CLASSIC LATIN AMERICA

News, commentary and opinion on Central and South American philately

Tasty Brazil, Bolivia and Chile at Gartner

1881 Brazil 100 Reis Proof Sheet
1881 Brazil 100 reis proof sheet in blue. The issued stamp was released in olive-green

Watching the postman struggle to our door the other morning could only mean one thing: it was time for another Gartner auction.

Of all the international auction houses, Gartner probably produces the most substantial catalogues. They are usually multi-part affairs which even need their own separate booklet to enable the hapless bidder to navigate the listings.

Their auction later this month (15th-19th October) is no exception with a mind-boggling 27,000 lots (if you include the bank notes and coins).

Buried in amongst these listings however, are some rather fabulous Latin America collections looking for a wealthy benefactor to find them a new home.

First up is a marvelous, highly specialized collection of Brazil, focusing on the years between 1881 and 1889, encompassing the ‘Casa da Moeda’ small heads, larger heads and numeral issues printed by the Brazilian mint. A plethora of rarities included in this lot, backed up by a suitably ambitious start price of €70,000.

Next we have two superior Bolivian collections. The first is an in-depth study of the famous 1867 Condor issue (start price €17,000). The second (and for my money the most interesting of the Gartner offerings) is an accomplished study of the airmail service in Bolivia, with a great selection of proofs and varieties. The 1924 Aviation School issue is one of my personal favourites. This collection kicks off at €22,000.

Bolivia Aviation School Proofs
Examples of the Bolivia 1924 Aviation School proofs

My final selection from Latin America is a collection of the Colon Heads from Chile. Perhaps more of an accumulation than a collection per se but a great start if you wanted to get properly stuck into these. Starting at €17,000.

Plenty more information on the Gartner website for those of more modest means. Or give your own postman a workout and order a catalogue.

 

Which country has the world’s worst postal service?

Which countries should you avoid shipping to?

Let’s say you put a few items up for auction on eBay and one lucky winner has an address in Haiti.

Would you post it using regular mail?

If you’d just read the Universal Postal Union’s annual report on the global ranking of postal services around the world, probably not.

Each year, the UPU assesses the postal services from 173 countries to come up with an indexed score and ranking to show how individual countries have performed.

Each country is ranked on four key measures:

  • Reliability – operational efficiency
  • Reach – global connectivity
  • Relevance – the demand for postal services
  • Resilience – diversification of revenue streams and ability to innovate

These four metrics combine to create a score which then determines its country ranking, such that each country can be compared with its peers.

And the award for Worst Postal Service goes to…

Enough of the preamble. Who’s at the bottom of the table?

164th – Iraq

165th – Dominica

166th – Guinea

167th – St. Vincent

168th – Mozambique

169th – Samoa

170th – Liberia

171st – Haiti

172nd – Sao Tome and Principe

173rd – Tuvalu

A few predictable names in there but ironic to see St. Vincent so low in the table, given the fact that it is the third most prolific stamp issuer on the planet (over 5500 new issues since 1950!).

How about the top ten?

In order of postal excellence, the best performers are: Switzerland, Netherlands, Japan, Germany, France, Poland, Singapore, USA, UK and Austria.

How does Latin America do?

As this is a Latin American blog it would be remiss of me to not mention the performance of the twenty republics. Out of 173 countries, in descending order, we have:

44th – Brazil

66th – Colombia

72nd – Chile

76th – Mexico

78th – El Salvador

90th – Costa Rica

99th – Peru

101st – Argentina

105th – Dominican Republic

114th – Honduras

119th – Panama

123rd – Paraguay

125th – Uruguay

127th – Ecuador

134th – Cuba

151st – Venezuela

163rd – Nicaragua

171st – Haiti

Surprised? What you expected?

Conspicuous by their absence are Bolivia (whose postal service has been in turmoil in the past few years, culminating in a new institution being formed in March this year) and Guatemala (also suffering from protracted disruption and suspension of services).

