Lot 30286 – 1875, 1 sen brown syll. chi (8), THE FINEST UNUSED EXAMPLE EXTANT OF ONLY SIX 1 SEN SYLLABIC 8 RECORDED

THE FINEST UNUSED EXAMPLE EXTANT OF ONLY SIX 1 SEN SYLLABIC 8 RECORDED

1875, 1 sen brown, syllabic 8 (chi), wove western paper, the spectacular example from the lower right corner of the sheet, position 40 displaying sheet margins, with the design intact, untouched by the perforations, possessing very fresh original gum which is slightly cracked and with a very slight hinge mark. A magnificent example. Cert. Florian Eichhorn BPP (2023).

One of the “Swedish Sailor Stamps”, the finest unused example recorded of this stamp, unique with corner sheet margins. Six examples of this stamp are known, with only five in private hands. (JSCA ¥6,500,000; Michel €60,000).

Note on the “Swedish Sailor Stamps”:

The stock of “Cherry Blossom” 1 sen brown, syllabics 7 and 8, were only used for postal purposes and not exported to foreign stamp dealers or sold to local philatelists, hence why so few are unused examples are recorded.

In 1939, the auction sale of the Woodward collection included one unused example of each syllabic. In the 1958 auction sale of the Caspary collection, the syllabic 8 from the Woodward collection re-emerged.

When in the early 1960s the collection of Mr. Bertil Ollerstad was auctioned, it was a great sensation to find two “extremely fresh” pairs with full gum of both syllabics (ex-singles illustrated in Dr. Ichida’s handbook of 1965 on page 281) . These were soon separated into singles and went into the collections of Dr. Ichida and a U.S. collector (reference by Dr. Ichida, 1965 as above.).

In 1958, Bertil Ollerstad privately published his book “Handbok över Japans äldre frimärken” (Swedish, 61 pages), which displayed illustrations of items from his collection, including these stamps. Due to the language and its nature as private publication, this discovery did not become widely known. Once “The Ollerstad Find” became public, research was undertaken. It appears that these pairs were provided by Mr. Ollerstad’s grandfather, who was a sailor onboard a Swedish ship which called at Yokkaichi (Japan) in the summer of 1875. He probably bought these pairs as souvenir at the local post office.

By 2023, the number of recorded unused copies still stands at seven for syllabic 7 (to), and six for syllabic 8 (chi).

Provenance:

Bertil Ollerstad

Dr. Ichida Soichi

Shirai Tsugumi

Our Census:

-The example presented here

-Centred to bottom left with few tone spots, position 10, in the Ota Katsumi collection

-Centred to left, sheet margin at right, position 24, in the Kanai Hiroyuki collection (The Philatelic Culture Museum)

-Centred to left, position 32, being the stamp which formed a pair with the corner example offered here, but in the position 32 the sheet margin was removed, Yigal Nathaniel collection (ex Ollerstad and Dr. Ichida)

-Centred to bottom (“thinned, rather badly in place”), unknown position, ex Woodward and Caspary (lots 736 and 521 respectively, the latter not illustrated)

-Centred to bottom right, unknown position, illustrated in the “Gallery of Japanese Stamps” (vol. 2, 1990, page 135), ex Fukuhara