Specialized Catalogue Review for PAKISTAN, BANGLADESH, BURMA & SRI LANKA

Region : South Asia (ex-modern India)

Catalogue Title : Stanley Gibbons Commonwealth Stamp Catalogue : Bangladesh, Burma, Pakistan & Sri Lanka, 3^th ed

Publisher : Stanley Gibbons LTD, Ringwood, UK (2015)

Format : Soft Cover, 234 pages, 170mmx240mm, color illustrations

Breakdown of Page Length By Nation

• Bangladesh – 44 pages
• Burma – 7 pages
• Pakistan – 76 pages
• Sri Lanka/Ceylon – 99 pages

Language of Text : English

Price : UK£21.95 (per publisher's website https://www.stanleygibbons.com/store/StanleyGibbons/publications-accessories )

For collectors of South Asia, Gibbons remains the authority of record for most. This extends not only to the issues of the colonial era, but also to the post-colonial states that came into being after the withdrawal of British hegemony in the region in 1947-1948. This catalog represent the philatelic issues of those regions of South Asia that were either neither part of the British Raj (Ceylon, colonial Burma after 1937) or the successor states to the Raj other than India that remained in the Commonwealth of Nations (Pakistan, Bangladesh and post-colonial Ceylon/Sri Lanka, which was NEVER part of the Raj administration during the philatelic era). I will deal with the volume covering Raj and post-Raj India in a future post.

As good as the SG catalogue is for this region, the catalogue does have a couple weakenesses, part of which are due to editorial decisions made by Gibbons, others due more to the interest of Western

philatelists as a whole.

Review Of The Catalogue and Comparison with Scott

While not the largest of catalogues, as with all other volumes in the Commonwealth series the amount of information crammed into this catalogue is immense. For purposes of this review, I am going to split the discussion along national lines

Bangladesh

Created in wake of the Pakistani civil war of 1971, the philatelic issues of Bangladesh are fairly straight-forward and presented as such in the Gibbons catalogue. Not a huge amount of difference with the coverage in the Scott general stamp catalogue, just a few additional varieties here and there.

One issue that neither Gibbons nor Scott deal with are the numerous provisional overprints that were produced in liberated areas of Bangladesh during the course of and immediate aftermath of the civil war and Indian military intervention. I find this area fascinating as a record of the dramatic political upheaval of the time and had hoped that Gibbons at least would provide a bit of information as to what was produced, but alas the only mention in Gibbons, as in Scott, is an introductory note.

Note in Gibbons regarding Bangladesh provisionals

One can argue that given the provisional nature of these overprints it would be very challenging for a catalogue like Gibbons to sort out legitimate versus philatelic-inspired productions. In the end though, I think this really represents a degree of myopia among collectors overall, who tend to focus more towards the issues of the classical era at the expense of further study of varieties and special issues of the post-1945 era. This is an issue I will return to shortly, but I think it bears keeping in mind that especially for non-Western nations, coverage of varieties within modern (post-1945) issues tends to be somewhat less thorough that the coverage of pre-1945 issues. And this, in large part, is due to what has been a lack of research on these issues by dedicated philatelists outside a small number within the nation concerned. Hopefully as philately becomes more popular in non-Western societies as economic conditions create a new class that has the resources to engage in hobbies, this dearth of information can be rectified.

Burma

Gibbons coverage of Burma in this catalogue illustrates one of my issues with how Gibbons organizes its catalogues. I understand very well that the catalogues are dedicated to the issues of the Commonwealth and their imperial colonial predecessors. However, I really do not like the fact that for those nations, such as Burma, which decided NOT to remain in the Commonwealth after independence was granted, coverage in the Commonwealth catalogues is halted and the post-independence issues are placed in a separate catalogue. Thus, for collectors of Burma, one will need to purchase TWO catalogues in the Gibbons line rather than one to have complete coverage (**or at least that is my belief, it may be that the colonial era issues are covered in Gibbons Southeast Asia volume to the same degree they are in the Commonwealth series of catalogues.)

Having said that, one has to say that when it comes to the colonial era, no catalogue holds a catalogue to the degree of listings that Gibbons has for Burma. Even the Scott Specialized 1840-1940 catalogue is less than thorough.

Gibbons listings for Burma at end of colonial era

And this thoroughness extends to the issues of the Japanese occupation of Burma during the Second World War, where the listings in the Scott Speciailized catalogue seem very basic in comparison.

 

Gibbons vs Scott Specialized listings for Burma under Japanese occupation

If you restrict your interest to the colonial era, then the coverage of Burma in this catalogue is EXCELLENT. However, those who want information on the post-colonial era will need to source the Gibbons Southeast Asia catalogue.

Pakistan

Much like its coverage of Bangladesh, Gibbons coverage of the issues of Pakistan tend to be, to a degree, uneven. Much like what would happen in Bangladesh in 1971, at the time of Partition in 1947 postal official in those areas which would become Pakistan produced numerous provisional overprints, many of which were on an ad-hoc basis as supplies of the centrally-produced Pakistan overprints either ran out or were delayed in transit or lost in the social upheaval that would tear much of the Pakistan-India border apart. Again though, Gibbons (as well as Scott) only provide a note, with Gibbons noting that while the issues are “of philatelic interest,” they “lay beyond the scope of the catalogue”.

With the establishment of a more stable situation in Pakistan, the early years would see the production of some gorgeous issues, including definitive issues with a good number of varieties of perforations and shades. Gibbons does a great job listing these, providing yet again more depth than what Scott provides in its general catalogue.

Gibbons vs Scott listings of the early issues of Pakistan.