This exercise has been undertaken since 2013 and each year, comparisons can be made against prior year to see how individual countries are performing and how they move up and down the rankings. Quite how relevant the table will become in future years is open to question though, as stamp issuance ceases, mail volumes decline and delivery services are more reliant on the private sector. Witness the aforementioned Bolivia and Guatemala…

For those that want to dig a bit deeper or view the entire list, you can read the full report here.

Collect Brazil? You probably need this…

Brazil catalogue cross reference book

Pre-internet, collectors tended to be far more reliant  – dependent even – on the catalogue that was written in their own language. Buying and selling was limited to the relationships with dealers you knew, and the auctions you attended were those nearer to home.

I’m generalising but you get the picture.

Move on to the present and you can be buying or selling, from and to, anyone who is anywhere. The click of a mouse secures you a win on a bid from an auction on the other side of the globe.

If so, the odds are that they’ll not necessarily be using the same catalogue that you depend upon.

The four main catalogue publishers – Scott, Michel, Stanley Gibbons and Yvert & Tellier – all have have their own reference systems, none of which directly relates to the other. Throw in a regional specialized catalogue to the mix and the collector that wants to take advantage of the global market has a lot of cross-referencing on their hands.

Which is what makes this new handbook rather useful.

Cross referencing between Michel, RHM, Scott and Y&T

The author, Ulrich Schierz, has managed to convince four catalogue publishers to authorise the use of their numbering systems, so as to provide a cross-reference between either one.

Scott, Michel and Y&T numbers are printed alongside their corresponding RHM (the specialised Brazilian catalogue) counterpart to provide a quick and easy cross check.

Brazil catalogue cross reference example
A sample number comparison

There are no prices here, no values, no colours…just numbers. But that’s all you need. The presumption is that you’ll already have your own catalogue and will be taking whatever other information you want from there. The book covers issues from the ‘Bull’s Eyes’ up until 2015.

There is also a section that cross-references the watermark types that each catalogue uses. Officials are covered and there are a few pages devoted to the notoriously complex ‘Série Vovó’, issued between 1919 and 1941. Keijo Kortelainen has a very good overview of the catalogue differences of this series on his website www.stampcollectingblog.com.

The only omission is any reference to Stanley Gibbons. Whether they were never invited to the party or declined the invitation is unclear.

But overall, I would suggest that this is a ‘must’ for the acquisitive Brazil collector. Certainly makes those eBay and Delcampe searches much easier.

 

Footnote

The book is produced by ArGe Brasilien in German and can be obtained for €11.92 plus shipping directly from the publisher. ArGe Brasilien is a German/Brazilian philatelic society but with 30% of its members outside Germany and over 100 papers published.

Hackmey’s Chile to be sold

Chile Colon block of 12
Chile Colon 10 Centavos block of 12

Conveniently following on from my plug for SOFICH a few weeks ago, comes the news that Joseph Hackmey is to part with his Chile collection. This is set to be a landmark auction with rare and exceptional items from one of the most important classic Chile collections ever formed.

You’ll need deep pockets for this one.

The auction will focus on the 1853-67 Colons including die and plate proofs, large multiples and unique frankings.

Corinphila will host the auction at the end of the year. They seem to be leading the way in securing major Latin American collections at the moment. Their May/June auction contained a wealth of quality material with particular strength in Brazil and Peru.

A teaser pdf illustrating the highlights of the collection can be downloaded at www.corinphila.ch

SOFICH, so good

SOFICH Chile catalogue

I recently acquired a very nice collection of pre-1940 Chile that had been collected by SOFICH and cross-referenced by Scott. It clearly shows just how much room for expansion there is by collecting using this specialized work.

The SOFICH catalogue is published by the Chilean Philatelic Society (Sociedad Filatelica de Chile). It is a lavish, large, hardbound tome that takes collecting Chile to the next level. If you’ve been relying on Scott/SG/Michel/Yvert all these years, well, you’ve been missing out.

It really does open up your collecting options ten-fold with no end of varieties and shades not touched upon by the major publishers.

First published in 2000, the catalogue is now in its second edition, released in 2006. This is a substantial work, clocking in at 650 pages, weighing 2.5 kilos and is one of the most comprehensive single-country works available.

