13th June 2011

Stamps versus Coins – No Contest 

Much talk in the last couple of weeks about the new Channel 4 series ‘Four Rooms’ in which four art/antiques dealers make offers for a range of rare and unusual objects. Very interesting to see the differing psychological tricks employed by the participants to induce the owners to sell and the items themselves make the series highly watchable. Nothing of a postal nature as yet but I was interested to see that a Concorde nose cone was sold for £55,000. Judging by the prices paid last month for the items in the Charles Harrison collection the seller would have done even better if he had stuck a stamp on and asked a pilot to sign it. 

Whilst all the hard work continues in the London office, visiting us in France are old friend Charles Riley and his wife Katherine. Charlie was formerly head of auctions at Grosvenor’s near neighbours, Baldwins, and is now a leading independent coin and medal expert. We play the usual game of debating who has the superior hobby. He tells me that the stamps are making my hands ever stickier. I tell him that his face is certainly becoming more round. 

Pretty...	... not pretty

We try out his metal detector in one of our fields, a promising site right on an ancient trade route, the Ténarèze, between Bordeaux and the central Pyrenees. After a couple of hours we discover a Napoleon III coin and he seems well pleased. I tell him that stamp experts may have to poke around in dusty attics but rarely use a muddy spade.

To further prove the point that used stamps are more attractive than used coins here is our discovery, together with a New Zealand 1862 rouletted 1/- from the fine collection of Captain Peter Lay which will feature in the Grosvenor September auction. There really is no contest.

JG