This interesting piece of postal history tells an unusual story. I bought the envelop in a job lot of Canadian material.  But i was surprised by the number of times that this particular envelop was endorsed with rubber stamps.

The earliest endorsement is 30 May 1878 from Esquimalt in British Columbia. On the other side of the envelop there is another endorsement from Victoria in British Columbia - the state capital which is about five miles from Esquimalt. This also appears to have been endorsed on 30 May, The envelop then travelled to Hamilton Ontario (endorsed June 10) and then to Sandwich in Kent in the united kingdom, where it arrived on June 24.

A look at the envelop reveals why the letter was sent. The envelop has the badge of HMS Opal - a corvette ( a type of small fighting ship) which had both sails and steam power. In 1876 the boat hit a rock in the Strait of Magellan - in chile and was taken to Esquimalt for repairs. It was not until 1880 that she got back to Britain. So the crew would have had plenty of leisure to write letters.

The letter is addressed to Miss Henderson at Upton House. In fact,  there were two young ladies in the family - but this is most likely to be Flora Henderson. who would have been in her early twenties when the letter was sent. Flora had four brothers, all of whom were officers in the Royal Navy. So it seems probable that the letter was sent by a very bored brother to his sister back in Kent. But that’s the charm of postal history - a few marks on a piece of paper, can tell a life story.  The pictures below, incidentally, show the corvette Opal and three of the brothers on one of the rare occasions when they were in the same port.
see also -Love and romance and the lure of postal history
A glimpse into the life of Haille Selassie

Last week, for the first time in my life, i found myself in trouble with the US Treasury. The error i made was trying to sell some Cuban stamps on Ebay.
Let me make this clear.  The US Treasury has a policy of financially isolating Cuba. It maintains that Cuba is an oppressive regime and supports other oppressive regimes and that the US want to ensure that it doesn’t have access to foreign currency.
Under Barak Obama, there were moves to relax sanctions against Cuba. But President Trump insists that the sanctions should be toughened.
No matter what you think of this policy (and personally I disagree with this) it means that i can’t buy or sell Cuban stamps. I wrote to ebay and pointed out that the stamps i was selling were from  1890 when Cuba was still a Spanish colony and that the stamps haven’t been anywhere near cuba for around 120 years. Ebay apologised for any misunderstanding, but pointed out that the policy still stands. so I’ve found a roundabout way of selling them.
Anyway, this is the baby head of Alfonso X11 of Spain, which ran Cuba until 1898. From 1902 the country was effective a protectorate of the US.
see alsosicilys-stamps-and-the-great-postmarks.html

seePen and Sword publishers have produced a book on Mainline Railway Stamps. It’s a good subject, but unfortunately the book is a missed opportunity.
Let’s start with the good aspects. The book is very well produced (hardback) and has some really nice pictures of stamps. And it’s all in colour. For such a well produced book, it’s reasonably priced and there is some interesting information on various countries and their train services. However the text is poorly organised and many interesting aspects have been largely ignored.
Most countries have stamps featuring mainline railway trains. But they are all very different. In Britain - the first country with a railway - almost all the stamps featuring trains have focused on nostalgia. They have pictures of Stephenson’s Rocket, or famous steam trains - such as The Flying Scotsman - powering through the English countryside.
In Eastern Europe, the stamp designers were much more progressive. Stamps featured the latest diesel or electric trains and attempted to highlighted the industrial might of the Eastern bloc. Poland and Hungary, for example, had some wonderfully modern designs.
In Canada and USA trains were the means by which the countries were explored and developed. And this is reflected in the very unsentimental, almost diagrammatic representations of trains.
Perhaps one of the most interesting countries for railway stamps is Belgium. In Belgium there were special stamps issued by the railway, illustrated with drawings of trains. This is because the railways ran their own postal service, delivering parcels.
The book ignores all this and contains rather a jumble of information. And some of the information should probably not have been in the book. For example, there is a section on the Bluebell Railway, which is a heritage line in Sussex and not part of the mainline at all. And there a section on Railway Letter Stamps, which are not postally valid outside of the small heritage railway lines, where they are issued. There is also a lot of information on how to store stamps, which is beyond the scope of this book.
If you are a keen thematic collector, and you’d like to know a bit more about trains on stamps, this is probably worth adding to your library. But it is rather too patchy for such an important subject.
Mainline Railway Stamps, by Howard Piltz, Pen and Sword Books £16.99.
See also - Travelling post offices
See also - The postal museum and the underground mail rail

Over the last few weeks, the future of the House of Fraser stores has been thrown into doubt. Despite the last minute buy-out by Sports Direct, it seems probable that many of the stores will close. Among them are a number that were previously run by the Army and Navy Stores. 

