Labuan stamps on cover remain elusive among the British Borneo philatelic collection. The early covers from this region are very scarce that to see some example of their usage would be a priviledge. The cover above shows the early usage of such stamp. In this example, the cover is franked with 6c. on 16c. stamp of 1891-1892 issue. This stamp off cover is priced at  £1800 in Stanley Gibbons.

 The seller, sandraa4073, rightfully indicate that the stamps and overprints are not genuine and serve as spacefillers only. This though, was mentioned only in the description in a small letters and not in the heading of the items listed. The heading often read something like "Rare Japanese Occupation Overprint in Mint Selection", avoiding the term "forged or fake". This is potentially dangerous for buyers who don't bother to read the description. The fake Japanese overprints appear not only for North Borneo stamps but also for other countries, notably Malaya, Sarawak, and Brunei among others.

I have finally managed to spare sometime to post this list due to St. Patrick's Day public holiday in Ireland. Although there are many interesting stuffs and items being listed in the past two months, these are essentially quite common and as such fetched relatively average prices. Some covers and postcards, as expected, reached good final prices. Even though in January there are other lots of MNH stamps that purpotedly reached hammer prices of $800 and $500 etc, these are essentially due to shill bidding and do not represent real legitimate transactions (detail here, seller has been kicked out off ebay!), as such these are not included in the list. Comments are always welcomed.

The selection criteria for this list include (a) stamps/philatelic items of North Borneo appearing in ebay, (b) must be available internationally and (c) must be on auction format only.

On January this year, several interesting North Borneo postcards have been listed in ebay. The whole collection is altogether impressive with magnificient frankings on some of the rarest black and white real photo postcards. These fine postcards merit appreciation and it is no wonder the hammer prices were high. Many of these postcards were won by a sole winner except for a number of other postcards. The pictures are all amazing and sheer historical, so I thought I'll post them here for future reference or simply for a closer look and an in-depth appreciation:

The stamp was listed in ebay and ended on 2 Jan 2011. There are 10 bids placed on the stamp and apparently managed to push the price to a whooping end price of US$856.22! The catalogue price for the stamp in S. Gibbons is GBP750 and in Scotts is $450. Seems so far everything is benign until you click at the bids for top bidders of the item:

This is a very old black and white film of various scenes throughout North Borneo, filmed in 1907 by Charles Urban Trading Ltd, and sponsored by the British North Borneo Company. The original film has no audio (silent throughout) and I didn't bother to put any music on it. So here's the clip in its originality.

The clips starts with a train journey and views from the train as it passes through a village and crosses a bridge. Note that the locomotive train is the one depicted in the first North Borneo pictorial stamps as opposed to the one we still have in Sabah today. Next, the film shows rapids, most likely to be in Padas river. It also films locals on a raft and members of the expedition fording the stream. This is then followed by scenes of the local industries. Locals quarry for manganese ore, gather rubber from a tree (watched by Europeans) and pick and sort tobacco leaves from the fields.

Further scenes reveal locals at a trading post and performing for the camera. Next, Chinese convicts collect their food, before a sequence showing a European supervising two locals as they chop a sago palm tree. Once felled, the trunk is sawed off and buffaloes (ridden by locals) haul the logs off screen. Local boys take part in a swimming race - diving off a gangway, watched by a European figure rowing alongside - before the film concludes with further shots of the buffaloes, driven into, and crossing, the water.

I think that it is a very informative film, showing how North Borneo looked like about 100 years ago. This is the time which, if given some supernatural power, we would go back and collect all the North Borneo stamps, revenue documents, the coins and banknotes etc and would travel to remote areas such as Silam, Mempakul, Gayah etc to post our letters franked with the rare North Borneo stamps as we know today...:)

There is not much going on in ebay recently - much the same kind of items except for a few notable and unusual postmarks. The CNY celebration in Ireland as well as other stuffs mean that I spent less time on the internet in the past few weeks, explaining the lack of entry. :) Nevertheless, I'll share with you the most recent cover I acquired - a registered Labuan cover addressed to Mr. Fred Parker. The cover is franked with Labuan stamps of 1904 issue from 4c on 5c. to 4c. on $1 (Complete set of 9). The cover bears the violet Labuan boxed registration mark numbered 2216 and is strucked with a black single ring Labuan cds dated 2 OCT 1905. The stamps are cancelled with the 9 bars obliterator in black. At the back shows London arrival registration mark dated 8 Nov 1905.

The cover is definetely philatelic in nature and quite obviously contrived with the printed address and the "Registered" capital on top left corner. In Stanley Gibbons' catalogue, there is a brief note mentioning this -  "The barred cancels can be found used on 'Philatelic' covers of this issue". I guess the note must be referring to this example. The cover itself is not unusually rare as such, and I certainly have seen at least one other example of similar cover (also franked with the 1904 complete set stamps) also addressed to Mr. Parker. In North Borneo philatelic circle, the Parker covers are quite well-known possibly because they are among the few philatelic covers from North Borneo and Labuan. Some early German dealers concentrated on the earlier postcards (eg. Kiederlen, Adolf Bauer etc) as well as the early North Borneo and Labuan covers. Nonetheless, I find the cover above particularly attractive not only because it is borne to be attractive and collected but also because I don't have many early covers from Labuan.

On a lighter note, I have started casual collection on other philatelic items outside the British Borneo and Malaya states. Some people collect China because of anticipation of increasing prices in the future, I certainly could not afford any of the Chinese stamps, so I'll collect Ireland and Great Britain as well as the works of the master engraver from Sweden, Cz. Slania (deceased). The most recent auction of an inverted overprint on China stamp by Spink reached an amazing realization of GBP 95,000 whereas the inverted India stamp reached GBP 80,000...which means I shouldn't venture on those areas at all, at least not for the time being...:)