The cover is shown nearby. It was in the Prestige Philately auction of May 2, and the invoice for it was $A2,563.

How do I know the invoice showed $A2,563 - as the buyer Noel Almeida emailed it to me!  And that is without any postage and packing added, as it was hand collected.

Even scarcer “Cinderellas” of cricket, like the supposed Don Bradman one illustrated nearby from 1936, now sell for $100s in good condition off cover, and much more ON cover. They are often licked on backs of covers.

The stance and features on this label are unmistakably modelled on Sir Donald Bradman, then match winning Australian Captain, and national hero No #1, in those gloomy depression era years.

Bradman moved to Adelaide in 1935 and worked as a stockbroker , and captained the South Australian team for the first time in November 1935 against the MCC.

Cast your mind back to this Centenary Test Cricket match. The "old rivals" battling it out exactly 100 years from the first Test in 1877. The biggest sporting event of the year in Australia.

The Post Office had issued the attractive se-tenant strip of 5 x 18¢, and single 45¢ stamp, and hoped to reap substantial extra revenue by marketing this set of 6, and associated souvenirs, at the cricket ground.

A fancy temporary Post Office was erected at the MCG, built to replicate a 19th Century bush Post Office. All Australia Post staffers manning it dressed in period costume, to add to the "1877" visual effect.

This PO was open from March 9-17th, outside the Member's Stand. A special large size color poster of the stamps was produced by AP, to sell at $2.

Those were a huge flop, and nearly all posters were destroyed. Noel Almeida now BUYS these posters for 3 figures if anyone still has a copy!

The Post Office also produced a special registration label, worded "Centenary Test Melbourne" to affix to all registered items posted over the 9 days.

The special pictorial cancel illustrated was a hit with collectors, and over 100,000 items bearing this cancel were serviced.  But only 56 of these items were Registered, hence the extreme scarcity of this special label.

I understand the lowest number seen of this Registered label is 0005, and the highest is 0040.

Only 23 different label numbers are recorded, all on cover, and all have the applicable backstamp, and all except one are cancelled First Day Of Issue for the stamps.

Therefore for 8 of the 9 days of PO opening only one Registered item is recorded.  A date other than March 9 or March 17 may bring more than $2,563, as it may prove to be unique.

There was NO publicity whatever given by the Post Office or the stamp magazines, or PO “Bulletin” to this label at the time.

It was then PO practice NOT to produce such printed special Registration labels for temporary post offices. Collectors had no idea or inkling that it existed.

It was assumed a "Jolimont" Registered label would be used, that being the closest PO to the MCG. (Jolimont Post Office no longer exists.)

Melbourne cricket enthusiast and dealer Noel Almeida has sought these labels for the past 37 years. He even published a monograph titled "The 1977 Centenary Test" in 1991.

Almeida used the Freedom Of Information Act in 1983 to obtain from Australia Post all internal files pertaining to this stamp issue in 1977, to research his book.

He saw in the FOI documentation reference to the fact that labels 0001 and 0002 were planned to be presented to Queen Elizabeth II, presumably on covers. Her Majesty and Prince Philip personally attended the Centenary Test Match.

Noel wrote to Sir John Marriott, RDP, FRPSL, the "Keeper Of The Royal Collection", to try and verify this fact and check if they were stored in the Royal Collection.

Sir John's handwritten reply to him, on "Buckingham Palace" Royal crested letterhead from 1986 indicated no record of these Test Cricket labels can be found.

Cricket related stamps are still big sellers, as the market for them is not just in Australia, but strongly British and Caribbean and so on, indeed as we see above - Holland and the USA.

The January 2014 Ashes Series 5-0 total whitewash saw Australia Post rush release a 60¢ letter rate stamp, and a $2.35 one for overseas mail.

Both were quickly available in the normal gummed perforated versions, in PO sheets, and on PO FDC, and in a PO pack.

The $2.35 value was also released in peel and stick - but four WEEKS later. There was no FDC, no pack, and it caught most collectors totally by surprise. Months later, the scarcity of it on FDC is now becoming apparent.

I had a few done on the official PO First Day Cover envelope, and with the official “The Urn Returns” Pictorial postmark.  My last few are $A40 apiece, and I believe only a few dozen were ever serviced thus.   

These stamps were MASSIVE …. the largest size I can ever recall seeing from Australia. Near THREE times larger than the usual “International” $1 stamps on sale at PO’s.

The other Ashes products have done well in the past. The 2014 Philatelic Numismatic Cover (PNC) was also a rush release, and in a surprise move only 7500 were produced, all individually numbered.

They sold out nearly instantly, little wonder - as the earlier 2007 “Ashes” PNC of even greater number sold - 8000 units, is a $235 item already on a $19.95 issue price! 

I ordered mine quickly and hence got VERY early numbers. I have low numbers 122 to 130 left, and at $A50 each they will never be cheaper!

We all know that using Registered or insured post is smart. These days it more and more is essential for items of any value.

More and more domestic mail NOT addressed to PO boxes is getting stolen – sad but true. Contractors are not PO staffers, and will leave boxes and parcels in unsafe places or in the rain very often.

