1900 Mafeking Siege

Today, a friend of mine (an old member here by the name of Bandicoot), bought a stamp to show me. He found it in the safe at Scout HQ in Perth where he works. As far as I can tell it would be SG#20 from Mafeking. Does any one have a current CV for this, so he can let the Scouts know how much it's worth.


Type (a), 18mm




Thanks
Steve

Drop dead gorgeous stamp. Love the blue color.

SIEGE OF MAFEKING: 1900 (SG.20) Baden Powell cat val £400

One of the few cat. valuations likely to match or exceed) reality.

I don't know what stamp expertizing resources are present in Australia. However, it may be a good idea to get your stamp expertized if there are any plans to try & sell it. The USA Scott catalog advises that excellent forgeries exist of Cape of Good Hope Scott #s162-179; and this appears to be #179. Best, Steve

For comparison re forgery, here's a genuine Michel no. 16 II

The forgers never got it right re perforations. They did 11½ or 12½ so a check of the perforation and finding it 12 would indicate a possible genuine siege stamp. The 25mm On The Nose postmark would indicate genuineness.

The "E" in "POSTAGE" looks different to me on the two stamps. On the stamp Steve posted, the distance from the bottom leg of the "E" to the bottom line of the scroll looks to be almost the same as the distance from the top leg to the top line. On the stamp posted by ClassicalStamps, the bottom leg of the "E" is considerably closer to the scroll than the top leg. "TAGE" looks a little bit short and a little bit farther away from the bottom line of the scroll on the stamp Steve posted.

Ryan

Thanks all.
I will pass this info on to Bandicoot.

Steve

Clearly, the count of perf's is different on the two stamps.

What a great classic of classics! I sure hope the cancelled one is genuine, it is superb!

The stamp has gone back to the safe, so I can't count the perfs, but I did measure the stamp across the frames. It measured 18mm, so if you allow a little extra to take it to 2cm, then looking at the pic, 12 perfs seems about right. Using the frame a guide again, the cancel measures 25mm also.

Steve