Recent acquisitions

These are some recently acquired material from fairs, ebay etc. They are not uncommon but still should be interesting to some collectors of our areas.

This is Sandakan D10 which was mainly used for fiscal purposes between June 1900 and November 1904. It is not uncommon but is a good looking cancellation. This is the best one I have so far.

I bought at the same time as the Sandakan D10. This is a nice Singapore cancel on a Labuan adhesive and probably represented paquebot use.

On the top left corner is, I am fairly sure, a boxed Paid cancellation from Kuching, Sarawak. The significance of this cancellation remains uncertain. With the manuscript part signature on this adhesive, it looks likely that it also had a fiscal function.

I can never get enough of these Retour covers. This one is not that ancient and dated from 1950. It was sent from Brunei to Brisbane. It has various nice postal markings including INCONNU NOT KNOWN.  There is a Dead Letter Office cancellation in red which is possibly uncommon. It was sold to me by a good friend in the Sarawak Specialist Society.

Rare overprints on the first Labuan postal stationary card

The first post card of Labuan was issued in 1881. This was the 4c green on buff card. It bears the head of Queen Victoria similar in design with the concurrent stamp issue. 

In 1891, the card was overprinted 3 CENTS  when Labuan joined the Universal Postal Union on 1 July 1891 and the overseas rate was reduced to 3c. According to Higgins & Gage, both genuine used and unused copies are rare and counterfeits exist. However, the latter's existence has not been proven and almost certainly no forged copies have been seen or classified as such. So what we have here is quite likely to be the real deal. Commercially used copies are definitely going to be expensive.

On 1 November 1907, the administration of Labuan was transferred from North Borneo to Straits Settlements. Evidently, some of the original stock of the 1881 card were around. These were overprinted for use in addition to the contemporary 1c+1c and 3c+3c cards. The overprint used can be seen above. The overseas rate was 3c. All three cards are difficult to find especially when commercially used. The above card should the rarest of these three cards. I dare not speculate how much a properly used copy would cost as it would also be very desirable to Straits collectors.