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.

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.

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

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!

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.

I finally got the opportunity to re-visit the shop after extensive renovation last year. The first time I visited the shop was in 2005, about 5 years ago. At that time, the shop was still in its old location. In 2010, I got myself a nice assortment of low values Irish stamps and some British Commonwealth stamps. Unfortunately they didn't have any collectible stamps from British Borneo or Malaya.

Raven stamps & Coins is the only philatelic shop in Ireland's second largest city, Cork. Situated in Washington Street, it is the centre for collectors from the southern province of Ireland, largely collecting Irish stamps, GB stamps overprinted the Irish Provisional Govt, as well as GB stamps used in Ireland. My favaourite Irish stamps is the engraved seahorse overprints (2/6, 5sh, and 10sh) but these are quite expensive and difficult to acquire. Another area of interest is the pre-stamps entire and Victorian covers used in Ireland.

The owner, Padraig O' Shea and his assistant are friendly gentlemen and would warmly welcome you to their shop. There's a radio interview by RTE to Mr. O' Shea a couple of years back, and you may listen the interview here. You can get an idea about the Irish stamps in general and listen to the Cork accent. :)

In my most recent visit, I asked about book reference relating to Irish postmarks as I'm getting more interested in collecting Irish stamps, especially the postmarks. His assistant handed me two books, one by David Feldman (1976) and another newer book but without reference on the postmarks. I didn't buy them as I already have my Stanley Gibbons for Irish stamps issues and the one by David Feldman is only for the shop's reference and not for sale. Nevertheless, it is quite unfortunate that I couldn't get any stamps from British Borneo esp. North Borneo. It would be nice to see covers sent from North Borneo to a rare destination like Ireland. Perhaps I should continue the hunt in Ireland's capital, Dublin!

I recently got this Brunei cover with A.V.2 mark on it. In ebay there're several North Borneo covers that appeared with the same circular mark, and I managed to get another one. A.V.2 stands for "Avion 2", a UPU term that signifies that the letter arrived at a transit point and had to be forwarded by air to its intended destination. It appears in airmail letters of certain countries between 1940s to 1960s. During and after the war, many countries tried to avoid the war zones routes and resulted in longer route requiring transits. A.V.2 is then applied on a letter on top of the bundle in the transit point, explaining the relative rarity of such postmark. The equivalent mark for A.V.2 is the O.A.T mark (usually in red) which means "Onward Air Transmission".

A.V.2 and O.A.T marks are virtually the same. Murray Heifitz did a pioneering research on these and published his findings in the Airpost Journal (from American Airmail Society) in December 1992. According to him, A.V.2 mark was used in Singapore, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Amman, Cairo, Tripoli and San Francisco from 1940 to 1957, and later in other places such as Prague in 1966. The O.A.T marking was used in London, Prestwick, Tangiers, Hong Kong and Amman from 1940 to 1945. Of these two, Heifitz estimates that about 1000 to 1500 of A.V.2 marks exist in collectors' hand (maybe even higher) while many more of letters with O.A.T mark exist, making the A.V.2 mark relatively rarer than the O.A.T mark. He lists 20 types of A.V.2 mark and 15 O.A.T marks based on about 500 letters.

Collecting A.V.2 mark

Because there are about 20 types of A.V.2 used in countries like Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, Jordan, Egypt, Libya, the US etc., this should be an interesting area to explore and collect, knowing the fact that only letter on top of the bundle receives the marking, making it quite rare. The O.A.T mark is probably not as common as the A.V.2 mark with regards to letters from British Borneo (N.Borneo, Sarawak, Labuan, Brunei) but discovery may still be made! Happy hunting.

Couldn't believe my eyes when I found this cover in ebay. The seller, apparently with just 13 feedbacks, tries to sell this very common, very typical generic FDC for an eye-poping price of £1,579! Even the opening bid is £1,200. In his description he writes: "This First Day Cover was released in conjunction of the coronation day of H.M Queen Elizabeth 2. In that year, Sarawak (now under Malaysia) was still  under British ruling. This rare artifact is more than 50 years old and is highly valuable. If you have successfully purchased it, please handle with care."