I regularly get sellers nervous about mailing me stamps to buy. They often only run to $100s, or a few $1000s, but they really are not at all happy doing it.

I will in future remind them of this true story about the safety of Registered Mail, and they might be a lot more comfortable about it all!

Harry Winston, the leading American jeweller and gem dealer, mailed the legendary “Hope Diamond” in a package via Registered Post using a single red “REGISTERED” handstamp.

In November 1958, Winston donated the diamond to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, intending it to be the foundation for a National Jewel Collection.

It is a large, 45.52 carat deep-blue diamond, now housed in the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in Washington, DC.  Value is estimated today at $US200-$US250 million.

With his years of experience in shipping jewellery all over the world, Harry Winston chose to have the near priceless diamond delivered by Registered Mail.

He told a reporter for the Washington Post that: “Registered Mail is the safest way to ship gems …. I’ve sent gems all over the world that way.”

The massive diamond was placed in a box, wrapped in brown paper, and sent by Registered Mail, travelling down from New York in a Railway Post Office train car.

The addressee, Dr. Leonard Carmichael signed the receipt for the Registered package from the Post Office delivery person.

The price paid for shipping the gem, valued at $US1 million at the time, was $145.29, most of that being for the contents insurance!

As you can see on the scan of the packaging, the postage was $2.44. It looks like $9 was the largest value USPS postage meter at the time in 1958, 56 years back, and 16 of those were used, with a $1.29 label to make up the balance.  

When trawling the web this week looking for a bird stamp image I found an unusual website.

A guy in the USA called Matt Deifer runs a business where he body-paints images directly onto people’s skin, and does high resolution photo sessions of the finished artwork.

One session with a pretty young lady named Thalia came up with this cleverly painted on copy of the 1969 Haiti 10¢ “Calecon Rouge” bird stamp.

I understand this is the national bird of Haiti, and is known as the “Hispaniolan Trogon” and I am sure I’ll get 10 emails from serious bird collectors if that is wrong!  

Matt offers these art sessions for folks who are wanting to celebrate something special, and wish to have a pictorial record made of it. “Living Art” I suppose! 

Lots of young folks get tattoos done to mark special occasions that they later regret as those are “forever”, so body painting and photos of it seem far less intrusive!

Heaps more examples of record album covers, movie themes, and other things people have painted on their bodies are at - www.bodypaint.me – all very tasteful I might add.  Matt asked me for ideas of other stamps he can paint on clients.

I assume the paint used for the body painting is water soluble, so it all washes off in the shower after the photos are taken?

Matt emailed me to say the Haiti stamp session took him about 5 hours to do, so a lot of work is involved in each creation.

It is much like those finely detailed sand sculptures people do on beaches all over the world - take all day to create, and when the next tide comes in ……

About 2 weeks after this magazine is printed, the world will know what the world’s rarest stamp is actually worth. 

Sotheby’s New York will auction the British Guiana 1856 1¢ Magenta stamp on June 17.  Their estimate is a pretty bullish $US10-20 million.

The stamp looks really terrible on the front, and seems to have suffered under John du Pont’s ownership - he is rumoured to have sometimes slept with it under his pillow!

This image you see I manipulated from the appalling pink blob that Sothebys Press Office came up with, as their best effort to show it, after I emailed both their New York and London press offices.

For their millions in Commission you’d think they could have taken a decent scan of it.  Sadly not. A stampboard member viewed it in HK, and said in the flesh it looked far better and clearer than the dreary Sothebys official pic.

Du Pont was later jailed for 40 years for shooting dead an Olympic gold medal-winning wrestler in 1996, and he died in prison in 2010.

An Australian owned this stamp for 30 years - Frederick T. Small, who sold it at auction via Robert Siegel of New York in 1970.

tinyurl.com/1cGuiana contains much more detailed info, and discussion on John du Pont, and the rare stamp, and the auction. All the info is in one place there.

The Will beneficiary – apparently a weightlifter from Bulgaria, has decided to sell this stamp at Sothebys, and the balance of the British Guiana collection at Feldman in Switzerland.  Weird.

One of the more fascinating aspects of the British Guiana 1856 1¢ Magenta stamp is the reverse, which shows the personal owner marks of several of its famous owners including:

1. Two impressions of Count Ferrary's famous ‘trefoil’ owner's mark.
2. A large faint "H" of American Billionaire Arthur Hind - said to have burnt a second copy sold to him. "It is now STILL unique".
3. A small "FK" of Finbar Kenny, the stamp manager at Macy's who brokered its sale by Hind's widow.
4. A small shooting star added by the Australian, Frederick Small who owned it from 1940 to 1970.
5. A pencilled "IW" by Irwin Weinberg, head of a group of investors who bought the stamp in 1970 and sold it to du Pont.
6. A large pencilled "J E d P", initials of the late John E. DuPont who bought it for $US935,000 in 1980, and died in prison.
7. The large and ornate 17-pointed star has all the experts completely stumped.

Gary Watson, owner of Prestige Philately in Melbourne told me this week: “I predict the buyer will be a wealthy Chinese person. Who, I do not know, but China is becoming VERY important for the stamp market.”