CLASSIC LATIN AMERICA

News, commentary and opinion on Central and South American philately

Brian Moorhouse RIP

Brian Moorhouse

Brian Moorhouse, the renowned Latin America expert and dealer, died on 15th July.

I last saw him at his September auction, seemingly as fit as a fiddle and with no indication that this was on the cards. This will come as a sizable shock to the philatelic community, not least to the thousands of collectors he will have interacted with over his 45 year career.

Moorhouse certificates are recognized as the gold standard in Latin American philately and his name accompanies many of the key philatelic items from Central and South America. He leaves a significant legacy but also a large void that will be next to impossible to fill.

His wife, Mimi, has put up a condolences page on www.brianmoorhouse.com. It is already starting to fill up with comments, recollections and condolences from well wishers around the world.

South American stamps continue to appreciate in value

Argentina 20 Peso High Value

“While stamp prices of Europe and North American countries have shown significant weakness over the last five years, South American countries are showing continued appreciation with little or no price erosion during that time”.

So says Richard Lehmann in this month’s ‘American Stamp Dealer and Collector’ magazine.

Lehmann is the founder of StampFinder (www.stampfinder.com) and a columnist for Forbes. His articles tend to explore the more investment-orientated aspects of stamp ownership and take an analytical approach to catalogue pricing data.

For this exercise, Lehmann isolated only those stamps identified in Scott that were issued up to 1950 and had a catalogue value of $25 or more. These are then split out between mint and used before being compared to catalogue prices from five years previously, in this case comparing 2015 against 2010. This then illustrates the appropriate appreciation (or depreciation), like for like comparisons between countries can be undertaken and explanation or speculation is then provided on why specific countries are either up or down.

Whether investing or collecting (not a debate I’m going to get into here) , we should rejoice in that hard cash shelled out on South American stamps has more than held its own over the past five years. As to why is another matter.

Argentina, Uruguay and Colombia show the highest appreciation

Looking at mint examples, Argentina shows the highest appreciation at 57%, followed by Uruguay at 30% and Colombia at 27%. The only two countries to show depreciation are Ecuador (-0.6%) and Peru (-1.5%), whereas the overall increase for the region was 22% based on an analysis universe of 2109 stamps.

Used stamps fared even better with a five-year appreciation of nearly 30%.

Lehmann provides his view on why certain countries may or may not be doing so well, concluding with his view that Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil and Columbia offer the best opportunities for above average growth.

These sorts of analyses are only ever as good as the underlying data and can be picked apart by the cynical. For example, Scott may undertake a thorough price review of some countries over the period but may only skim over others. That said, it is a useful insight into how prices change over time.

And nice to know that the South American market is leading the way…

Footnote: the article was republished by Forbes in December 2017 and can be read in full here www.forbes.com/sites/richardlehmann/2017/12/08/south-american-stamp-show-strength

And the second most expensive Latin American country to collect is…Honduras. And the least expensive? Guatemala. Debate!

Black Honduras

Back in 2000, a Canadian Gentleman by the name of Michel Bégin compiled a database entitled “The Most Affordable Classic Stamps to Collect” and published his findings on the web.

Clearly a man with time on his hands, he manually ploughed through the entire Scott 1840 – 1940 Specialized Catalogue and sorted each country’s listings into price bands to determine the overall cost of collecting a specific country.

Fast forward to 2017 and the website www.germanstamps.net has attempted a similar exercise. This time, Michel 2015/16 has been used as the default catalogue. Data has been accessed electronically rather than manually and the listings now encompass the full 1840-2015 period.

There are two variants of the tables, one for summary country listings and another for detailed (e.g. including states, locals, officials, postage dues, revenues etc). These two tables can then be viewed as either mint or used and as actuals or percentages.

An exercise of this nature is only ever as good as the data upon which it is based and inevitably there will be anomalies that skew or affect the final result. Nevertheless, it is an excellent tool for getting a broad idea of the overall catalogue ‘value’ of a country, understanding the relationship between the number of expensive to low value stamps and how the cost of completing one country relates to another.

How affordable are stamps from Central and South America?

I thought it would be an interesting exercise to just pull out the Latin American constituents to see how they compared against one another.

For example, at the summary level for mint stamps, these are the results.

Latin American stamp values ranked

This exercise throws up some interesting results. For example, the three most expensive countries to collect are:

  1. Mexico (by a significant margin)
  2. Honduras
  3. Colombia

However, Honduras has to be treated as an anomaly due to the hugely disproportionate €150,000 valuation Michel puts on the renowned 1925 ‘Black Honduras’ airmail, of which only one exists. If we eliminate this one stamp then Honduras drops down to 13th place.

As for the three least expensive, the figures give us:

  1. Guatemala (the most inexpensive)
  2. El Salvador
  3. Haiti

El Salvador and Haiti only have two stamps each that catalogue more than €100 with Guatemala having only seven. In comparison, Mexico has 289, Brazil 117 and Colombia 98.

The data can be cut any which way you want and you can have a lot of fun with the tool, dependent on your collecting interests.

