Show And Tell: Bermuda

My fiend's mother had been trying to get rid of her father's stamp collection for years. Her father (H.T.) mostly collected in the early 1950s. He was a merchant marine and bought stamps from every county he visited.

She tried to sell the collection to a dealer in the 80s, but he only offered $20, so she decided to keep the collection to just give to whoever wanted it. My friend told her that I collect stamps, and she offered to give me the collection. What I got were several large boxes stuffed with mostly kiloware, but among all that were hundreds of glassine envelopes filled with some MNH goodies. Some of the envelopes included slips of paper listing how much H.T. paid for the stamps.

Here's a set that H.T. bought in Bermuda in 1951 for $18. They are all never hinged.

Now that is a great find. You should thank your friend and his mother. I'm interested to see if anything else comes up.

Unfortunately, his mom recently passed away before I was able to go through what was in the collection, but my friend knows how grateful I am at the find. The best stuff to come up has been sets of George VI in singles and pairs in MNH for all the British colonies in the Caribbean. Otherwise, it's a lot of mint material from other Caribbean islands and Central and South American countries from 1930s through early 1950s. I'll post some of the other stuff separately. I'm trying to get to 50 posts, so I can trade.

From the price paid, it's clear that H.T. went to the P.O. So while these Bermuda shilling values can be quite confusing to sort out by shade, you have ones issued 1951 or earlier (for what that's worth).

You already may know that Gibbons has more listings than Scott for these. The £1 and 12/6 pairs and singles are in different shades from what I can see.

If there are any of these with brown gum, that's perfectly acceptable but should be mentioned should you trade or sell any. Obviously, keep the marginal pairs intact; collectors like those particularly for this issue.

That's correct: there are a couple different shades and perf varieties. 123 single and pair are both perf 13. 124 pair is perf. 13 and single is perf. 14. 125 single and pair are both perf. 13. 126 single and pair are both perf. 14. 127 single is perf. 13 and pair is perf. 14. 128 single is perf. 14 and pair is perf. 13.