We had rented the largest 4WD Avis had, and schlepped it all back to our Hotel “Suite” to sort them out roughly.  We only had a day or so before the flight home, and it was school holidays as I recall, so could not get another flight out for days.  We had removal boxes stacked in the lounge room, bedroom, and the hallways! 

I sold about 8 or 10 removalist cartons online to stampboards members whilst up there.  One chap also bought over 100 KILOS of coins and banknotes sight unseen, collected by an Army mate, which had stacks of silver and gold bullion coinage, and banknotes going back to £10 KGV etc.  Half a room full.  Best buy of his life I’d suggest!  But quite impossible for us to get home.

Virgin only allowed 4 cartons each to be checked though, 8 in all, so all the rest needed to be sold at silly low prices by the carton on stampboards, based on a few hurried pix, or given away to the stamp club there etc.  We piled up the rental 4WD and headed to the little Belgian Gardens Post Office there, with a dozen large cartons of stuff to mail to the lucky buyers.

The hoard had masses of mint blocks and sheets, so we pre-plastered the sides of these cartons with mint stamps.  Luckily, I mail an awful lot of parcels, so have a good ‘’feel’’ as to what sort of cost that runs to.  Heavy parcel rates to or from North Queensland are terrifying of course, so these boxes cost buyers $60 or $70 in postage - lucky nice stamps were used!

The bemused staffer at Belgian Gardens PO, I do not think had ever seen massive boxes plastered with full sheets of stamps down the sides, on her counter.  When I asked her to cancel them nicely, she looked mortified and handed the date-stamper to me, and said if I did it, she could not be blamed for blurry strikes!  She later added up all the franking, and luckily my guesswork was good, and she was impressed - all were a little overpaid.  

It was an amazing hoard, and formed around issue time of the stamps, going back the Queensland State issues, and with lots of 1913 Mint Roos blocks and even sheets of lower values etc.  I am very slowly working through it, and list up a few more interesting pieces that catch my eye, whenever I get 10 minutes spare, here and there!  Will take me 20 years to wade through it all. 

For me, a once in a lifetime Aladdin’s Cave, and I grab a few now and again from one of the 100s of stockbooks, and scan them up and add them for sale to my Rarity Page.  None of these stamps has EVER been on the stamp market before, in the past Century or so.  So buyers get to be the FIRST collector to own it since, which is pretty cool at times.

One piece that caught my eye this week from “The Hoard”, were 2 snippings off mail from Tasmania, in an old envelope along with other near worthless mail clippings.  To many readers, of little interest am sure, with a pen cancelled 6d Violet, and 2 x non full marginned later imperfs.  But something about the pen cancel 6d made me look twice at it.  Soaked off the piece, 99% of those reading this would assume it was fiscal use, as the vast bulk of these 6d Queens were indeed used thus.

But some nagging dealer instinct told me it was worth looking into closer.  Clearly both letters were in same handwriting, and obviously to the same person.  I could not read the wording on top line of 6d.  Margo looked, and had no idea.  Handwriting from 150 years back is not easy to read, and the first word was not leaping out at me.  The letters were TINY!  After a bit of guessing at words, I came up with OYSTER.  Typed that into google and voila, up came OYSTER COVE as a tiny remote location.

So what we have here, and not seen by anyone for over 150 years most likely, is a neat manuscript cancel "Oyster Cove - 25 March 1869".  Alongside there is a clear red “Tombstone” transit cancel of nearby Hobart - "PRE-PAID - 27 MR - 1869".  So that one was clearly struck 2 days after the manuscript marking was inscribed at Oyster Cove.

Got out my John Hardinge superb and recent, hard-bound “Tasmania Postmarks” handbook, and even in the index, there is not a single reference to OYSTER COVE.  Odd.  So more research entailed, as I was getting very interested in this now.  I sent out an “SOS” to stampboard members, and more info came flowing is - a great read - tinyurl.com/OysterCove for more background on these.  It was like a giant philatelic jigsaw puzzle!

PPA tells us Oyster Cove was a "Receiving House" from 6/4/1857 to 8/9/1873.  No cancel was ever issued for this tiny speck.  Why?  As it seems the population there was largely the tiny remainder of the Tasmanian Aboriginals.  These included the last one to survive, Truganini - who of course was depicted on the striking 10c stamp from 1975, shown nearby. 

