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Just had these arrive in the mail , a recent purchase from ebay for the princely sum of $5. A bargain in itself as facially they looked very nice.

I flipped them over to find that not only are they all MNH but they all have a backstamp saying that they were once part of the King Farouk of Egypt Royal Collection !






Has anyone else come across this backstamp on a purchase before?

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Collecting early empire MLH up to and including KGV.

Farouk sometimes sounds more like a hoarder than a collector, akin to FDR, who had standing orders at the State Dept to forward on to him all the incoming international mail with stamps on it.

Farouk ordered the printers to make all kinds of "funnies"--one sees singles/pairs/blocks all the time of the most ridiculously misperfed stamps, which were all deliberately created for royal jollies.

His hoard of stamps, along with another collection of coins, especially gold coins I think, not to mention jewellery and other treasure, were auctioned off after he was knocked off the throne.

Covers and album pages from the FDR collection were all rubber-stamped with their provenance, I'm sure the same was done for Farouk, but not sure what the stamp looks like.

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Collecting Mongolia; Thailand; Indo-China; Mourning Covers; OHMS.
My online 'store': http://stampsfromaethelwulf.blogspot.com/

Ive done a bit of further research into it and it seems he was indeed a hoarder. His stamp collection alone took 3 days to auction off by Harmer's!

There was even this old video giving a brief overview of some of the items that were to be auctioned off http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqLzuEVOmTs

I wonder if they carry some sort of premium, I'd guess to the right buyer, maybe someone specialised in Grenada, they would be seen as pretty unique.

As you said, he had printers run off all sorts of misperfs etc but he also had some very prominent egyptian stamps , proofs and essays in his collection that were unseen until his dethroning.

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Collecting early empire MLH up to and including KGV.

Michael Rogers mailsale #85 had this


No scan of reverse though.

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Collecting Mongolia; Thailand; Indo-China; Mourning Covers; OHMS.
My online 'store': http://stampsfromaethelwulf.blogspot.com/

Interesting clue:



"Each stamp bears a guarantee on reverse".

Milwaukee Journal, March 28, 1954
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1499&dat=19540328&id=pAQkAAAAIBAJ&sjid=9iMEAAAAIBAJ&pg=1539,5496982

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Collecting Mongolia; Thailand; Indo-China; Mourning Covers; OHMS.
My online 'store': http://stampsfromaethelwulf.blogspot.com/

There was also this on here from back in 2008, owned by Flying Tiger.

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Collecting early empire MLH up to and including KGV.

Harmers did the same with stuff they bought from Roosevelt Collection -

http://www.stampboards.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=23498

Nice set tho if you paid no extra.

He must not have been much on centering and gum (several looked quite toned and only VG/F centering).

I suppose if you have millions you can hoard a ton and look at it and then toss it in a pile.....

-Jason

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Development Owner of - [*] Stamp Image Bursting Application - http://www.drakeserver.com/
[*] Stamp Album Page Generator - http://code.google.com/p/stamp-pagegen/ - [*] Stamp Web Editor

The stamps are also backstamped the same as those in the original post.

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Regards, Jay

One of the biggest buyers of the Farouk Collections was Kasimir Bileski. Many of the cards displaying the stamps were put together by him as were certain backstamps authenticating them as coming from the Royal Collections.

In my time of purchasing Canadian rarities from him he would send me such items as gifts/incentives for purchases. Being specialized in Egyptian philatelics I recognized them and made a few large purchases from him of proofs and yes...what are called "crazy perfs".

I have since sold most at a handsome profit and many are prized by Egyptian specialists.

Many sets such as the one at the beginning of this topic are often actually rarities. Not saying the one pictured is but I would make close inspection of them as they may be a color variance, perf variance, have a small error in design unseen without magnification, gum variance....on and on.

Many stamps the king collected were gifts from various leaders and diplomats of many different countries. Many are unique.

The stamps sold for shall we say peanuts in 1954 as Egypt and such was not a very popular country collecting wise at the time. Many sell for 1,000's today.

Much of the Egyptian varieties are cataloged in Specialized Catalogs such as Balian.