Unfortunately, this deeper coverage of varieties that starts off well in Gibbons with the issues of the 1950s and 1960s is not maintained in terms of coverage for later definitive issues. This is really not a fault of Gibbons per-se. Western collectors have in general not focused much philatelic research on printing varieties of series, especially definitive series, produced by developing nations after the late 1960s. In part this is due to a lack of information from the Post Offices themselves, which were trying to gain the ability to produce their own postage stamps locally and learning to master the new technolgies that Western postal administrations spent much of the 1960s trying to master.

Another factor that has limited our understanding of printing varieties in modern issues from developing nations has been the reality that the philatelic communities in these nations post-independence have tended to be small, and to a degree more interested in the philately of the colonial era rather than the present day. This trend has been changing since the early 1990s, however. Increased wealth in some nations has created new middle classes with an income to spare on hobbies and an interest in the philatelic history of their nations post-colonial era.

Gibbons listing of the 1980s fort definitives vs Siddiqui's specialized online listing

One can see the difference when one compares Gibbons to the listings in a catalogue from the nation in question. For example, the Pakistan Fort definitives in the late 1980s in Gibbons and from the online philatelic catalgoue pakistanphilately.com (an online version of a catalogue produced by AI Siddiqui and previously published in hard copy in Pakistan). Siddiqui also provides information regarding print runs, value of First Day Cover (in Pakistani Rupees) and more. 

My hope is that with the greater interconnection of collectors around the world possible via the internet, more research into the printing varieties of series produced by developing nations will become available and, in the course of time, receive listings in the main Western catalogues such as the Gibbons Commonwealth Specialized.

Ceylon-Sri Lanka

Of the four nations covered in this catalogue, the best coverage is provided for Ceylon (renamed Sri Lanka in 1972). Having remained a member of the Commonwealth, all of its issues to the present are listed, and the coverage of colonial era Ceylon is very, very in-depth. Comparing the listings in Gibbons for the later George V definitives with Scott's coverage of the same issues in the Classic Specialized is to a degree akin to comparing apples and oranges. Scott clearly has some catching-up to do in regards to Ceylon if it wants its Classic Specialized to be a true rival to Gibbons.

Gibbons vs Scott Specialized coverage of Ceylon George V issues, advantage Gibbons

Gibbons and Scott are to a degree more comparable when it comes to the the post-independence issues of Ceylon and, later Sri Lanka. Gibbons does list some varieties in the 1950s definitives that Scott does not, but overall the two catalogues compare well. Sri Lanka after 1972 seems not to have produced as much in the way of varieties on different series, in particular definitive series, that can be seen in Pakistan. In part this may be due to most of Sri Lanka's stamps being produced in other nations, but I do have a bit of a suspicion that again there may not have been a lot of research done on these definitive issues to create a full picture of the printing changes many of the longer-running definitive series quite likely had.

Ceylon and Sri Lanka back of the book stamps in Gibbons, nowhere to be seen in Scott (as of 2015).

And to serve as the exclamation point in terms of the depth of coverage Gibbons does provide for Ceylon/Sri Lanka, it includes back of the book material for both eras that are not included in either the 2012 Scott General catalogue or the 2015 Scott Specialized. From colonial Ceylon telegraph stamps to Sri Lanka postal-fiscals from the 1980s and 1990s, the Gibbons catalogue listings provide an additional element for the collector to add to their collections of this fascinating island that collectors dependent on the Scott catalogues would not really know existed.

Conclusions

For many collectors, interest in South Asian philately has for a long time been focused on the colonial era, with independence in 1947-1948 usually seen as the end point and the issues post-1948 as more the realm of topical collectors and the packet trade. Yet over the past couple decades that view has changed as South Asia has gone through an economic growth spurt. Most are familiar with India's transformation, and already this is having an impact on the value of post-colonial issues, especially those of the immediate post-independence years. Similar economic transformations have been ocurring in the other areas of South Asia, from Islamabad to Dacca and down to Colombo. To me, South Asia represents a very interesting philatelic frontier, with much philatelic research still possible in understanding some of the longer-running definitive issues and the challenges of adapting new printing technologies to keep up with demand for postage stamps from consumers.

To a degree then the Gibbons catalogue represents a good introduction point to these issues. But it must be kept in mind that in some respects, Gibbons is still not the complete authority all eras of philately in this region, the post-colonial era in particular. Pakistan and India both have locally produced specialized catalogues, and as the research of AI Siddiqui and others on the pakistanphilately.com website illustrates, there is a growing body of philatelic research coming from the region regarding not just contemporary postal issues, but new interpretations regarding colonial-era postal issues.

Specialized Catalogue Review for the ARABIAN PENINSULA

Region : ARABIA (includes past and present philatelc entities in what are now Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrein, the United Arab Emirates and Oman)

Catalogue Title : Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue : Arabia, 1^st ed

Publisher : Stanley Gibbons LTD, Ringwood, UK (2016)

Format : Soft Cover, 344 pages, 170mmx240mm, color illustrations

Language of Text : English

Price : UK£29.95

While the retail branch of Stanley Gibbons has gone through a period of financial turmoil, the catalogue branch under Hugh Jeffries has maintained its high standards and moved the brand forward. Revisiting the nature of the division of its specialized global catalogues, Gibbons has not only provided new editions of some major non-British sphere regions (such as China, a new edition being released in 2015) but has also created new titles to further refine some regions (and no doubt reduce the size of some of the older volumes that would be unwieldly in a new edition.) It is in this vein that Gibbons released a new Arabia specialized catalogue in the early part of 2016.

The release of the Arabia catalogue fills a bit of a gap in the more specialized catalogue literature that exists. For the collector of the British Empire, Arabia of course is one region that is collected, as the British maintained an interest in the Eastern and Southern coasts of the peninsula, from Kuwait to Aden, resulting in several philatelic entities that are integral parts of the British Empire. These areas were seen as vital defense and trade zones on the periphery of the British Raj in the Indian Subcontinent, and the British worked to ensure their hegemony along the coasts was secured via treaties with local rulers.