The University report in the link nearby shows only 12 aboriginals still remained alive there in 1869, when this Oyster Cove manuscript cancel letter was mailed.  The rest had died.  Truganini herself died a few year later, and is accepted as being the last Tasmania Aboriginal person. 

Indeed she may well be one of the women in this really ancient photograph, as only a few females were alive in 1858, when it was taken by Bishop of Tasmania, Dr. Nixon.  An INCREDIBLY early photo from Tasmania, on any subject matter.  I researched it - real photos from the 1850s are most unusual.

So a tiny little piece of Australian and Aboriginal history, all intertwined into these tiny pieces in The Hoard.  I asked Tasmania postmark guru John Hardinge what he guessed the poorly struck barred numeral cancel might be on the 2d and 4d imperfs, and he very tentatively guessed at “66”.

That numeral has long rumoured to have been allocated to Oyster Cove, but no strike of it has ever been seen or recorded.  It might be an inverted strike of that numeral cancel - what do YOU think?  Certainly the last number seems to be an inverted “6” if you look carefully, and there are no other obvious other numbers.

tinyurl.com/OysterCove is the ongoing stampboards discussion on it.  As they cost me essentially nothing, I mentioned on there I’d priced them at $A100 the pair on pieces, if anyone collected this area.  One clever member then came up with public auction realisations, for lesser examples, of the Oyster Cove cancel manuscript that has been invoiced for over $A1,000.   Dumb ole Glen!

And there were several other mega $100 realisations added there for this rare cancel - all clearly in the same florid pen handwriting as used on this new discovery, and clearly from the same person.  The first to pounce on them was well known dealer/collector/FIP Judge David Benson, and best of British luck to him with them. 

I am sure he will make many $100s on the quick purchase.  Several keen Tasmanian postmark collectors contacted me privately about it, and hopefully it can be noted in the Tasmania Philatelic Society journal, to add to the data base on this scarce manuscript marking.

I auction nothing, as I prefer fast turnover, and a CERTAIN result, so price things at a little more than I paid.  Pretty simple really!   My stamp mentor, Ken Baker, (who lived to age 104!) the most successful dealer ever in this country, stressed time and time again, to always remember his sage advice - "Son, you CAN’T go broke making a quick profit". 

Ken Baker did not have a Harvard MBA, and neither do I, but oddly, simple and time proven business principles, often work better than fanciful theory, and greedy mark-ups - that often sees dealer stock sit around for decades!  Ken handled every rarity this country has even seen, from the MUH pane 60 of the £2 Roo, the 2d KGV Tête-bêche pair, 3d Kooka Imperf Mini Sheet etc.  Some several times. 

There was no “Stamp Duty Act” until October 1863 so pen cancels on ALL Tasmania stamps used before then MUST be postally used, as usage of postage stamps to pay any kind of duty or tax was not yet authorised.  The postal pen cancels took all sorts of forms - cross hatched grids, wavy lines, roughly hand written numerals, wavy squiggles, signatures, dates, and mixes of all the above!

Early Tasmania stamps in particular one needs to be careful with, as stacks of the later imperfs had non-postal (or “fiscal”) pen cancels.  However until October 1863, any pen cancel on early imperforate Tasmania (and there were many) must be POSTAL and not fiscal - confused?  "Knowledge Is Power!”  Another good reason to buy off real dealers who know their stuff, and not clueless ebay sellers. 

All four of the 4d Blue Star Watermark Tasmanian imperf stamps shown nearby MUST be postal cancelled, as the dated cancels are before 1863.  (If you can read them!)  and the other 4 are handwritten numerals.  Many collectors and dealers would in isolation, regard them as pen cancelled fiscal used stamps, as the later numeral watermark imperfs of the same colours mostly were.

Collecting early Australia States is an absolute minefield, and for the novice, places like eBay are to be avoided at all costs.  Ink jet printed scans of imperforate Tasmania are being offered on ScamBay on a daily basis, and the brain dead eBay Bunnies are hoovering them up, paying many $100s for stupid fakes the ink is not yet dry on.  A fake cancel, on an old bit of paper and the idiots paid $A450 for this nonsense nearby, alleged to be SG #1.

The Bunnies may as well print out the scan direct off ebay - they get the same thing - just worthless paper, and a fake cancel made days back.  Saving themselves $450.  When they show them to a real dealer down the track, they will get offered ZERO for either.  Not such a brilliant Ebay “BAAHHRRGEEN” then.

tinyurl.com/TasFakes  is the stampboards discussion where 100s of these laughable fakes are documented.  As the originals were crudely locally printed, imperforate, and did not have watermarks - a faker’s paradise.  ScamBay of course do nothing, as they make 13% profit on each one sold, and do not give one hoot whether those are fakes or genuines, despite their alleged rules. 

