Inverted Stamp of China.

A Rare Inverted Chinese Stamp. Do you have it?

 

 

1915 $2.00 Blue and Black



Historical background information.

 



The Beijing Guozijian

 

The Beijing Guozijian was the imperial college (Guozijian) during the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, and the last Guozijian of China. Most of the Beijing Guozijian's buildings were built during the Ming Dynasty and it remains an important heritage site in China. During the Hundred Days' Reform of the Qing Dynasty, the education and administration of education functions of Guozijian was mainly replaced by the Imperial Capital University (also translated as Imperial University of Peking), later known as Peking University. In 1905, Guozijian was finally shut down.
The whole complex of Guozijian faces south, and it has a total building area of more than 10,000 square meters or 107,639 square feet.

Sir Robert Hart, 1st Baronet, IMCS 1863-1911

Chinese Customs"
Hart as caricatured in
Vanity Fair, December 1894

Guozijian, often translated into English as, the Imperial Academy or Imperial College, was the national central institute of learning in ancient Chinese dynasties. It was the highest institute of learning in China's traditional educational system. Emperors in imperial China would also frequently visit the Guozijian to read Confucian classics to thousands of students.

A policy of isolation was forcibly ended in the 19th century by the Opium War and the subsequent opening of treaty ports; several nations opened foreign post offices from 1844 on. This expanded to involve dozens of cities, mostly on the coast, along the Yangtze River, and in the far south. Shanghai organized its own Shanghai local post in 1865. In the same year, the Englishman Robert Hart developed a mail service for the Imperial Maritime Customs, initially to carry consular mail to and from treaty ports. This service was opened to the public on 1 May 1878, and China's first postage stamps, the "Large Dragons"  were issued to handle payment. The stamps were inscribed "CHINA" in both Latin and Chinese characters, and denominated in candareens.

Large Dragon Stamps 1st May 1878

Initially, all mail to foreign destinations went through Shanghai, but by 1882 there were twelve post offices. On 20 March 1896, an edict directed that the Customs Post become the Imperial Postal Service effective 1 January 1897; the Min Hsin Chu was shut down, as well as the Shanghai local post, and postal system adopted cents and dollars as the units of currency.

Through the first half of 1897, new stamps were unavailable, and so the existing stock was surcharged in cents, with several variants distinguished by philatelists. Revenue stamps were surcharged as well.

The first new stamps, inscribed IMPERIAL CHINESE POST went on sale 16 August 1897. The twelve values, ranging from 1/2c to $5, were lithographed in Japan. The low values depicted a dragon, the middle values a carp, and the dollar values a wild goose. The paper used for these stamps had a watermark in the form of a yin-yang symbol.

Imperial Chinese Postage Stamps

The attractive Arch of the Hall of Classics design used on the dollar values of the Junk series was printed in sheets of 50 (10x5) in the Peking printings. Only one sheet of this error was found in the Hankow post office, making a total of only 50 such stamps originally printed.




 

#237a, 1915 $2.00 Hall of Classics, first Peking printing, Center Inverted, a marvelous example of this famous inverted center error, being the remarkable top sheet-margin plate no. "1" single (also showing a portion of the imprint in the selvage), possessing strong bright colors and highly detailed impressions, full original gum that has only been lightly hinged, a trivial translucent spot in top right margin mentioned for accuracy only, fine. The attractive Arch of the Hall of Classics design used on the dollar values of the Junk series was printed in sheets of 50 (10x5) in the Peking printings. Only one sheet of this error was found in the Hankow post office, making a total of only 50 such stamps originally printed and, of course, this is unique as the sole plate number single from the sheet. This is only the second example of this rarity we have ever had the pleasure to offer in our auctions. A fresh example with slightly irregular perforations at left realized $26,500.00, plus the buyer's premium, in our September 2005 Collector's Series Sale (Chan #245a; $22,000.00).

 

Lot 1103: http://stampauctionnetwork.com/f/f11417.cfm

This stamp actually realised at an online auction in 2005 - $60,000

So keep a look out in your albums you may have one!!!

Happy Stamping peeps!!

Chinese Stamps not listed in Stanley Gibbons...can anyone help?

Let me present a little bit of background information...

In my last blog I quickly spoke about the confusion I was having whilst trying to identify the stamps in my Chinese album. This led me to to write a quick blog on stamps that have had a surch applied to them, how to identify them using the Stanley Gibbons catalogue and reinforce the notion to other novice stamp collectors, that stamps with a surch applied to them are catalogued differently to the stamps that do not have a surch. Sounds simple now, but took me a number of hours to fathom this out as the surch is often on a different page to the picture of the stamp that is being referenced. 