More important, however, is the coverage of the majority of the Arabian Peninsula that was not under direct British influence, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Both areas were under the influence of the Ottoman Empire in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century (much to the chagrin of the local populations, Yemen in particular became known as the Graveyard of the Ottomans at the turn of the twentieth century as the Turks attempted to maintain control over the often rebellious tribal people in the Yemeni interior). Following the Ottoman collapse in 1918, the British were content with working with local powers to ensure that no outside power lodged itself in Western Arabia, thus allowing the consolidation of a Yemeni state under the Shi'i tribes around Sana'a and the rise of the Saudi state to dominate the majority of the peninsula.

Finally, one can not mention Arabia without a passing word regarding the infamous “Sand Dune” issues. These were stamp issues printed by various agents in the name of an assorted gaggle of political entities on the Arabian peninsula. Most of these issues were not sold in the lands they purported to come from, but their topical designs made them popular as packet fare in the 1960s and 1970s, before political changes resulted in the creation of new political units with much more conservative philatelic outputs. And there are collectors today who find a charm in these issues. We will return to these issues in the catalogue review.

To my knowledge, there exists no single recent specialized treatment of the stamps of Saudi Arabia (and its precursors) or Yemen in English (although I think there are works in Arabic for Saudi Arabian philately). Thus the Gibbons Arabia catalogue fills a vital gap to introduce collectors in the West to the complex philately of the region beyond the basic level.

Review Of The Catalogue and Comparison with Scott

The first point to deal with in any discussion of this catalogue is that it covers a fairly large number of postal administrations. To summarize, included are : 

• Kuwait
• Bahrein
• the British PO in Eastern Arabia (the general issues used in what are now Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman after 1948 and Indian independence. Before 1948 the Posts were managed by the Indian post office)
• Oman
• United Arab Emirates – Includes issues for the Trucial States and each of the seven component sheikhdoms – Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujeira, Ras al-Khaima, Sharjah and Umm al-Qiwain as well as the issues of some of the sheikhdoms' dependencies, such as Manama)
• Qatar
• Yemen – Includes both North Yemen (Royal, then Republic, with coverage of the Yemeni civil war issues from both sides in the 1960s as well) and the British-dominated zone of Southern Yemen, including Aden, Seiyun and Hadramaut. Also includes the Federation of South Arabia and the issues of several component members, independent South Yemen, and the Unified Yemen since 1990.
• Saudi Arabia – including the independent issues of Hejaz and Nejd before the conquest of Hejaz by Ibn Saud in 1925 and the creation of the unified Saudi state.

A large number of different postal administrations are thus covered in the catalogue.

One important thing to remember is that until the twentieth century there were no local postal adminstrations. The Ottomans established a large number of post offices in Hejaz and Yemen, while the areas the British would come to dominate on the Eastern and Southern coasts of the Peninsula would gradually come under the Indian Post Office. One area of specialization popular among collectors of this region is cancels issued by the Indian and Ottoman post offices for branches in the area. The Gibbons catalog provides a lot of pricing information regarding cancels used on Indian postal issues in the region from Kuwait around to Aden.

Unfortunately Gibbons does not provided any coverage of the Ottoman precursor issues used in Hejaz, Yemen, and parts of Eastern Arabia before the establishment of British hegemony. I know there is some very specialist literature coving Ottoman posts in Arabia (and other areas of the Empire that did not become part of the successor Turkish Republic in 1923) but as of now this is an area that is lacking in terms of coverage in popular specialized Western catalogues of the region.

For clarity in discussion of the catalogue I am going to start with the British sphere of influence then move on to the Western Arabian peninsula states of Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

A) The British sphere of influence in Eastern and Southern Arabia

One of the nice things about Gibbons is its coverage of Indian postal issues used in the Eastern part of the peninsula. Listings of prices for cancels from Bahrein and Muscat are provided, as shown below for Bahrein.

Listings for Bahrein cancels on the stamps of British India, (p. 3 of listings)

For the British sphere of influence Gibbons does its usual amazing job parsing out varieties such as watermark errors, shades and othe varieities, including items not covered by the Scott Classic Specialized. For example, here is the first page of Kuwait's issues starting with the 1923 overprints.

First page of listings for Kuwait

This specialization continues beyond the classical era, as shown here for the varieties that exist for the Elizabeth II definitive issue for Aden in the 1950s.

Varieties on the Elizabeth II definitives for Aden from the 1950s

And for those states that did not have postal services of their own, the British would take over administration of the post offices from India (or in a couple cases Pakistan) after the end of the Raj in 1947 and created their own postal surcharges that were used in Qatar, the Trucial States and Muscat.

Listings for the British Post Office in Arabia issues (note no info on cancellation values)

One thing NOT included though, which is a bit of a miss, is valuation of different cancels on these British issues. I would imagine usage from Qatar would have been more rare than from Muscat, and that legible Doha cancels would be worth more than Muscat or Dubai.

By the 1960s changes were coming into play in the eastern part of the Arabian peninsula. Kuwait became independent in 1961, and the other Arab sheikhdoms would assume local control over their postal services, producing stamps for their needs. This would of course lead to the rise of the “Sand Dune” issues as some of the poorer states, like Ajman and Fujeira, would sign contracts with agencies to produce stamps with topical appeal in their name.

Appendix listing for the "Sand Dune" issues of Ras al-Kheima in the 1960s

Gibbons does NOT price most sand dunes, instead listing the majority issued after 1967 in “appendixes” at the end of each nation, as the above for Ras al-Kheima shows.