Co-operative Army and Navy Stores (CANS) was set up in 1872 as a co-operative organisation aimed primarily at British service personnel and their families, who were often posted in far-flung parts of the British empire. Obviously much of its business was mail order and the company sent out large numbers of letters and parcels - most of which carried the distinctive perforated initials (perfins) CANS. There were a number of patterns for these initials and the Perfin Society website has details of many of these. 


In 1973 Army and Navy was taken over by House of Fraser and in 2005, the remaining stores were rebranded simply as House of Fraser. The archive of House of Fraser is currently held by Glasgow University, but there appears to be little in the archive which isrelated to the mail order operations or the running of the firm’s post room. Nor is there any information on how the perfins were made or who did the work.

The picture shows a five shilling Seahorse (high value George V stamp) with perfin. Beneath is a headed 1938 receipt which has a two pence George Vi perfin to pay the duty on the receipt.
See also - communist-stamps-why-we-should-love-them.html
and - selling-stamps-when-do-you-need-a-good-stamp-dealer.html

It’s one of those stamps that every collector dreams of having. It’s beautifully designed, it’s instantly recognisable and it’s the pride of many collections of British stamps. So how much should you pay? 

Well, it’s an iconic stamp in every sense of the word. Everyone knows what it is. and everyone knows that it’s valuable. It also represents a time when stamp collecting was an almost universal hobby and when stamp design was seen as very important. The seahorse design - showing a chariot pulled by horses coming out of the sea - was produced by Australian sculptor Bertram Mackennal. Although seahorses were produced throughout the reign of George V, the £1 seahorse was only produced in 1913 by the printer Waterlow. There wasn’t any real need for it to be reprinted.

When it comes to valuation, the obvious place to look is the Stanley Gibbons Great British Concise Catalogue. The stamp isn’t particularly rare. I’m not quite sure how many are knocking about, but it’s probably a few million. (I could find out if sent an email to the British Postal Museum and Archive). But it is very desirable. This is not just because it is pretty, but because it is seen as an investment piece. It’s unlikely to go down in value very much. 

Stanley Gibbons puts a cat value of £1200 or £1400 on the stamp - depending on the shade. for well centred or lightly used examples, Gibbons will charge an extra 35 percent. I looked on ebay and it was quite easy to get them for £500 or £600. I found mine at a dealer in Brighton, and he had bought it only the day before. We had a chat and after a certain amount of discussion we settled on a price of £370. It’s a nice thing and it should hold its value. And I personally am very interested in George V, so it makes a great addition to my collection. 

see also
How much should you pay for a £1 PUC?
Seahorses 
The book on George V and his stamps.

Another peculiarity of the stamps is that King Ferdinand didn’t want images of his face to be defaced by a cancellation. So the cancellations were in the form of an arch, which neatly cancelled the sides of the stamps of the stamp without defacing King Bomba! 

The stamps are highly collectable. Although there are only seven values, there are numerous printings, papers and shades. 

And because the stamps were made at a time of political upheaval, the covers are very interesting and sought-after. Because of the various wars of unifications in Italy, various different routes might have been taken for a letter to go from Sicily to Florence, for example. And they would all require different markings from different postal authorities. 

A couple of years ago, the RPSL ran an exhibition by Francesco Lombardo of his collection of covers. I went with a friend of mine - an Austrian judge who collects Sicilian covers of this period. He told me that he bought a couple of covers 20 years ago. Because they are so costly, they are now completely out of his price bracket. 

see also - The One Pound PUC stamp
The Five pound orange - a prize for serious collectors