Lot 60838 – 1868, 2 1/2c blue, position 23, used with handstamp

1868, 2 1/2c blue, position 23, a very scarce marginal example from the base of the sheet, unusually fresh impression displaying very large to huge margins, used with light strike of « Salamina/Franca » oval handstamp in blue; usual thin spots and vertical crease along outer frame line at right, not detracting from this, one of only two examples recorded with a handstamp cancellation, this feature making this item absolutely exceptional if we also considered the remarkable scarcity of this stamp, which is already highly desirable with manuscript usages; signed Stanley Gibbons.

Note: This example was unrecorded by the famous expert and collector Juan Santa María (Medellín). We have discovered that it was originally used as part of a pair. The other stamp, being position 22 (at left in the unsevered pair), was part of the Larsen and Santa María collections. Both positions 22 and 23 perfectly match the shape between them and the oval postmark. When the Larsen collection was sold in 1960, the position 22 was illustrated in the only colour plate dedicated to Colombia in that all world auction catalogue, and it was included in that privileged position as a rarity for having a postmark; then it was already presented as a single, consequently the pair had been already severed before that time.