But this is not true for all states. Dubai, which while not issuing as many questionable issues as the other smaller state, still had some very topical issues, is listed in full, and this includes issues NOT included in the Scott Standard Catalogue listings for Dubai.

When is a "Sand Dune" not a "Sand Dune?"  Full listings for all Dubai issues, 

in spite of their "Sand Dune"-like nature

Further south, an anti-British, anti-sheikh revolt in the British dominated regions of Southern Arabia would lead eventually to the withdrawl of the British from Aden in 1967. Some of the Easten Yemeni sheikhdoms would joint the Sand Dune bandwagon, issuing stamps until the radical nationalist rebels seized power. This included a new state, Mahra, which is not included in the Scott Catalogue.

The stamps of Mahra given full listing in Gibbons (not in Scott, however)

By the early 1970s, though, the flood of “wallpaper” coming from the former British sphere in Eastern Arabia would be rapidly shut down as the seven Trucial states federated into the United Arab Emirates in 1971, Qatar became independent (as did Muscat, as the Sultanate of Oman, though the Muscat government did not join the “Sand Dune” ranks) and an anti-Western regime came to power in South Yemen. All of these states would pursue much more conservative philatelic regimes in the 1970s and 1980s, and today these early independence-era issues have become quite valuable, cataloging many times their original catalogue value when first listed in the 1970s. The just goes to show that a nation may tart its philatelic reputation with Wallpaper for a period, but can rehabilitate that reputation with a more conservative stamp issuing policy afterward.

Today there is even a dedicated group of collectors of the “Sand Dune” stamps issued during the free-wheeling late 1960s, although Gibbons does not value most of these issues, they at least make mention of them (something the Scott Standards as of 2012 still did not do). For a full treatment of these issues however, one must turn to the Michel and it's “Gulf States” regional catalogue, where each issue is listed in full with valuations.

B) Saudi Arabia and Yemen

Moving to the non-British influenced are of the Arabian peninsula, the Gibbons catalogue does an excellent job dealing with the often complex issues surrounding the rise of the Saudi Arabian state in the 1920s.

The complex philatelic wonderland of varieties and errors of Saudi Arabian precursor issues 

from Hejaz and the Nejdi conquest after 1925. 

It should be noted that Scott, in its 2015 Classic Specialized, does a very comparable job with the listing of the regular stamp varieties, overprint complexities and varieties that exist, both for the issues of independent Hejaz (1916-1925) and for the Nejdi supremacy after 1925. Decades of involvement in the Saudi oil industry by Americans means that Saudi Arabian philately is actually a bit more popular in the USA than other areas of the Islamic World, and Scott responds well to that interest in its coverage of the Classical era stamps of the Kingdom and its precursors.

After the proclamation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932, Saudi issues become a bit less complex for a period, though there are still plenty of shade and perforation varieties, as the listings below show.

Saudi Arabia listings from the 1930s, note the full listing of perf-varieties for the definitive issue starting in 1934 (not fully covered in Scott 2015 Classic Specialized)

Moving into the post-oil boom era of Saudi history, Gibbons does a wondeful job listing varieties of color, perforation and design type that exist on the various Saudi definitive issues from the 1960s to the 1990s, providing illustrations where Scott might only list a footnote, as with the varieties of the al-Khafji Oil Rig issue of 1977-1978.

Gibbons (top) and Scott (bottom) listing for Saudi issues of the late-1970s, 

showing Gibbons full listing of the inscription varieties on the al-Khafji oil rig definitives, 

which are merely footnoted in Scott.

Finally, coverage of Yemen in Gibbons starts with the Kingdom issues first released in 1926. Fairly comparable to coverage in Scott until the outbreak of the Civil War in 1962. For the Civil War issues, Gibbons catalogs not only the majority of the Republican issues in full (there is a small appendix for issues in the period 1967-1972, and the listings are fuller than what is in the Scott catalog for the entire period of the Civil War for the Republic, with notes up to early 1967 then no information on later issues) but also the majority of the Royalist issues for the same period. This is an area that Scott's 2012 Standard Catalogue does not cover at all, not even in notes.

Royalist Yemen "issues" during the 1960s Yemeni Civil War, listed in Gibbons, 

but not even mentioned in passing in Scott.

By 1971 the Civil War had ended and a single North Yemen Republican regime was issuing stamps, and Gibbons covers contemporary Yemeni issues in a straight-forward manner, similar to what Scott covers.

Conclusions

A philatelically complex region, the Arabian Peninsula is covered quite nicely in this new Gibbons catalog. More specialized than the Scott Standard, and even for some states more specialized than the Scott Classic Specialized, the Gibbons Arabia is a great introduction to the philately of this part of the world, in all its nuances and forms.

Comments? Questions? Ask away and let me know people are reading this :)

Specialized Catalogue Review for AUSTRALIA (II)

Country : AUSTRALIA

Catalogue Title : Stanley Gibbons Commonwealth Stamp Catalogue : Australia, 9^th ed

Publisher : Stanley Gibbons LTD, Ringwood, UK (2014)

Format : Soft Cover, 338 pages, 170mmx240mm, color illustrations

Language of Text : English

Price : UK£29.95 (Note this price and review is based on the 9^th edition published in 2014. The brand new 10^th edition has just been published in 2016.)

One of the grand names in philately, and one of the “Big Four” catalogue publishers that publish worldwide catalogues (the other three being Scott, Michel and Yvert et Tellier), the catalogues of Stanley Gibbons are considered by most collectors of the the United Kingdom, the British Empire and modern Commonwealth as the catalogues of record for that sphere of the philatelic world.

