Submitted by aarAdmin on Tue, 02/09/2021 - 00:00
A £2 Black and Rose block of four Australian kangaroo stamps (lot 101), which changed hands for $50,190 including buyer’s premium, scooped the auction pool at Leski Auctions Melbourne sale on February 7.
Many of the 1500-plus lots in the sale (900-plus of which were offered online in the days leading up to the auction) sold well within or above their catalogue estimates, with collector interest peaking for the 600-odd items proffered on the day.
Another top result was a first watermark 2/- strip of three Australian kangaroo stamps (lot 95) that sold for $45,410, while a carmine-rose King George V one penny Perkins Bacon die proof (lot 172) at $8365 was well within its catalogue estimate range.
Postal history in the form of aerophilately and flight covers attracted plenty of attention with Qantas’s first mail delivery flight on November 5, 1922 – an inaugural trip from Cloncurry to Longreach to Charleville – carrying the cover with a Wellington address (lot 277), one of only two recorded New Zealand destinations, bringing $10,755.
An Australia to England flight cover (lot 289) with 8d in Australian stamps and over-franked with British stamps, flown June 25,1929 on Charles Kingsford Smith’s Southern Cross who also signed the letter, was another interesting sale – changing hands for $3585.
Nineteen-thirty-five dated Bulolo Air New Guinea £2 bright violet and £5 emerald green stamps (lot 513) brought more than their catalogue estimate at $1434, while lot 521 – a 1918-23 New Guinea northwest Pacific Islands overprints sheet – also sold above estimate for $2629.
New Zealand stamps were others to see action with 1d and 2d Smiling Boys in corner marginal blocks (lot 534), formerly part of the Sir Gawaine Baillie (2006) and Lord Leonard Steinberg (2011) collections, selling for $6572, while a 1917 Papua rose-carmine one penny (lot 558) changed hands for $3824.
In another interesting development, collectors happily paid $3107 for the pilot signed flight cover dated January 11, 1935 (lot 600) carried by United States pioneer aviator Amelia Earhart when she became the first woman to fly solo non-stop from Honolulu to Oakland.