The 1853 4d Tasmania shown nearby he has sold dozens of this year all offered as ‘’genuine’’ of course, and getting over $250 each at times for a photocopy.  He dips the paper into CocaCola or something to make it appear old and brown, and adds an old hinge.  Would most readers here be able to pick these as a fake - sadly NOT.   

Stampboards has had SCORES of accounts from this Sydney forger closed down eventually - ebay stupidly allow the same guy to open new accounts - some of the current names being used are: antiques unlimited - antiquesunlimited111_1 - La_Lune_Collectables - StarCollectables - stamp_37 - clonstamps - stampcentre - biblica99 -  strampsdownunder -  stamps_lovers101

Another profitable line is faking 100s of South Australia “Departmental” stamps.  This amateur faker does hopelessly crude overprints, and loads up only low rez fuzzy scans.  Again anyone with even a half brain would be alerted to that.  But no - the “E.B.” shown nearby sold for $A528 - the normal common 6d stamp he bought to overprint it on, is shown next to it here.  Many fakes sell for $500+.

Any sane eBay bidder FIRST googles the name of the seller, before placing bids on expensive pieces into 3 figures, unless they are well known PTS/ASDA/IFSDA dealers etc, or very high feedback reliable ebayers.  Scammers ARE mentioned on Bulletin Boards, and forgery websites, and Uncle Google will lead you right there IF you check first.

Do not bother to contact the seller’s fake accounts in any way - total waste of time - direct your complaint direct to eBay.  Now and again some bored eBay drone in Karachi and Bangalore or Manila gets interested, reads the actual eBay rules re selling forged stamps, and not marking them thus, and wipes some accounts, which is very handy.  Several complaints gets the attention of Multi-Drones. 

He also has a trick to scan a Hagner of totally genuine, but very common States material worth a few dollars, and then “salts” in a totally forged photocopied Tasmania 1853 Imperf etc, and other fakes, and does not mention them, hoping the legions of drooling Bunnies will see it, and go nuts outbidding each other for this “rare hoard”.  They mostly do, sadly.

The page shown nearby is one example with a FAKE 4d Orange highlighted by a stampboards member.  You can also see a really crude Victoria £2 KEVII fake at base, and even a SA Departmental the scarce “GF”, a fake Victoria 1850 3d Half Length, and even a Fake OS 1/- Lyre.  Incredibly fuzzy scan on purpose, so no-one can see any detail, but bidding went insane from the eBay dreamers, and sold for many $100s, for $10 of real stamps.   

Note this faker always uses the “PRIVATE AUCTION” feature that ebay stupidly allows spivs to choose.  You cannot then see who the other bidders are (allegedly) against you, and most likely many of his duplicate accounts are madly “Shill Bidding” you upwards.  Only a cretin ever bids on eBay until 4 seconds from the close, to avoid this, so that means 99% of bidders do just that, childishly bidding early, playing right into the hands of these cons.

Another favourite, on top of all things overprinted, is to scissor off the perfs of NSW 6d and 8d and 1/- Diadems etc, and sell them as wide margin imperfs - see the before and after nearby.  Same with SA and Qld earlies.  Again if you are in the market for these, buy **ONLY** from someone reputable, who WILL be about in 5 years - these spivs close up after a few weeks at times, and your money is then gone forever.

When it comes time for you or your family to sell your $10,000s of eBay “BAAHRRGEEN” purchases, and show them to a real dealer, or a real auction house, is where the heartbreak hits.  I had a guy offer me a stockbook of States material this week he spent about $25,000 on via eBay, over the past 5 years. 

I offered him $500 for the lot, for the few things in there that were actually genuine.  He had neat little white tags on them.  ’Purchased eBay “jimmytheforger” October 2016, SG £900, for $A200.’   What a deal  - how could anyone pass that one up?  Way less than those nasty dealers asked!  More here - tinyurl.com/TasFakes   

Near EVERYTHING was totally faked, others wildly misidentified, or repaired or defective etc.  He went off in fury to demand answers, and later reported back that ALL the selling accounts were now defunct.  A $25,000 life lesson.  He accepted my $500 and looked crushed.  A client collects fakes, so he will like them as a reference.  In life there is “no such thing as a free lunch”.  Do remember that.