What many collectors may not realize is that in addition to the top-notch Commonwealth catalogue 1840-1970 that Gibbons updates yearly and is the first place of reference for most collectors and dealers in the British sphere, Gibbons also publishes an EXCELLENT line of regional catalogues that cover all aspects of philately to the present day. With the exception of the old Dominons of Canada, Australia and New Zealand which have developed their own catalogues of record due to the existence of highly active collector communities, Gibbons Commonwealth Stamp Catalogues are the catalogue of record for these issues.

Australia is to some degrees in the middle between having its own Catalogue of Record and the primacy of Gibbons. As noted in my previous reviewe, the Australian Commonwealth Specialists' Catalogue (aka the Brusden-Whites) is THE primary catalogue of record for Australian issues from the first Federal issue in 1913 to the introduction of decimalization in 1966. However, there are a few things the Brusden-Whites either do not cover, or only cover in editions that are over ten years old.

1. Pre-Federation Colonial Australian Issues for the six colonies
2. Contemporary pricing of decimal-era issues and varieties
3. Most of the Australian External Territories issues (it does cover the Cocos Islands and Australian Antarctic Territory issues up to decimalization, but for some reason neither Norfolk Island nor Christmas Island's pre-decimal issues).
4. Australian colonies in the South Pacific (Papua, Northwest Pacific Islands, Mandate New Guinea, Papua New Guinea and Nauru)

For collectors looking for a specialized treatment of these four areas of Australian philately, the Australia volume of Gibbons Commonwealth Stamp Catalogue remains the catalogue of record.

As this is the first of what will be several reviews of Gibbons catalogues, a couple of comments about Gibbons catalogues in general. First, the text in the catalogues is SMALL, very SMALL. Gibbons crams a ton of information in each page, and if like me you have less than stellar eyesight, you might find yourself reaching for reading glasses or a magnifying glass.

Second, the organization of minor listings has a logic to it, but like looking for the right key on a keychain to open a door, it takes a bit of trial and error to figure things out. Watermark varieties are usually marked with a minor listing w, and if the watertmark variety is tied to another variety within the issue, a second minor letter is added, so a bw minor listing would be for a watermark variety on the b variety of the main stamp. Again with a bit of practice you soon become accustomed to how Gibbons lists varieties, but to those used to Scott's system of using just one minor letter for each variety (most of the time) this will take a bit of accustomization.

Review Of The Catalogue and Comparison with Scott (and Brusden-White)

For most classical-era collectors, the lack of coverage of the pre-Federation Australian colonies postal issues (the stamps of New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia, Western Australia and Queensland) in the Brusden-White catalogues is a major gap in their otherwise excellent coverage of Australian philately. To be fair to the publishers of Brusden-White, the many complexities of Australian colonial issues would make such a tome (or tomes) would require would be another lifetime of work, and perhaps it is best that they have chosen to focus on the post-Federation era (though as we have seen they DO cover the Postage Dues of New South Wales and Victoria, so a precedent of sorts has been set. But I digress...)

As noted, Gibbons does cover the Australian colonial issues in this volume – they occupy the first fifty-five pages of the catalogue. And the amount of information provided in the catalogue listings is a specialists delight. As can be seen in the first page of the catalogue's Queensland listing.

The first pages of listings for Queensland in Gibbons Australia 9th Ed.

Compare this to the listings in the Scott Classic Specialized Catalogue 2015, and one can clearly see the greater degree of depth that Gibbons dives when covering the colonial issues. Scott does a good job as an introduction, but Gibbons clearly adds many more varieties, especially perforation varieites and plate flaws.

The first page of listings for Queensland in the 2015 Scott Classic Specialized

When it comes to the early Federal period pre-decimalization, however, Gibbons pales in comparison compared to the intricate parsing of varieties, plate types and errors that the Brusden-Whites provide, as the comparison below shows.

Coverage of the George V Sidefaces in Gibbons (first issues)

Coverage of the 1/2d George V Sideface first issue in Brusden-White

For many collectors, the level of detail that Brusden-White provides, especially in terms of plate flaws on specific plates, may seem like flyspecking overkill. For these collectors who want something a bit more detailed than what the Scott Classic provides, but not to the Brusden-White extreme, the Gibbons Australia provides a happy medium between the two.

Moving into the modern era, the comparisons between Scott, which only lists modern Australia in its Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue, are much more clear. Compare the listings of the 1981-1984 Australian Wildlife Definitives between the two catalogues

Coverage of the 1981-1984 Wildlife Definitives in Scott (top) and Gibbons (bottom)

While Scott's listing is quite good, Gibbons provides a few more variety listings and a clearer illustration of the difference between the photogravure and lithographic centers on the 27c Tasmanian devil. One thing that Scott does better in this set is parse out the perforation varieties issued in 1983-1984 as a separate minor number set rather than mesh them together with the main listing. Given the popularity of Australia among North American collectors, Scott does a pretty good job with varieties on Australian definitives compared to other nations.

Se-tenant listings in Gibbons are minor-numbered beginning with the first stamp in the set!

One common point about Gibbons catalogues that will drive Scott-based collectors a bit crazy at first is how se-tenant issues are listed. Gibbons lists unseparated pairs/blocks etc as a minor variety after the first stamp in the set in the catalogue. Scott is the exact opposite, making the unseparated versions a minor number after the last stamp in the set in a catalogue. Something very important to keep in mind when looking online to purchase these setenant issues from dealers that use Gibbons.

One area that Gibbons covers in the Australia catalog that is not covered in Scott (either standard or Classic specialized) and for which Brusden-White's coverage was last printed in 2002 is full Booklets. Gibbons prices them, and given the plethora of booklets that have been released since the early 1990s, such pricing information is quite useful as there is at times a small markup for full booklets, especially for se-tenant issues that contain more than one set per full booklet. Many of these have been sacrificed to create single sets, and as a result full booklets are often given a large markup (much as was the case with USA booklets containing setenant panes of five designs that were popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s.)