Chile SOFICH album page
A shade better than Scott, perhaps…?

The catalogue is broken down into three sections.

The first covers pre-philatelic marks before launching into a thorough breakdown of every issue since the first ‘Colons’ of 1853, including perf and shade varieties, watermarks, designer, engraver and printer details, errors, print runs and so on. The second part deals with the foreign postal agencies, the War in the Pacific issues, tax and telegraph stamps, aerogrammes and postal envelopes. The final part tackles souvenir sheets, FDC envelopes and adhesive labels.

Although pricing is in peso – and is now twelve years old – it is easy to spot where a particular shade or variety holds more value in relation to others in a series.

How does SOFICH compare with Scott, SG and Michel?

To give an idea of the depth over and above the ‘regular’ catalogues, here’s a sample comparison:

Issue Number of issues and varieties
Scott SG Michel SOFICH
1904 Columbus ‘Napoleon’ 6 7 6 31
1904 Telegraph Overprints 23 22 14 73
1910 Independence Cent. 15 15 15 75
1915-28 Presidents 25 27 27 234

 

The 1915-28 Presidents & Personalities set suddenly presents a completely new challenge. Better check those ‘duplicates…’

The Sociedad Filatelica de Chile have an aspiration to produce a new edition but for now, the 2006 is the final incarnation. They currently have stock and can be contacted at admin@sociedadfilatelica.cl

Part 20, Part 20, wherefore art thou Part 20…?

Stanley Gibbons Part 20 South America

It is now ten years since Stanley Gibbons printed the fourth and current edition of their ‘Part 20’ South America stamp catalogue. And the separate ‘Part 15’ that covers Central America was last published in 2007.

It looks like these are the final editions of these heavily referenced catalogues.

Stanley Gibbons business has gone through well- documented turmoil in recent years with a misguided focus on concentrating its efforts in selling ‘investment grade’ material to a small but wealthy group of spenders.

Combined with a ridiculous vision of attempting to beat eBay at its own game by spending (read “wasting”) over £10,000,000 on a technology platform that never delivered, the company has gone through an extensive period of mismanagement.

Is an updated catalogue still viable?

To produce new versions of the Latin American catalogues would need:

  1. Resource, both human and monetary
  2. Knowledge – an in-depth knowledge of Latin American philately
  3. Access to reliable prices from which to update the existing figures. And after ten plus years, a comprehensive review would be necessary

I discussed this with Hugh Jefferies, SG’s highly regarded catalogue editor during this month’s Stampex in London and although sympathetic, realistically there is no real prospect of a replacement pair of catalogues on the horizon. Gibbons needs to reconnect with its core base of British and Commonwealth collectors and focus efforts on those parts of the business that will clearly generate a profit.

Thankfully, it looks like it is now on that path.

But perhaps it’s no great deal.

Catalogue prices are always contentious, not least in Latin America where demand, supply and ‘value’ can frequently be out of synch with one another.

The core of the catalogue remains the data, the information that allows identification and catagorization. Sure, this can change as new information comes to light but on the whole, the listings data remains fairly stable. As for new issues (a.k.a wallpaper), well, that’s no great loss in my book.

The existing catalogues still imply comparative value, even if the pricing is somewhat questionable. Relying on them as a firm base for value though is steadily becoming outdated.

How long before existing users switch to other catalogues?

How long will dealers continue to use these prices as indicators of value? Five more years, ten more years? There becomes a point where the prices stated are too detached from reality to be used in day-to-day transactions.

Which is why I have a copy of the Scott Classic Specialized on hand which is updated on an annual basis and bears a closer resemblance to market prices. Just.

The irony, of course, is that in an age when actual selling prices, whether via eBay or auction houses, are freely available to all, catalogue prices become less and less important other than as approximations of value.

Price transparency has never been quite so, er, transparent as it is today.

Gibbons appears to have now sold through all copies of both these catalogues (they are not advertised on their website) so your only source is secondhand. I noticed that some chancer had put a copy up on eBay for £140 recently. Or you could try the example for sale at Abe Books at £309.

Perhaps those investors that SG was courting ought to start investing in their catalogues instead.