Two Scott Albums w/ Penny Black & British Commonwealth Stamp Collection

North America, United States, Scott Publications, New York. A pair of green cloth Scott Specialty Series albums, gilt-lettered at the spine, housing a working collection of Great Britain, British Europe, and Oceania issues. Printed by Scott Publications of New York (copyright 1962 and 1964), the leaves provide illustrated spaces for every major variety listed in Scott's Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue. Volume one runs from Great Britain to Tonga and opens with the 1840 Penny Black, the world's first adhesive postage stamp, tied by a red Maltese cross cancel; volume two continues from Nauru to Western Australia. Queen Victoria, Edward VII, George V, George VI, and Elizabeth II succeed one another across the pages, joined by the overprinted New Zealand issues of Niue, the Brooke Rajah portraits of Sarawak, and the Gaelic harps and Celtic crosses of Ireland. Stamps are hinged, most cancelled, the spaces partially filled. The 1840 Penny Black is philately's founding document. Rowland Hill's uniform penny post swept away a byzantine system in which the recipient paid according to distance and sheet count, and the engraved profile of the young Victoria (no country name, then or since, Britain alone being exempt) became the template every postal administration on these pages would follow. The red Maltese cross was the original obliterator, abandoned within a year because red ink washed off too easily and let a shrewd correspondent reuse the stamp. What the two volumes chart is a single design idea travelling outward: the sovereign's head, the engraved frame, the denomination in the corners, carried by packet boat to Sarawak, Niue, Nauru, and Tonga, where local administrations overprinted, surcharged, and eventually replaced it with kiwis, wakatipu lake views, and the harps of an independent Ireland. The collection closes in 1964, the year Scott issued the second album, the year Nyasaland became Malawi and Northern Rhodesia became Zambia... and, for readers who prefer their history in three chords, the year four musicians from Liverpool landed at Kennedy and gave Britain its most durable export since the penny post. Item # 204450

Estimation:€312.46

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