SGSC Logo John's Jottings
January-March 2015
by John Ineson
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spacer Small Head Damaged

I very often write about the scarce and unusual items that have come up for sale, either on eBay or in auction.  In this issue, I report about a Mafeking small head Baden-Powell 3d stamp sold recently on eBay and referred to as a "Space Filler".  This stamp, with the 19 April 1900 postmark was offered by a collector in South Africa and received 15 bids from five different people.  Can you guess was this sold for?  See the price below in the next paragraph.  I do not think that I have ever seen a Mafeking blue stamp in such a worse condition, with a large part missing at the top and a bad crease across the stamp.

We have an expression in the U.K., " It never rains, but it pours".  It was only in the July - August 2014 Bulletin that I reported a second recorded cover from the 1936 Northern Counties Jamboree held at Raby Castle, Darlington had been sold by auction.  Now a few months later I was offered Cover with 5 strikes of Darlington Cancel Darlington Postcard the cover shown here.  It is a little "Philatelic" but still a cover posted from the camp on Thursday 6th August and signed by the Chief Scout, the day he, and Lady Baden- Powell visited the camp.  The postmarks are very clear, but the red "Northern Counties Jamboree 1936, Raby Castle" label, is not a label, but appears to have been cut out from somewhere else, and fixed to the cover with a stamp hinge.  The B-P stamp made £27 on eBay.  Having obtained the cover, I needed something else to fill the page, and a fellow collector and a member of the SGSC kindly agreed to sell me the postcard shown.  It would appear that the Scouter is blowing a Kudu horn to summon Scouts to the Jamboree.  Have you seen any other postcard from this camp, other than the one of Raby Castle which is rather black in places?  The Chief Scout often said that when he visited camps, he could guarantee that it would rain and it certainly looked as if it did on his visit to this camp, which you can see can if you go into www.youtube.com/watch?v=ag71iHqLKZA.  This is only a short clip without sound.
The B-P stamp made £27 on eBay.


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