Order of the Bath

When these stamps were first announced in May for release 7 June, my first thought was “eek,” they’re horrible. A sort of cross between Pocahontas and Lara Croft. Therefore I was not at all surprised to get a letter in June (dated the 2nd) to say that they were not to be released, mostly due to the objections from the Maori community.
They said that “as the stamps have not been released the stock is accounted for and will be destroyed.” Well why does the Len Jury auction catalogue that I have had today have them on the front cover, and a lot consisting of a full set—estimate 13,500 NZD? I would say that, from the accounts of the Post Office, that these stamps have been stolen and the auctioneer is handling hot property. They say “original invoice copy to vouch for authenticity” but that doesn’t mean anything. I would strongly recommend that no one buys these. The “teddy bears” fiasco from some years ago was bad enough, but this is just too blatant.

Update: I think I may have been a bit harsh on the dealers. It looks like NZ Post made one almighty foul up yet again and sold some copies by mail order before the official release date. Len Jury assures me that the invoice they have is from NZ Post. Even so I would not regard these as collectable by mainstream philatelists as they were withdrawn before the release date and hence not valid for postal use. There is some debate about whether NZ Post can order their recall from customers but I doubt it, as it was their blunder in selling them in the first place.

This entry was posted on 2 Oct 2006 at 22:29 by Rick and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.