Gibbons listings of Australian complete booklets in the mid-late pre-decimal Federal period

Finally for the collectors of the Australian external territories and Australian colonies in the South Pacific, Gibbons provides specialized coverage to the same degree as their main Australia listings for Norfolk Island, Christmas Island, Cocos Islands and the Australian Antarctic Territory.

Also included are listings for Australian ruled Papua, the Mandate of New Guinea, Papua New Guinea and Nauru. Listings are also provided for the Australian occupation of German New Guinea and various German islands in the South Pacific in 1914, which would result in the issues for the North West Pacific Islands, with all its varieties in both base stamps and overprint.  The one limit is that Gibbons coverage of Nauru and Papua New Guinea only extend until independence. Post-independence issues are covered in the Western Pacific catalogue, which also duplicate the listings in the Australia catalogue for these entities.

For an example of coverage, compare below the listing for Nauru's first issues in Gibbons and the Scott Classic Specialized shows again how much deeper into varieties the Gibbons Australia catalogue goes in comparison.

Listings for Nauru in Scott Classic Specialized (top) and Gibbons Australia (bottom)

Finally also include for the first time in the 9^th edition are listings for the German colonial issues of New Guinea, which of course would be the basis for the GRI overprints when German New Guinea was seized by the Australians in 1914. The listings are rather basic though, and probably the best catalogue for the German issues would be in volume one of the yearly updated Michel Deutschland-Spezial catalogue, which includes German colonial issues and all aspects of German philately up to the Zero Hour of April 1945.

Conclusions

This review is based on the 9^th edition of Gibbons Australia, published in 2014. Gibbons has just released in July 2016 the 10^th edition of this catalogue, and while there are no new major categories of stamps added to the catalogue, it does apparently list more varieities in the Colonial issues as well as expand listing on the pre-Decimal Federal era. Gibbons will never be a comprehensive as the Brusden-Whites when it comes to the pre-decimal Federal era, but for those who want to go beyond Scott's listings (and as I said before Scott is not a bad first reference point, especially the Classic Specialized, given the popularity of Australia in North America) the Gibbons represent a happy middle ground for those looking to specialize in Australia further.

New series of blog posts in the pipeline - Reviews of Specialized Catalogues from around the world

I've been relatively scarce the past several weeks and for that I apologize.  Work has been very hectic lately for me, still working 48 hour/week shifts.  Also had some family drama, as my mother-in-law first moved in with my partner and I, and then a week later passed away. My mother-in-law was 86 and was in late-stage conditions of Alzheimer's Disease, so while her passing was not completely unexpected, the demands on my free time were taken up for the most of May by preparations to move her in and then the unexpected demands of dealing with my mother-in-law's passing, as my partner was her last surviving child.

June has only been a continuation of the stresses of May at work, though I finally took my first week of vacation the week of the 19th to the 25th. It was my first vacation in nine months, and had been originally scheduled for April but due to my hospitalization in April due to a blood infection, I had to reschedule the vacation week.  I have another week of vacation in July, but as I have friends from overseas coming to visit and plans to spend a few days in the St Lawrence Valley and then in Montreal and Ottawa, I had to spend a good bit of my June vacation preparing for that.  At least I can say life is not dull, but free time to spend with stamps and my other hobbies has been at a premium.

The good news is that July is looking less hectic to a degree.  After months of being short staffed, my department at work is now full staffed as of this week.  Once we get past the 4th of July holiday, I should be working 40 hour weeks going forward.  You do not realize how much an extra day away from work can help keep you sane and give you personal time to do things you want to do! My friends from overseas will be here most of the last two weeks of July so that will be a demand on my free time, but after that I should finally be able to have more time to work on stamps and my other hobbies.

This is not to say I have completely ignored stamps over the past couple months.  I was not able to attend World Stamp Expo in New York as it was held during the Memorial Day holiday, one of the busiest holidays for meat and seafood departments, and with the weather having been so nice this year it was really busy and gives me pause to think how busy the 4th July holiday will be especially if the weather is as gorgeous and warm as it has been here the last couple weeks.

I was able however to get a chance to attend COLOPEX 16 here in Columbus.  The regional APS show held each year by the Columbus Philatelic Community, it was a nice show.  Not quite the grand show it used to be in the 1990s to be sure, but nice enough as it was with some great exhibits and about 25 dealers in the bourse accompanying the show.  Found some nice French colonial material that day, and overall it was a great afternoon of philatelic fun for me.  In 2018 the annual APS Stamp Show will be held here in Columbus, so that will be something the local philatelic community will be gearing up to host.  If it is as good as previous APS shows held here in Columbus it will be a great philatelic time to be had by all.

Now that things in Real Life are beginning to allow me more free time, I am going to start a new series of posts here in this blog over this next several weeks.  The idea of the posts was suggested to my by philatelic blog master Jim of the Big Blue blog.  As those who regularly read my ramblings here on this blog, I have a love of specialized catalogues, and my library continues to grow as I add more countries into the mix.  In fact I think I am currently focusing more on the catalogues than on stamps themselves, in part because I am setting up my collections and so need to have the catalogues now to properly lay out my pages for all the varieties that specialist catalogues provide information.  Jim suggested that I consider a series of posts reviewing the various catalogues in my collection and compare them to the Scott Specialized 1840-1940 catalogue that many collectors use when they want access to a bit more information on specialized material from the golden age of philately.