Check out my last blog here:

http://stampphilatelic.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/starting-to-work-with-my-new-stanley.html?m=1

After some frustrating rubbing out (my advise would be to use a pencil when writing in the SG numbers peeps its easier to erase when you get it wrong!), I went on to re-reference the stamps. 

This however did not solve another stumbling block! I was still unable to find a couple of series of stamps that was not listed in the Stanley Gibbons catalogue. Of course this could either be a good or a bad thing. A good thing because I may have an unlisted series of stamps and thus very valuable. ( I am as ever an eternal optimist!) Or indeed it could be a bad thing as they may be some type of forgery, however I find this entirely unlikely as it was my grandfather who assembled the collection and as he was the one who was stationed on the Chinese border whilst serving with the British Army and working next to the mail room!

So I know that he collected the majority of these stamps first hand. So surely they have to be real, just not listed in this catalogue.

Identifying the stamps

So what do I do now, well I emailed Stanley Gibbons for an answer and a couple of days later I did receive a rather unhelpful reply, which said that the series I was looking at was a series that I had already discounted. So I quickly flicked through the pages of the catalogue to make sure that I had not made an tumultuous error. 

To my surprise, the images of the elusive series of stamps that I had sent through to the experts had in actual fact been incorrectly identified by them, at their end. I know this as what they were suggesting was another series of stamps that I had already correctly identified on another page of my album. 

The elusive series of stamps.

Frustratingly I had to go back to the drawing board.

Scanning down the email there was another suggestion. It said that I may want to purchase another book. Yes another book!! But this one focuses on all Chinese stamps. This reference catalogue is called Part 17 China and funnily enough this is written by the good people at Stanley Gibbons!! Well we all have to make money.

Part 17 China

Anyway I have bitten the bullet and gone to Amazon and found it. It currently is wheeling it's way to my address and hopefully it will reference the sets of stamps that I am looking for. If not then I am going to have to throw it out to a number of the communities on Google plus and hopefully there will be someone on there who will be able to tell me what they are, or a better place to start looking for the answers.

So come on Mr postman, I am waiting!!

Mmmm, I wonder if there will be any stamps affixed to the front of the package which are worth keeping...

Happy stamping!!! And wait out peeps....

Starting to work with my new Stanley Gibbons Catalogue.

Page 1 Chinese Stamp Collection

OK, so I have been busy going through the first few pages of my Chinese stamp collection. Although I thought it was going to be easy to sort out which stamps are which, (and I must say for the majority of cases it has been) it has not all been plain sailing. What I mean by this is that some of the stamps I have in my album are not listed and to add to this some stamps have been franked with a specific postage mark. 

I have since realised that the specific postal mark refers to the area that the letter was sent from and having hurriedly put Sg numbers next to certain stamps I have quickly had to erase them as they are recognised as a different variant of that stamp in the SG catalogue. This also consequently alters the value!!

I have a couple of examples here, that show how the Surch ultimately effects how the stamp should be recorded.

China / China, People's Republic / China, People's Republic

( Keyword: whistling swans )

  

1950 Nos. 1344/7 and unissued values of Nationalist China (Whistling Swans) surch as T 190.

So here is a $100 surch on a 16 cent stamp. The catalogue values it unused at £0.15 and used is £0.40, not a great deal of money I grant you but it would be easy to mix it up with the Tundra Swans over the globe which retail anywhere from £15.00 to £120...

China / China, People's Republic / China, People's Republic

( SG#: 1429 )

SG1424

SG1429

1950 Surch as T 186. Perf or roul.

Here is the second example from my stamp collection. Below is the complete series. I am not sure what this series is called. If anyone knows please feel free to comment ;-) 

So the steam locomotive used is valued at £20.00 and unused £3.50 but with the additional surch of $500.00 it is revalued at used £0.25 and unused £0.50 respectively. Again a big difference!!

This may of course be old news to the more experienced collector but I think it is useful to illustrate that cataloguing stamps to the novice collector, even when when you think you have all the right tools to hand, can be more difficult than it seems.

According to historian and author @clinttwist, the swan stamps have an iconographical importance that far outweighs their face value, he tweets,

@stampphilatelic more important than increased face value, surcharge on Nationalist swan stamps marked new national identity as PRC.

Again it proves that this journey to decode my grandfather's stamp collection comes with important historical values. Here Chinese philately records important historical turning points in Chinese History, a snapshot of a bygone era neatly recorded on their stamps.

Check out my google + community page, Chinese Philately for more images of my collection and feel free to comment if I have made any mistakes. Please also add your collection and pictures of your favorite stamps, I would love to see what you have and which areas interest you the most!!

https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/108777950359982601849

and be sure to follow my posts on twitter at https://twitter.com/stampphilatelic for blog and website updates.

Happy stamping!!!