Lot 40944 – Lebanese Foreign Post Office Postal History: The Life-times Collection of a distinguished gentleman

Lebanese Foreign Post Office Postal History:

The Life-times Collection of a distinguished gentleman: This collection has taken over 30 years assemble and brings together items from all the major Foreign Offices based in Lebanon, from the Ottoman Empire, French, German, Austrian, Russian and British offices all represented.

The collection is carefully annotated by the collector and is presented on over 1400 pages and housed in some 31 green Lighthouse albums. The more that 1470 items dating from the Venetian period starting in 1509 right the way through to the start of World War I in 1915.

There many wonderfully rare, interesting, attractive, colourful and or valuable items from many of the Foreign Post offices that served Lebanon at the time. It must be said while there are many important items the vast majority of the collection is made up of the standard usages mostly from Beyrouth with strength in the periods from

A small selection of some of the more interesting and or valuable items are described as follow:

Early stampless mail: A selection of three what appear to be 15th century Venetian mail, some later stampless covers covering the 17th and 18th centuries etc.

Ottoman Empire: This period is well represented including 1848 stampless cover with clear Arabic negative seal in blue of Beirut, 1863 Toughra 1pi tied by Beirut arabic blue dotted cancel on cover, 1886 envelope franked Empire 20pa horizontal strip of six all tied by Arabic double-circle of Zahle, 20pa stationery envelope with additional 20pa neatly cancelled and tied by blue Kousba negative and addressed to Atlantic City, USA etc.

Austrian Offices: Stampless disinfected cover bearing oval black Agenzia del Lloyd Austricao / Berutti, 1866 folded cover to Glarus, Switzerland, franked 1864 Lombary Venetia 15s brown, three examples tied by BERUTTI/24.1 cds, 1867 3s green, 5s red and 15s brown all neatly tied by BERUTTI/14.3 cds on envelope to USA etc.

French Offices: 1855 Stampless cover bearing ALEXANDRETTE/10.MAI.55 cds, plus a fine array of covers bearing GC5028 and some showing martime ship markings etc.

British Offices: 1875 Folded cover to Glarus, Switzerland, franked GB 2 1/2d tied G06, 1877 large registered cover to Berlin, franked 2d + 2 1/2d + 1s all tied G06, 1878 US Consular envelope from Beirut to Omaha, franked GB 2 1/2d strip of three tied G06, plus a fine array of rare and desirable combination frankings showing three covers and one front all from Beyrouth to France with GB franking tied G06 and French franking tied in transit in Alexandria by GC5080, plus 1906 1pi on 2d grey-green and carmine (SG 15) horizontal pair tied on registered cover from Beyrouth to Manchester etc.

The above are just a small sample of the vast range of this collection. There is not doubt that it would be essential to view this collection however large parts of it will be available for viewing via our website