Stamps

Stamp and coins dealership Stanley Gibbons reported its full year results highlighting the impact the pandemic had on sales.

Philatelic and numismatic specialists Spink have posted annual sales figures of just under £29m.

Sotheby’s set a new auction record for a stamp with the $7.9m (£4.85m) hammer taken for the 1856 British Guiana one-cent Magenta in New York last week.

The British Postal Museum & Archive (BPMA) has revised its policy for sales of duplicates following controversy surrounding last July’s Sotheby’s auction.

Sotheby’s have issued a robust defence of the British Postal Museum & Archive in the wake of strong criticism of the decision to sell off a tranche of its stamp collection valued at up to £5m.

Noble Investments, the parent company of coin and medal specialists Baldwins, have announced the acquisition of Apex Philatelics Limited – their first foray into the stamp market.

Spink, the specialist London coin and stamp auctioneers, have announced auction revenues of £23.8m including premium for 2007.

LONDON coins, medals and stamps specialists Spink have bought the American stamp auctioneers Shreves Philatelic Galleries.

ON Friday and Saturday, February 23 and 24, the Royal Bath and West Showground at Shepton Mallet will host the largest postcard, tradecard, postal history and ephemera fair in the UK.

THE world stamp market is reeling this week after what could prove to be a €5bn pyramid selling scheme was unmasked in Spain.

FINE ART buyers may recoil from bloodied dead game or memento mori skulls on still lifes, but the rest of the market knows no such delicacy. Death and disaster, after a suitable lapse of time, become marketing opportunities, as was demonstrated at the Chiswick rooms of Harmers (15% buyer’s premium) on October 22 when their wide reputation as philately auctioneers brought them the remarkable Günther Heyd Disaster Mail collection from Germany.

Frontline forgery: LETTERS home during WW2 were extremely important to soldiers on the front. Each soldier was issued a quota of stamps which were specially overprinted to validate their posting from a specific location.

UK: BOOKS were not really the main attraction in this sale, although it did contain a 1795 first edition of John Aikin’s illustrated Description of the Country... round Manchester. This was, however, an ex-library copy that had been rebound and had its share of stamps.