultralight craft that still buzzes around the skies5. Between 1979 and 84, over 2000 were built and sold for under $5000 US. It is considered one of the most successful aircrafts sold in Canada.
This is an OUTSTANDING set. I rushed out and bought the booklet and souvenir sheet the morning they were released. The covers were missing in action everywhere I looked. so it looks like they’ll have to be ordered from the Canada Post website. The booklet of 10 stamps costs $9.50 CDN as does the set of 5 covers. The souvenir sheet of 5 stamps costs $4.50.
Hats off to designer Ivan Novotny6 of Taylor | Sprules Corporation for this beautiful set.
Canadians in Flight 2019 spring Canadian stamp release booklet
Canadians in Flight booklet backside
Canadians in Flight souvenir sheet
Notes & further reading on the people on these Canadian stamps:
To learn more about Elsie MacGill start with the Canadian Encyclopedia entry Vintage Wings – The Queen of the Hurricanes includes photos of airplanes MacGill designed
Pick up the book Queen of the Hurricanes by Crystal Sissons, published 2014 by Second Story Press. ISBN: 9781927583531 for paperback and 9781927583579 for hardbound editions. Or check your local library
Comic image courtesy Roberta Bondar Foundation
I want to thank everyone who has dropped me a note and still visited the site, despite the lack of fun content. It's been a bit of a hard slog on this end and the double vision really makes things a bit rough. However, it looks like a diagnosis is on the horizon which means treatment.
In the meantime, I'm going to try and write. If I get things a little wonky, just sigh with me. Its hard to take life seriously when everything is blurry and doubled.