Sounded like a winner to me, so the plan I am working on is to start posting the series one country/catalogue at a time. Hopefully the readers of this blog will find these review useful and, as always contribute suggestions for improvement.  And a special thank you to Jim for the excellent idea he planted in my ear.  I can only hope my postings are remotely as educational as his posts for BigBlue, though I will be covering the whole catalogues I review which means there will be quite a bit of post-1940 discussion as well.

And speaking of Specialized Catalogues, with the sudden approximately 10% drop in the value of the UK£ against the US$ in wake of the Leave victory in the EU referendum,  British catalogues are now a nice bit cheaper than they were a week ago.  Since I think this drop in value is only somewhat temporary, I decided to place an order for a bunch of Commonwealth Specialized catalogues from Stanley Gibbons.  The fact that SG is also still facing a great deal of its own financial turmoil (its stock is now down to approx  UK£0.12 per share now) and the potential that something bad may happen to SG in the near future as a company also motivated my decision.  The result - I have 13 catalogues heading my way from Britain and hopefully they will be here sometime in the next week.

If you are in the USA and collect British and or Commonwealth material, now is an excellent time to pick up some items from British retailers while the UK£ readjusts in valuation to deal with the new realities of the UK leaving the EU.  Make hay while the sun shines!

Trouble in philatelic paradise???? The "Autumn of Discontent" for Scott and Gibbons...(Repost & Update)

This is a repost of a blog article from my 1.0 blog originally posted on 24 November 2015

For those of you who have visited either the Stampboards or Stamp Community forums in the last couple weeks, you may be aware that two of the most important names in the philatelic world, Stanley Gibbons and Amos Publishing (publisher of the Scott line of albums and catalogs in the USA) have both been having very trying periods.

In the case of Amos, it seems to be a massive technical failure that has completely eliminated their presence on the internet.  Going to the main Amos Advantage website only results in an error message and a note saying that the company hopes to be back online soon.  But for now, access to the products produced by Amos for the philatelic community via the publisher's own website is completely cut off.  With the holiday season rapidly approaching, hopefully these technical issues will be resolved soon, since I am sure that Amos, like most retailers, depend on holiday sales for a significant portion of their business.

While Amos grapples with internet gremlins of the first order, a much more potentially serious problem is growing for the British philatelic institution Stanley Gibbons.  A few years back new owners of the comany decided to take Gibbons into the world of Stocks, floating what had been a private company with what was, at the time, a fairly successful Initial Public Offer.  The management at Gibbons then began aggressively marketing the Gibbons company as an opportunity for investors in rare philatelic collectibles, promoting the idea that philatelic items could be a good alternative investment in an age of low returns due to the very low interest rates available in the West, and the uncertainty caused by the rapid gyrations of stock markets since the start of the 2008 Global economic crisis.

The year 2015 will likely go down as Gibbons "annus horribilis" in terms of its decision to travel down the investment pathway.  Investors have not invested to the degree imagined, and the auction market for the type of high-end UK and Commonwealth material that is the bedrock of Gibbons inventory has been flat at best and losing value in some areas.  Gibbons stock, which started the year with a value of over UKP 3.00 per share, has now fallen to  below UKP 0.90, a nearly 75% drop in value. 

The fundamentals of the Gibbons company do not augur well for a recovery any time soon. It's internet presence via the Bidstart marketplace (which Gibbons purchases a couple years back hoping to increase its internet-based retail presence) is dire and going through yet another revamping. Profits have not met market expectations, and the result has been a steeping downward slide in the value of the stock. Parts of the Gibbons empire, such as the Catalog business, remain vibrant, but that branch alone can not support a company whose marketplace ambitions may simply have been too big for the resources at its disposal.  Hopefully Gibbons will be able to turn things around, reorganize itself around its core philatelic business, and seriously rethink the idea of being a vehicle to promote stamps as an "investment opportunity" for those seeking a quick profit.  Hopefully this can be achieved without Gibbons having to be "liquidated" in wake of further profit losses, but its unclear just how much lower Gibbons' stock price can go before the marketplace starts to consider that the most likely option. 

For collectors in North America, there is a little solace in knowing that Amos Publishing is a privately-held company, so much less subject to the whims and pressures of a financial market that prioritizes short-term profit over long-term potential for growth.  As disconcerting as the longer than expected resolution of Amos' technical issues is, these issues should be resolvable in the end, and hopefully the financial cost to Amos will not have been too egregious. If Amos was in Gibbons' position as a publicly-traded company, the potential for investor flight gravely damaging the economic health of the company due to this technical crisis would probably have been immense.

I am not anti-capitalist by any stretch of the imagination, but sometimes keeping a company privately owned is a better option for the long-term health of the company instead of exposing the company to the whims of the global financial marketplace. I personally think the experience of Gibbons as a publicly-traded company illustrates the great risks that any company involved in collectibles faces.  In the end, philately really should never be seen as an investment tool, but rather for what it is, an enjoyable hobby that, perhaps over the long term, can also be profitable to the collector with a bit of luck, patience and time.

UPDATE : 

Since the original posting of this article back in November, things for Gibbons have gone from bad to worse.  Its share price on the London Stock Exchange is now less than a quarter of what it was in November, hovering around UKP 0.20 or so.  The management team has had to turn to stock owners for an infusion of capital, and there have been more than a few departures from the management team (some I will wager jumping with golden parachutes as is common in the world of investment capitalism these days). 

The Gibbons catalogue line is still being produced (they just released a brand new title Arabia covering the Arabian Peninsula, a welcome addition as this is an area of the philatelic world with little specialized guidance available, especially outside the British-influenced areas along the Persian Gulf) but their Bidstart marketplace looks set to be wound down, and overall the company seems to be on more than a bit of life support at the present.  Hopefully for the futue of the hobby the Gibbons name and its essential production of catalogues survives these troubling times, but it still looks very touch and go as far as the current organizational setup of Gibbons is concerned.

