Time to Get Serious

There may be a light-hearted attitude demonstrated in many of these weekly reports but we are, after all, serving a hobby and believe that it is supposed to be enjoyable.

However, this week the task of describing all the lots for the next Grosvenor auction was completed and we are on to the very serious business of putting together the next catalogue. This will move along at some pace for we need to have this ready to transfer to our printers, Pardys of Ringwood, in particularly good time during August. Apparently printers need summer holidays as well !

The final totals, then, are in and we can confirm that the number of lots for this next auction has, as predicted, grown to such a number (1,790) that it will indeed be necessary for it be held over two days on Wednesday 28th and Thursday 29th September. Time now to make final decisions on how the auction should best be structured and we have elected to start the first morning with a 145 lot section of Miscellaneous & Mixed Lots, their estimates ranging from £8,000-10,000 to just £100-120.

Next ‘on the block’ will be a 54 lot section of Philatelic Literature, created from the
library of “Ronnie” Straus whose exceptional worldwide collection appears throughout
the auction, giving this sale a more ‘Foreign Countries’ flavour than is sometimes
the case.

This group will be followed by a small but very interesting section of ‘Steamship Lines
to the West Indies’, a collection formed by Michael Rego and divided into 20 lots of collections and items.

The rest of the auction will present countries listed alphabetically, Afghanistan to
Cayman Islands completing the morning session.  This group of lots includes the most unusual Joyce hoard of sheets of Bahrain Castles.

At 2pm we will restart with a strong section of Ceylon that includes the John Sussex study of King George V Key Type issues, followed by China, which is very popular nowadays and expected to attract a great deal of interest internationally. By the end of the afternoon we will have reached Ireland, passing via such countries as Hong Kong and India. Some Falkland Islands lots are included but our main offering of these this autumn will appear in our November auction.

We open on Thursday morning with just a single lot of Israel, however it is a collection estimated at £4,000. The main attraction of the morning of the second day, though, will be the Francis Kiddle Kuwait, a truly exceptional collection presented in 181 lots.

In the afternoon we recommence with New Zealand, featuring the fine collection of Captain Peter Lay, and our journey around the world then continues via the Richard Stroud collection of the Orange Free State and other countries before ending up, as is not uncommon, in Zanzibar.

The Kuwait stamp alongside has been chosen as the "star" for the front cover. Regular clients will have noticed that, for aesthetic reasons, we tend to favour a single item for this purpose when possible. The winning item has to be both scarce and pleasing to the eye (these elements do not always coincide, unfortunately) whilst hinting at the delights inside, so the choice can be tricky. Our designer, the excellent Dorothy Sharp, will next suggest colour schemes whilst we select further items for the back and inside covers.

In the meantime, work on our next pair of auctions, Specialised Great Britain and another of British Empire & Foreign Countries, to be held in the same week in November, has already begun.

The London auction world may be a great big melting pot but it is also a giant hamster wheel for those who work within it !

JG