Officially Back In-Luvthecommonwealth's Progress

Well, I'm officially back into stamp collecting as of today. Stopped by a dealer for the first time in...four years (when I visited Stanley Gibbons on Strand) and bought four stock books, some tongs, and various stamps.

Now..it's onto sorting the shoebox of stamps into a collection. Right now, I've dumped them out and am sorting them out alphabetically. From there, I'll arrange it alphabetically by country. With the amount of stamps I have right now, I'm guessing five letters to one stock book will do.

As the projects progresses I'll post some pictures of my finds and also on what the collection will be narrowed down to. Right now, it is a worldwide collection, but I'm tempted to really just focus on the British Commonwealth, pre-1960, after this.

As of right this second, I believe my oldest and most valuable stamp to be the following:



SG 4c, Western Australia One Shilling Swan on Pale Brown, issued 1854.

I have a couple others I know of I'll post pics of soon.

Wonderful stamp luvthecommonweath. You're lucky to have a stamp dealer close by.

Dianne

luvthecommonwealth, lucky you getting to Stanley Gibbons. The only day I was in the area, the store was closed. Oh well, maybe another time. Who knows.
Great looking stamp. My favourite collection is Australia and Australian States. Don't have that one though.
Have a good day.

Welcome back Luv, my interests in different countries and topics have waxed and waned over the years..but never broke the code "Always a stamp collector " !

Welcome back to the hobby.

I love that Black Swan stamp, but then I am biased.
I am living in Western Australia.

Steve

Thanks guys.

More to come!

Another one from the collection. Currently sorting through the A's and am finishing up Australia.






SG 52. 20 Shillings, Cobalt Blue, 1888. Marks the commemoration of New South Wales being a colony for 100 years. Show the 1788 governor and the one in 1888, I believe...not sure on the names at the moment though.

Also..not yellow like it looks in that picture for some reason!

wow, that's a special stamp. One question though, perhaps silly, but why is this stamp 20 shillings? Isn't that the same as 1 pound?
And why such a high nominal value? If you take into account that you could send letters for a few pence, 20 shillings would have been enough to send something huge. A cow or something like that :)

Yeah, I have no idea why it was so much.

Another wonderful stamp. You have some great Australian colonial stamps.




The first Governor of NSW when the first fleet landed was Captain Arthur Phillip. He founded Sydney, naming it after Lord Sydney, the Home Secretary who had appointed him Governor-designate before the fleet left England. Port Phillip Bay on which Melbourne is located is also named after him - the region was called the Port Phillip District of NSW before it separated from NSW and became the colony of Victoria in 1851 (a year after Victoria had issued it's first stamp .) The Governor of NSW in 1888 was Lord Carrington (a name nowhere near as known as that of Phillip.)

I collect Victoria, so I can't really help with an explanation of the value (or why they chose 20/- as opposed to £1.) In 1884 Victoria had passed an Act that made all Revenue, Stamp Duty and Postage stamps interchangeable, so I have no comparison to the NSW stamps after this period, as Victoria had a host of high values up to £100 valid for postage or Stamp Duty. There is a note that around 1867 a Victorian Post Office Report stated that there was a need for a high value (5/-) stamp due to heavy correspondence to England, such as bundled newspapers. One could assume that the same reasoning would be behind the NSW need for higher values. NSW didn't go the same route as Vic with the Stamp Duties, in fact in 1885 when they decided they needed higher values they at first overprinted 5s, 10s and £1 Revenue stamps with the word POSTAGE.

As a side note, Captain Arthur Phillip was with the British navy fighting against the Americans in the American Revolution.

Balf

Thanks for the info Baif. Always wanting to learn the history behind the stamp. I recently bought some more Australian state stamps (not as valuable as the other two), so I'll post a pic of those soon as well.

those are neat stamps

Thanks. I have to say those two colonial stamps are among my favourites, especially since I salvaged them from a strewn shoebox (my dad missed some valuable ones back in the day I guess).

So, how goes the collection?

Well, been doing some ebaying to gather more of the stamps I want to collect. Got some decent details, including a good Bahamas lots :D. While I don't have them yet, I uploaded the ebay pictures:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/450717...22945314442/