Mr. Bileski was quite the investor in these type of sales. He was a major buyer in the sales of the Waterloo and ABN archives. His final investments were from the Format International Security Printers archive. His final purchase a whopping 300,000 GBP's worth! He was one of the largest Canadian Stamp Dealers in Canada.

His true passion was the research. He once told me that he much more enjoyed the research and discovery of new and rare items rather than selling stamps. Profiting from the sale of them just came with the territory. Much of the Royal Collections were new discoveries in Egyptian Philatelics and elsewhere.

The Researcher, Is Mr Bileski still doing business. I need some information on the Format Printer sale.

Hello pothbhola,
I am sorry but Mr. Bileski passed away in 2005.
For the sale of the Format Printers archive a lot of the information is lost and scattered.
It was quite a process. Done in several private treaties and auctions by Robson Lowe/Christie's.

To objections by Mr. Feigenbaum as to the bulk selling of the material I might add.

I am still looking for past auction catalogs which had sections in them of the material.
One group was in an auction of U.S. Stamps and covers. Not even mentioned in the opening titles.

The final sale of the material was in 1995. You can buy that auction catalog still.
It is called Essays, Proofs and Stamps from the Format Security Printers Archive.

It is very generalized though but gives some semblance of quantities in some instances.
Mr. bileski made a large purchase from that catalog basically on the Nevis side and foreign issues filling out purchases from private treaty in 1991.

That particular purchase changed the status on some of his earlier writings as to quantities found. A good example being the Nevis Spitfires missing color errors. I posted
a page on them here.

http://golowesstamps.com/reference/formatprinters/Nevis%20Spitfire%20Errors/nevisspitfireerrors.htm

Hope that helps a little!

I have not seen the handstamp before, but I still have a very tattered stockbook that was part of the Farouk Collection. It was given to me about 40 years ago by a dealer who was involved in some small way with the dispersal of the collection.

The backstamp is made by Mr. Bileski. i have seen it many times.

There are several types of backstamps on the Royal Collection materials.

Firstly there are the "cancelled" back proofs which the printers either printed in english or Arabic. Usually at an angle. These are usually stamps on thick cardboard and usually ungummed.

Secondly are the stamps with the "Royal Cartouche" which is basically a small black square with Arabic inscription inside. Backstamped by the curators of the collections on what they considered more important issues.

http://www.filatelia.fi/experts/marks/faruk.jpg

Then there are these. This backstamp he made to authenticate that the stamps indeed came from the Royal Collections of Egypt of which he was a major buyer in 1954.

Notice the crescent moon and star symbol at the top of the pyramid. The same is used on many of the Bileski cards of which the stamps were and are mounted. There are several forms of the cards. The cards with the bust of Nefertiti being the more famous.

revcollector
Are the stamps backstamped? And if so...from what country are they?

Alas, it was just the stockbook. The stamps in it at the time were not from the collection.

Ahhh...sorry revcollector.
The back stamped issues are very interesting.
I was just looking at a set I got a long time ago.

Set from Spain with cartouche on the back.
Interesting yes?

Hi The Researcher

Some time ago I posted the images below in another thread viewtopic.php?f=10&t=18849&hilit=Farouk

I was informed at the time that these stamps were from the Farouk collection and had in fact be produced especially for that collection.

You mentioned you had success in selling your Farouk items. Would you have a recommendation on a selling venue for these?



Memphre

Hi memphre,

A very nice section of the sheet.
Cannot see too clearly but appears the overprint is brown?
normal o/p is dark blue.
If so then they are the color trials of the overprint made on the 5m official in 1952.
Each stamp valued at around $40.00 in 2005. 100 exist.
Appears pricing by user Yaso on ebay (Boy King Collections) is his store is around $95.00 for other types.
you may want to contact him and ask him if interested.
Tell him John (golowenow) refered you.

This would be probably what is left of the pane.
Would probably sell intact as it is much rarer in this condition.
could break the three left ones to make it a very nice UR block of 16 though.

hope that helps!

John

Thanks for your suggestions, I will follow up on that.

You saw correctly, the overprint is brown instead of the blue as issued.

This is the first time I ever had 19% of an issue

Memphre

Very nice memphre!
Good luck to you!