New Views on the Labuan Stampless cover, 1858

at 1:43 PM Posted by Marcel |


Introduction

I posted this in my blog sometime ago and received some interesting comments that it could very likely to be fake. The cover first appeared in ebay around December 2010 and was listed by a French seller. Around that time I had some correspondence with the SSS committee including the then president, Mr. Peter Cockburn, the Labuan specialist Mr. Jeremy Dickson, the current president and librarian of the society Mr. Simon Martin-Redman and the Vice President, Mr. Chan Kee Tex. From the collective correspondence, there are several interesting views that have surfaced, and I thought it is worthwhile to share them here.

Genuine or Fake?

This was the primary question regarding the stampless cover as pictured above - is it genuine or fake? Jeremy Dickson has provided a wealth of information on whether the cover is genuine or not. We know that so far, only six known covers that bear the earliest Labuan postmark  as illustrated in Proud's book. This Harvey cover is dated "Feb 24, 1858" which means that if it's genuine, it predates all the other six known covers. In Proud's, there's a reference on a cenceller sent by the Colonial Office in London to Labuan on 15 September 1851, so the date on the Harvey cover is not at all impossible.

Jeremy had compared the dimension of the genuine cancellation (30mm for the outer ring and 29mm for the inner ring) with the one in the Harvey cover above. There is no way of telling what the dimension is in the Harvey cover so he reduced the size of the picture to match the 30/29 cancellation dimension. This resulted in the cover being measured around 100mm x 60mm - a rather small cover, but not altogether impossible.

Comparison to the other known cancellations based on the numerals was not conclusive either, as there are some parts of the lettering and numerals that are not replicated on the six known examples. Furthermore, Proud's cancellation is not accurate in terms of the lettering and numerals, making such comparison a difficult one. Nevertheless, a lack of evidence does not necessarily means that the cover is fake, as Jeremy pointed.

Regarding the comments sent by anonymous, Jeremy pointed that:

1.  The red cancellation on the Stafford covers has no bearing on whether the Harvey cover is or is not genuine.  The Stafford covers were datestamped in July, September and November 1864; whereas the Harvey cover is datestamped in February 1858 - over six years previously.  All the other two ring cancellations (including - I think - the earlier De Saumarez July 1864 cover) are in black.  It is entirely possible that over the six plus year period (1858 to 1865) different coloured ink pads would have been used. The 1864 De Saumarez cover has a rectangular boxed Singapore Ship Letter handstamp.  By itself, I do not see this as any evidence that the Harvey cover is 'wrong'.  It would however be helpful to consult Singapore philatelists to gain an understanding whether the boxed handstamp was used in 1858 and, if so, whether it was applied without fail to incoming mail. 

2.  I don't think that the suggested differences in the 8's is conclusive evidence the cover is 'wrong'; indeed I don't think that any conclusion can be drawn from this observation.  Firstly, the copy I have looked at has been through the email system three times - you got it off eBay, then to Simon and then to me and each transmission would have resulted in the loss of some clarity.  Secondly, there are no other known covers with '8' as the last slug in the year date.  It is entirely possible that there would have been small differences between different slugs.

3.  The fact that Mr Harvey was managing director of The Borneo Company could actually be said to provide authenticating evidence, rather than a reason to cast doubt on the cover.  The alternative argument that, as Mr Harvey could be identified by trawling the internet, the cover is 'wrong' is inconclusive. The 'too good to be true' argument is a starting point - not the finishing line!  Recently, there has been another amazing Labuan find, which goes to show that over the years covers and other material do emerge that none knew existed.

I have taken the liberty to post his comments verbatim here and I hope he wouldn't mind. :)

The Harvey Covers and French-connection

Mr Simon Martin-Redman added that in the Sarawak Journal vol 60 no 4 page 141  he described a pre stamp cover which appeared and was sold for £20,000 at a SPink auction after being touted by Lugdunum and Feldman Auctions.  This was first discovered in France in 2007 and is addressed to Mrs Harvey.

Last year he saw on ebay another cover previously unrecorded bearing the Sarawak Post Office cancellation and bearing East India Stamps.. This has turned out to be the second earliest cover known from Sarawak bearing adhesives.  It turned out that the cover is worth about £20,000! The interesting part was that the dealer was in France and the cover is to Mrs Harvey as well!

And now this Labuan cover from France and again Harvey. The two Sarawak covers are most definitely genuine and he therefore believes that this Labuan cover to also be genuine.

Mr Peter Cockburn and Mr Chan Kee Tex had similar view although with lesser explanations.

Conclusion

Although there are some good points to support that the cover could be genuine, these remain inconclusive as the only thing we have is the low resolution picture of the cover. It is obviously difficult to draw any firm conclusion based on this alone. I have recently emailed the French seller who listed the cover in ebay to give a higher resolition picture of the cover, but unfortunately he hasn't replied my message as yet. Perhaps we should just wait for the cover to re-appear again. At the meantime, I would appreciate your views and comments on this. Please let us know what you think.