How accurate a reflection of Latin American philately the stats provide is up for debate though. Ultimately, it is only as good as the source data, some of which you may decide to question. In many respects it can only be used as a guide for relative rather than actual value.

Certainly, it would be fascinating to see a similar version using Scott (or the rapidly ageing SG) data to see how they compare.

Book Review – Introducing Venezuela’s Escuelas Stamps by Williams Castillo

Introducing Venezuela's Escuelas

Before we get to the content, I should point out that the beauty of this book is the author’s skill for taking a complicated subject and making it very simple to understand.

There are countless philatelic books and articles that undertake to enlighten the reader on less complex issues but end up making things far more complicated than they need to be. This useful paperback serves to be a template for philatelic authors wishing to convey their knowledge in a clear and concise style.

The Escuelas (Schools) stamps were introduced by a government keen to expand its commitment to public education. Without the financial means to start building schools and employing teachers, the state hit upon the idea of placing a transactional tax on documents by utilizing a dedicated stamp. It didn’t take long before these stamps were being used for postal service.

And the idea worked. Between 1873 and 1885, the number of schools rose from 392 to 1957.

A focus on the first three series of Escuelas

Castillo’s book recognises the eight different series of Escuelas, released between 1871 and 1893 but focuses on the first three series. The bulk of the book is given over to the first series and their nine printings, taking us through until 1878.

The component parts of the stamp are broken down into easy to recognize elements, such that identification becomes a logical, systematic process of elimination until you are confident you have the correct stamp. The images are large, clear, in colour and do an excellent job in guiding you through the possibilities.

Castillo also provides a very useful rarity guide to the first series that makes something of a mockery of ‘catalogue prices’ and clearly shows the relative scarcity of certain values from specific printings.

The book stops short of going down to the level of discussing transfers of the values but as a comprehensive introduction to identification and classification it is a superb piece of work.

Available at www.escuelascollectors.com

Scott Specialized adds another 67 listings to Venezuela

Venezuela AR39 stamp
The newly listed ‘AR39’. Worth paying attention to…

It’s taken a while but Scott is now recognizing Venezuela’s postal fiscals (or postage and revenue stamps) in the 2017 edition of its Classic Specialized Catalogue.

This bumps up the number of stamps listed during the classic period to a further 67 items, all of them now prefixed under an “AR” code. AR1 through to AR26 are overprints of the 1893 ‘Instruccion’ series (with the usual smattering of inverts) whereas those following were printed in their own right. The later stamps are all easily identifiable by the words ‘Instruccion’ or ‘Timbre Fiscal’ included within the design.

Issued between 1900 and 1922, Venezuela was already well known for using fiscal stamps in the Escuelas series of issues (see next month’s post).

All of the new listings are priced at nominal amounts with the odd $10 or $20 stamp.

Double-check copies of the 1911 1 Bolivar Green

However, pay attention to AR39, the 1 Bolivar Green from 1911, illustrated above. There is a variety without the name ‘Bello’ shown below the portrait. Blanco (the Venezuelan specialized catalogue) has this priced at eighty times the regular issue. The variety is unlisted in Scott, SG or Michel.

And note the inverted triangle next to the V in this example. In many countries, this would be a listed variety in its own right…

This brings the total number of major listings up to 1940 in Scott (including local posts) to 661 items. In comparison, Gibbons covers 673 major listings within the same time period whereas Michel leads the pack with 872.

Latin American Auctions – first event for eighteen months

Seebeck Mosquito Coast

Brian Moorhouse’s auctions tend to be somewhat infrequent affairs, the last being held in February last year. Peterborough is a rather incongruous location but for a single day it becomes the epicenter of Latin American philately.

Brian had curated over 750 lots and attendance was good with a number of international collectors who had made the pilgrimage. And bidding was strong with less than 4% of items unsold.

A wonderful selection of over 100 die proofs of the El Salvador 1895 ‘Coat of Arms’ issue sold for £2500 and a run of 14 exhibition pages of the 1932 Nicaragua ‘Earthquake’ issue achieved £2000.

A pair of the 1858 Uruguay 180c Block Letters reached £1100. Interesting to note the premium paid for the pair as the preceding lot was for a single of the same issue in equivalent condition that was snapped up for a mere £70. Shows how even small multiples can have a significant knock-on effect on price.

Colombia was strong (as ever) and Haitian collectors were well served with a good selection of lots, including an 1846 pre-stamp cover bid up to £1100.

A surprise result was for the 1894 Mosquito Coast Provisional with seven copies on piece. This achieved nearly 14 times the start price, closing at £550. The preceding lot was also a Mosquito Coast Provisional, this time a pair on cover and went for £280. Although not listed in Gibbons or Scott, it appears in Michel and is an issue apparently sort after by ASFE (A Stamp From Everywhere) collectors, a branch of philately particularly popular in Eastern Europe, with the objective of collecting at least one item from every stamp issuing ‘authority’.

I placed a few select bids on some of the bulkier lots and came away with some useful selections for future sorting.