The great debate....hinged vs never hinged...and the evil legacy of Crystal Mounts....(Repost)

This is a reposting of a blog entry from the first version of this blog posted on 1 August 2015

It's a debate that has rumbled through philatelic circles since at least the 1950s (famous US Stamp Dealer and author Herman Herst Jr wrote about it in many of his articles, collections of which have been published as Nassau Street and Fun And Profit In Stamp Collecting and both of which are entertaining and educational reads well worth checking out!). Should mint stamps be collected as hinged or never hinged.  Or perhaps more to the point, at what point chronologically should a collector stop collecting mint hinged stamps and only seek out never hinged copies of issues.

A look at stamp catalogues from various regions is little help as none seem to agree to any date in particular. Generally, Scott sets its values for mint as never hinged for most nations around 1945 or so. Some countries a little later, some (like the USA) in the 1930s. Scott also, at least in its Classic Specialized 1840-1940 Catalog, provides pricing for never hinged for issues before their cutoff date. One thing Scott very rarely does though is price items, or even give a rough guide to value, for hinged items AFTER the transition date. Does this mean hinged items issued after the transition date are worthless???? Surely it can't, but how do you value the items if there is no guide, even a rough one.

Other catalogues, as I note above, use different dates.  The Gibbons catalogs make the transition form hinged to never hinged with the coronation of George VI in 1937.  Again, no guide is provided as to what kind of a discount should be given for items issued after 1937 that are hinged, and even more perplexing, neither is any suggestion of a degree of premium never hinged items issues before 1937.  At least none is given in the three specialized Gibbons catalogues I own (Australia 9th ed, New Zealand 5th ed and Malaysia-Singapore-Brunei 4th ed).

Since I am focusing at this time mainly on the French colonial world, I also have a set of Maury catalogues for France and empire.  Here there IS some help, as Maury prices everything from start to its general transition date of 1960 in both never hinged and hinged varieties. Interestingly enough, the degree of premium for Never Hinged items in the later 1950s vs hinged is not that large, usually around 33% or so. After 1960 prices for mint stamps are for never hinged only, though one could argue that the discount should not be too huge for hinged if the examples of the late 1950s pricing ratios are taken into consideration.  Similarly the Afinsa catalogues for Portugal and Colonies offer pricing for both never hinged and hinged stamps up to 1953 and the Centenary of Portuguese Stamps issue. The İsfila catalogue for the Ottoman Empire and Turkey sets the date at 1938, while the Guillermo Jalil catalogue for Argentina sets it at 1940, with both catalogues providing pricing guidance for never-hinged items issues before their transition dates, though not after.

Stamp mounts only began to become common in the USA with the introduction of the Crystal Mount by the HE Harris company in the 1950s, though there were some predecessors that, to be honest, were more work than worth the effort to use.  I remember Crystal Mounts well, since that is what my father used when he introduced me to stamp collecting in the 1970s and 1980s. I remember spending many an snowy upstate NY evening helping him mount his various collections with these mounts, that only came in a small range of sizes so that one had to fold over part of the mount to secure the stamp inside. 

Crystal Mounts in their packaging from the 1980s...images that bring shudders of horror to me today.

Until the introduction of mounts based around stamp height in a much larger range of sizes (such as the Scott Mount by Prinz and similar mounts) these were considered the best mount for keeping stamps never hinged. And millions of US collectors used them in the period from the 1950s to the 1980s (and some still swear by them)

(rant) I truly LOATHE Crystal Mounts (/rant). It was always way too easy to bend perfs as you folded over the extra plastic, and stamps often have a hard time "breathing" when they are in tightly folded ones.  When I inherited my father's stamp collection, I discovered that removing stamps from mounts was rather akin to extracting a coin that has fallen thru a grate - often frustrating and infuriating.  You need to be very careful removing the stamps from a Crystal Mount, and you often need to put it under some weight afterward to remove the -curl- that the mounts often create after years of storage.  Really poorly stored collections housed in Crystal mounts often have yellow staining where the gummed strip was positioned, and occasionally the gum will even glaze from moisture trapped over time.

When I was heavily building up my first stamp collection in the 1990s, I used the traditional album pages and Scott Mounts, as I've noted in my first post.  At times it felt like I was spending as much on supplies as I was on stamps. But this time around I have decided to use Lighthouse Vario stockpages and it is so wonderful NOT to have to factor the cost of mounts into my stamp budget AT ALL. Although they have come down in price from what they were in the 1980s when I was trying to convince my father to switch to Scott mount and stop using Crystal mounts (an arugment he eventually came to accept in the early 1990s) they are still not cheap especially when you consider the range of sizes you need if you are a worldwide collector.

But back to the original question - hinged or never hinged.  In the end, this is something that each collector has to decide for himself or herself.  De gustibus non disputatum est. My general rule of thumb is hinged is fine until 1960, and from 1960 onward I will only buy never hinged issues. By 1960 you really have huge supplies of never hinged material for most nations available in the marketplace here in the USA, and stamp mounts by 1960 were much more commonly in use. Some nations I may make the never-hinged only transition a bit earlier, but 1960 is, for me, a pretty firm date for all nations. Now, if given the opportunity to purchase pre-1960 material in never hinged form at a fair price, then I will not turn my nose up at it either, but for me at least, there is nothing wrong with a hinged stamp, provided that the hinging by previous owners has not done any major physical damage to the stamp over the years, such as thins on the back.  For my part, so long as the stamp remains in my possession, I will not harm it further with another hinge.  But let us be honest, we admire our stamps for the designs on the front, not to fetishize the pristine-ness of the gum on the back.