From 1 Jan to 31 Jan 2010, several hundreds North Borneo stamps have been listed in ebay. From this few hundreds of stamps, only several listings managed to fetch more than €100 price. The list below includes listings available internationally and with auction format only. Overall, the cumulative price for the 5 items is $2606. The top 5 most expensive North Borneo stamps are as follows:

This is for January 2010 list, to see the other list, click the following:
February 2010
March 2010
April 2010

This is another postcard that appeared in ebay and ended on 29 Jan 2010. One forged stamp was used and pasted on the lower left corner of the postcard. Again, the postmark appears to suddenly vanish beyond the stamp surface. If you compare this 2 cent stamp to the one on the top postcard, you'll notice that they are actually identical! The Position of the postmark, the angle etc are all identical, which means that they are printed by the same individual. This particular postcard was offered for $49.99 from a seller in Netherlands.

This article is no longer maintained. An updated version on Silam Postmark may be found in my new North Borneo stamps site.

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North Borneo Postmarks

This article is no longer maintained. An updated version on Silam Postmark may be found in my new North Borneo stamps site.

The Forgery

Due to its high prevalence, I'm trying to put some records of the forgeries of North Borneo SG2 and Scott #5. Genuine stamp of this surcharge is very rare, and we are uncertain if the surcharge of this issue is ever sold. All perforated 14 stamps bearing this surcharge are forgeries. Genuine stamps must have a perforation 12.

In Stanley Gibbons catalogue, it says that a surcharge without a fullstop is considered a forgery but the essential aspect is actually the perforations. Most of the forgeries on this issue if not all, used the later stamp issues of 1886 which has a perf 14. This particular stamp issue appears from time to time in ebay and other online auction sites and it's very sad that buyers pay for such a high price for this piece of junks. Most sellers are also unaware of this and despite knowing the perforation inconsistencies, could not decide further what it really means. Buying this stamp without any certification of authenticity is like buying an Euromillion Jackpot ticket, your chance of winning is 1 in several hundreds millions.

In the early days of North Borneo philatelic study, there is a doubt as to the status of the vertical 8 cents surcharge altogether. Stanley Gibbons catalogue for example stated that "There is a grave doubt as to the authenticity of No. 2" but since the 1978 edition, the statement is omitted. Although a genuine sample of postally used stamp bearing this surcharge is extremely rare, several cancellations may be used:

What are CTOs?

Cancel to order (CTO) in general refers to a stamp that was marked as used by the postal service despite not being used for postal purposes. Usually, these stamps are then sold to collectors and dealers at a fraction of the face value. The reason for this is that by selling the cancelled stamps, the government can acquire additional income. It's a good solution for selling the remainders of the stamps and at the same time not having to provide the postal service.



What are Stamp Remainders?

Stamp remainders are simply the unsold stamps at a time when they are considered obsolete by the issuing agents (post office). In other words, stamp remainders are the 'expired' stamps. Now, it would be a total waste to dump these stamps because they are still valuable to the stamps collectors. That's why these remainders are usually sold at a fraction of the face values and must bear the CTO mark to avoid being used postally.

North Borneo CTOs?

In North Borneo postal service, an oval of black bars was used to cancel the remainder stamps from this country up to 1916. However, not all the oval bars postmarks were used to cancel the remainders. In fact they were used both for postal cancellation and remainder cancellation up to 1916. This form of postmark (oval of bars) were used for postal purposes at some post offices up to 1949. Therefore, we may generalise it like this "all the North Borneo CTOs have the oval of bars cancel, but not all of the oval of bars are used for CTO stamps".

Because it is relatively easier to counterfeit the oval of bars postmark, it has been readily targeted by unscrupulous forgers to make easy money. Many forged postmark of this kind are very difficult to distinguish and the best way to spot them is by looking at the stamps themselves. It is amazing to know that actually stamps bearing this type of postmarks sell for much lower prices than the mint version even for the genuine stamps, and you always wonder why is it necessary at all for the counterfeiters to add the extra work to forge the postmark. In ebay, especially the queen issues of Labuan stamps, the forged stamps are usually offered as a block of 4 bearing this postmark. As a general rule, expect that it is a forgery until proven otherwise.

In Stanley Gibbons catalogue, the values of the CTOs are indicated in the third column (up to 1912 stamps issues), usually at a fraction of the postally used and mint values. The Scott catalogue lists the used price (in second column) as the CTOs up to 1912 and indicates that stamps with clear dated postmarks sell for much higher price.