What you have sold among your clients is not a blue mauritius post office, but a mauritius post paid, but it is also one of the most valuable stamps in the world. Why? And what is the difference between the two?
The blue mauritius post office was printed at a time of lack of stamps. A new delivery from Great Britain has not yet arrived, so the local engraver received an order to print stamps on Mauritius. There are 12 post office versions with this post office error print, two of which are publicly traded, others are in various museums, trusts and the like. Of the other two, one is in the Czech Republic, the investor bought it here in 2016. The price was not published, it is in any case a seven-digit amount in euros. And the second, according to my information, is now in Germany in a famous collecting family.
In our case, it is a reassembled original printing plate of the classic post paid variants. The whole field is in top print quality.
Blue Mauritius is a term known even to lay people. Is it the most valuable mark in the world?
It’s not. It is certainly the most famous, but not the most expensive. The most expensive is the so-called British Guiana one cent magenta. In 2014, it was bought by shoe designer Stuart Weitzman for more than nine million dollars.
How did Portu Gallery get into the reconstruction of the original blue mauritius post paid printing plate?
The basis of the sheet has an interesting story, circulated among renowned investors in stamps. Arthur Hindt used to be the owner, he owned one similar reconstruction. He composed the best of the two. Recently, this sheet came to the Czech Republic to a domestic investor. Portu Gallery bought it from him.
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What evaluation can be expected?
Interestingly. Recently, there have been auctions for some relevant blue Mauritia post paid in Switzerland or the United Kingdom. Assembling the same set of them would cost more than our subscription cost. Portu Gallery plans to hold this investment for at least five years. So we’ll see.
Are you planning further stamp purchases for Porto Gallery in the future?
We used to purchase and subscribe for the first Nitra gutter, the next issue represented historically the first stamps from 15 selected countries. If we are interested in something on the market, we will be happy to think about it. For example, we would like to put together an interesting portfolio of misprints.
How does the stamp market work in general?
The collector’s market operates on the basis of catalogs. Fixed prices are always given in recognized catalogs. They reflect auction prices, but are usually sold more expensive. This in turn constitutes the prices of the new catalog. I call it a perpetuum mobile.
Crises in other markets are also helping stamps.
Did the corona crisis also help?
Certainly. I’m a businessman myself, I solve problems all day and in the evening or on the weekend, when I have time, I play with papers. It’s wonderfully soothing. And there are more of us.
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Is the number of collectors growing?
There are over 50 million collectors worldwide, a tenth of which are investors. It is estimated that there are about 30,000 collectors in the Czech Republic, and the number of investors willing to invest hundreds of thousands of crowns in collecting is several hundred. However, this is old data. However, I dare say that the number of collectors is growing, but I have no data for that. There is no recent reliable data on the number of collectors.
However, there are data on the turnover of philately, which is around $ 15 billion a year, in the Czech Republic it is close to one billion crowns.
How does the Czechia stand in the global context?
We are still lagging behind the Anglo-Saxon world. In the world, for example, there are philately-oriented special media. The American magazine Forbes has its regular correspondent on the topic of stamps. However, last year’s exhibition of Prestige Philately Club Prague stamps at the National Museum also brought an interesting stimulus in the Czech Republic.
If you had to bet on evaluating some specific types of marks, what would you think would work?
Definitely a British colony. India’s oldest stamps, for example, India declared postage stamps as their cultural heritage and banned their export from the country. Chinese stamps from the period of the Cultural Revolution. Stamps of the Soviet Union until 1950. Occupied countries and various protectorates. And then the misprints. Czech and Czechoslovak stamps are also interesting.
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