You asked me to give some details about the greatest Australian stamp discovery of the latter half of the 20th century (arguably of the 20th century).
I first heard about it in Sept./Oct. 1998, I had called in to see Dr. Geoff Kellow in Melbourne. He had just received a letter from a gentleman in Central Europe (I'll call him Mr. Gee) included in the letter was a photocopy of an article that he was about to publish in a society journal, of which I am also a member.
The article stated "I have just acquired an accumulation of 40-42kgs (!!) used stamps on piece" all of which have never been checked, the article also showed the following stamps.
KGV½d Green Single Line Perf. used Perforated O.S.
KGV ½d Green Single Line Perf. used with part JBC Monogram.
KGV 1d Large Multi. Watermark used Cooke Carmine Pink Perforated O.S.
KGV 1d Crown over A block of 4 used with Rusted Clichés, Thin G & dot on Y
None of the above were known to exist in 1998
Needless to say I was keen to make contact with Mr. Gee, as I am a keen student of the KGV 1d's and I had noticed that the KGV 1d Cooke stamp had the 'Run N' flaw which had not been mentioned in the article, but I decided that I could not make contact with Mr. Gee until after the article had been published in the society journal, after all I only knew about it via a private letter to Dr. Kellow.
As soon as the article had been published I phoned Mr. Gee, and during our conversation he said that he thought he had found a number of Salmon Eosin's, but he was not sure as he had never seen a certified copy of the stamp, he also agreed to send me 3 A4 photocopy pages of the stamps and I agreed to send him a group of shades, Pink's, Carmine Pink's, Salmons & a Salmon Eosin so he could check his stamps.
I showed the 3 A4 Photocopy pages of the Salmon Eosin's to a few people and they were of the opinion that the stamps wold turn out to be Pink's or Salmon shades, I think their reasoning was that there were so many of them so they could not be Salmon Eosin's, but I wasn't so sure as the Nov. 1917 cancellation of Singleton & Wagga Wagga were there as well as many smaller towns from these areas that only experts would know are known on the Salmon Eosin.
I asked and eventually purchased some of Mr. Gee's Salmon Eosin's
I also arranged to call in and see Mr. Gee on my way to the UK later in 1999.
The Find:
Mr.Gee goes to most of the stamp shows in Europe, and asks the dealers 'Have you got any Australian stamps" and he has picked up some very fine material over there, and this is what he told me when we met.
When he attended a stamp show in Italy he asked the same question again, and one dealer said "Yes I've got some ½kg packets here and they are unpicked." Mr. Gee was a bit skeptical about that as he had heard that before, but decided to buy 4 packets just in case (this was one of the best things he had ever done as far as stamp collecting is concerned.)
The next day Mr. Gee drove home, and that night he started to sort the stamps out, and what he found got him very excited, there were Rusted clichés, Sub-cliché's, Die 2's & major flaws.
He didn't get much sleep that night, he wanted to get some more of this material but there was a problem, he hadn't got the dealers name or phone number and he had to go to work the next day, how could he get the stamps?
A friend of Mr. Gee's was a commissioner at the show, so he phoned him and described where the dealer's stand was at the show and asked him to "Buy all the ½kg packets of Australian stamps he has left, and get his name and phone number, I'll square up with you when next we meet"
The dealer had not sold any of the packets since Mr. Gee's purchase and the commissioner was able to purchase a further 4 packets for him.
Later Mr. Gee phoned the dealer, and it turned out that the dealer had been making up packets from a tea chest full of Australian stamps. Eventually Mr. Gee purchased the tea chest from the dealer, and after the deal had been done the dealer made the casual comment "I think we have another tea chest somewhere, if I find it I'll let you Know"
Much later the second tea chest was found and purchased by Mr. Gee. making a total of about 70 kgs in total.
It was agreed with Mr. Gee that I would bring an ultra violet lamp and a set of Salmon Eosin shades with me and we would check out his Eosin's.
I contacted a friend in Sydney and we made up a set of 12 eosin's covering the various shades for the Salmon Eosin group.
I packed the U/V lamp in my hand luggage and surrounded it with jumpers to help protect it, I guessed that it would cause a bit of a problem at the airports when I checked it through, but Melbourne was not too bad.
Getting back on the plane at Kuala Lumpur was a different story with guards coming over with automatic guns at the ready, then very very slowly undoing the case to show them the lamp, and trying to explain to them what it was used for and that it wasn't a bomb.
I also had with me a letter confirming my appointment to view the Queens collection in London which I showed them explaining that I was only a stamp collector.
And this was before 9/11, I don't think I would do it now. And the wife realized that we would have to go through all this again on the way back, she was not impressed saying she always new stamp collectors were nutter's and this has proven it.
When I checked Mr. Gee's Eosin's I was able to confirm that all but one were in the salmon Eosin group, he had the full range, Rose's, Pink's, Yellow's & Salmon's, it was wonderful to see such a fine display, as these had not seen the light of day for about 80 years.
As stated earlier I had purchased a couple of Eosin's from Mr. Gee, and he sold me another one that made up a pair, but the incredible thing is that one was found in the 1st tea chest and the other in the 2nd, now what are the odds of that?.
Another interesting piece that was found was a mint Salmon Eosin Monogram, no stamp but just the Monogram, but it is the only one known.
Before I met Mr. Gee he had sent me 6½kgs of stamps from the find (he had already checked them), I kept asking how much do I owe you?
He eventually told me that as I had paid some account's for him in Australia (to save bank charges etc.) if I was happy we would call things square, I can assure you I was more than happy with that.
Later Mr. Gee told me that he had sent 30kgs to a friend in the UK whom I happened to know, and when I met him at London 2000 I asked him if he had any of the damaged stamps left that he wanted to sell, 'I'm sorry, but I sorted them out and chucked the damaged one's in the garbage bin"
What a loss to the Postmark collector as within the first couple of hours of looking at my lot I found a vertical pair of 1d Victoria stamps and the postmark looked different, so I consulted 'The Post Offices and Hand-held Date Stamps of Victoria' by Watson,Webster and Wood, luckily it was from Barnawartha and listed as number 30 and has several ??? against it.
I asked Gary & David "why"? - and it turned out that at that time they had only ever seen 3 part strikes of the cancel, and here it was a full strike on a pair of common 1d Victoria stamps, and I have found several more interesting items from the lot.
I've been asked a few times how many stamps were in the find?
IF my lot was a representative sample I can give a fair estimate, I weighed out 3 x 100gm lots and they averaged 1000 per 100gm (remember many of them are still on paper) so 10 x 1000 = 10,000 per kg so 70kg = 700,000 stamps.
Where did they come from?:
It is hard to give a definite answer to this, but from what Mr. Gee was told by the dealer and what I have found in my lot it would appear that the stamps were collected in about July 1919 (latest date found, but from the late 1890's) they may have been collected for the Red Cross or some other charity.
They were purchased by the Italian dealer's Grandfather and eventually placed in their cellar and forgotten about.
They survived World War 2 and stayed there until the late 1990's when the dealer found them, and decided to make up some packets and take some to the stamp show.
Before going to Europe a collector let me know that he would be very keen to purchase the KGV Single Line Perf. ½d's, but Mr. Gee was not interested in selling them, he said "I wish you had tried to purchase them on the cheap as it would have been a lot easier to say no to your offer"
I believe that all the important items from this find have now found new homes, and the new custodians will look after them for the future generations of collectors.
I suppose the moral of this discovery (if there is one) is 'If you don't ask you'll never know' and look what you may be missing.
Regards David
