Madagascar Archive

[RogerKinns]

Items from the Madagascar 'specimen' archive are now appearing regularly on the philatelic market, with several recent offerings by Stanley Gibbons in London. Stamps were stuck to ledger pages and tied using a large circular handstamp in red reading 'Madagascar Postes et Telegraphes' around the edge and 'Collection de Berne' in the centre.

I acquired a Tasmanian KEVII 1d newspaper wrapper on Ebay in March 2005 from a US supplier, which clearly came from the Madagascar archive. The illustration below shows that it has been trimmed at the top and left, presumably to facilitate removal from the Madagascar ledger. Intriguingly, it has a Hobart cds, dated 31 January 1906, the first day of issue (see Page 158 and Figure 15-13 of Tinsley's 'Tasmania Stamps and Postal History', RPSL, 1986). This raised my suspicion that Tasmanian letter cards and PS envelopes with early CTO cancellations may have been supplied to the Madagascar and other specimen archives.

Wrapper,Madagascar.jpg (20.28 KiB) Viewed 3026 times

[Peter Allan]

Roger,
this seems a very interesting discovery, but I wonder if there are others like myself who do not know about the Madagascar archive. Could you elaborate a little ?

Pete

[Ross Ewington]

Here's a just a little information that I discovered during a short search - I have images somewhere of Tasmanian reply cards ex Madagascar Archive that I will post below when found.

A reference collection of U.P.U. distributed specimen stamps and stationery was maintained by the Director of Posts in Madagascar from the mid 1890s through the late 1920s (I'm not quite certain of the exact dates at present).

Madagascar affixed their reference collection of specimen stamps and stationery to folio pages tying them with a 42 mm handstamp reading POSTES ET TELEGRAPHES MADAGASCAR COLLECTION DE BERNE struck in red ink. Only a very small number of country archives used their own reference marking e.g. ULTRAMAR.

Until 1912 the archive was mostly arranged in country order. In contrast, from 1912 it was organised chronologically and without regard to geographical location.

[RogerKinns]

Ross. You have given a good answer to Peter's question. I believe that the Madagascar stamp archive was sold to a dealer (not SG) many years ago for a substantial sum, but the necessary retail prices for individual items were too high to be attractive to collectors. It has been dormant for many years, but is now being traded again. Recent offers by SG (http://www.stanleygibbons.com) are of stamps (e.g. Sierra Leone, Mauritius and South Africa), usually in strips of three as supplied by the UPU in Bern, on part ledger pages. I have not seen any postal stationery items in recent lists, so they may have been sold separately by Madagascar. Each postal stationery item with the Madagascar handstamp is probably unique. At most, there will have been three of each. I hope you can find the illustration you remember!

[Ross Ewington]

Found it!
[attachment=0]g124.jpg[/attachment]

My description (TSA Postal Auction Lot 277 Oct 6th 2007) read as follows:

277 - 1905 - 1d on 1½d surchd Reply Cards (two each of the Forward and Reply halves - one card has been reduced from base) all c.t.o. with Hobart cds pmks from 31.JA.06. Prepared for use in UPU reference sets (from Madagascar Archive) each bearing partial strikes of the red Postes et Telegraphes Madagascar/Berne rubber h/stmp. Glued together in pairs as they came from the album pages of the collection. Various faults but would be quite acceptable for exhibition purposes. (4)

Does anyone have an image of Tasmanian stamps ex Madagascar Archives?

[Ross Ewington]

The answer to my own question ....

Lots 938 and 939 in Prestige Philately's Public Auction No.112 (November 20th 2004) were comprised of Tasmanian stamps ex Madagascar Archives:

Lot 939
[attachment=0]tas madagascar archives 2.jpg[/attachment]

Lot 938
[attachment=1]tas madagascar archives.jpg[/attachment]

Here is a direct link to the relevant auction catalog page with full description and prices realised - thanks Gary!

http://www.prestigephilately.com/cats.p ... ode=taspic

[RogerKinns]

Thank you for some superb illustrations of material from the Madagascar archive. It looks as though three specimens of each stamp was the norm, with an occasional extra. Sometimes strips of stamps were separated, sometimes not. The reply card illustration suggests that the archived number was reduced for the relatively large postal stationery items, even if three were sent from Bern to Madagascar.

As with my newspaper wrapper, a CTO cds was applied to the letter card in Hobart on 31 January 1906, which is the earliest date noted by Tinsley (Page 139) even though the surcharged cards were issued on 1 June 1905. This suggests that various specimens were sent to Bern on 31 January 1906. I have a copy of the surcharged card that was sent to Finland with the identical Hobart datestamp applied to both halves of the card. There is no writing on the card, other than an address in Helsingfors. It is too clean to have been through the post, so I wonder if this too was sent to a postal archive.

1don1.5d card,to Finland.jpg (47.2 KiB) Viewed 3006 times