The word ‘Serendipity’ was coined by Horace Walpole in ‘The three Princes of Serendip’ and means, amongst other things, stumbling upon interesting discoveries in a casual manner. Now, when looking through the estate of a deceased person one never knows what will be found and such was the case recently when a 150 volume stamp collection came to light. As the resident stamp anorak I was ask to value and catalogue it, and what a joy that was.

The previous owner had particularly concentrated on South America containing material I had only heard about but never seen before, including a fine range of Brazilian ‘Bulls Eyes’ and practically complete collections of every country from the very first issues to modern material.  There was also s fine collection of Shipping Line issues such as Central American Steamship Company and the St. Lucia Steam Conveyance which are seldom seen and very rarely come on the market in such volume.

There was also an extensive collection of USA stamps from 1845 onwards including a fine range of Local Postmaster stamps on their original covers. Great Britain was not forgotten with not only a Whiting essay but also an example of the much scarcer 1880 Skipper essay. Having thought I had seen the best of the material I then found superb collections of Afghanistan and Indian States. Again these were well written up and containing material which previously I had only read about.

You can imagine my pleasure therefore in cataloguing this collection into 26 different lots but because of the sheer volume of material it has not been possible to analyse it all in detail so any prospective buyer is sure to find plenty of bargains.

Biddle & Webb have an extensive international stamp collection selling at auction on May 13th Interiors Sale from Lots: 201-229.

Alan