Over one hundred years ago, on 29th October 1908, Postmaster Monsieur Roy finished his pain au chocolat and his café
au lait, looked at his pocket watch and saw that it was 7.30am. Getting to his
feet, he called to his young native assistant to go and open the doors. As he
moved behind the counter, the first customer of the day, the young clerk from
Burns Philp & Co. Ltd. walked up to the counter and presented a
letter, addressed to a lawyer in Coffs Harbour, New South Wales.
"a tuppenny stamp please", said the young clerk.
"Ah, said M. Roy "This is a good day to ask for stamps my young friend. Today,
we have for the very first time, the new stamps of the Condominium! Allow me
to give you here two of the new one penny stamps. They are such a lovely shade
of red.... Sacre! What is this? Some espèce d'imbéc ... I mean some fool in that
damn printer in Suva has made a poor job here. Look, this whole row has not
received the special overprint. I am most sorry. Allow me to give them to you
for half price...."
And a legend was born: one of the 14 1d stamps overprint omitted. ---
Learn more in menu 1908 / 1908 Stamps / The 1908 Omitted Overprint.
Happy collecting!
Story by Martin Treadwell
(fiction of course: the real error stamps were bought by dealers immediately!)
These web pages present the stamps and postal history of the New Hebrides as a "Internet Cover & Stamp Album". The main idea of this site is to share the knowledge and fascination of the stamps and postal history of the New Hebrides (today's name: Vanuatu) with other collectors.
24 October 1909
Picture postcard to Nouméa, the 1d stamp cancelled with Type 7 Vila cancel. Addressed to Louis Le Scour, son of the first (and very famous) doctor in Nouméa. According to the writing on the card from Nov 1909, Louis sent this card in a letter to a friend (in France ?). (Klinger coll.)
Picture postcard to Nouméa, the 1d stamp cancelled with Type 7 Vila cancel. Addressed to Louis Le Scour, son of the first (and very famous) doctor in Nouméa. According to the writing on the card from Nov 1909, Louis sent this card in a letter to a friend (in France ?). (Klinger coll.)
Gems of The New Hebrides' Philately
A few days after I started these pages in May 1999, Martin Treadwell contacted me and we decided to improve these pages together. Sheryll Ruecker joined us some months later. Hubert Goron (†), a collector of the New Hebrides for many years, contributed many important pieces of early postal history, as well as the highlight of the New Hebrides stamps, the first 1908 1d red vertical pair with missing overprint on this site. Later, Jacques Mérot (†) provided us with rare items such as 1907 essays, 1908 fakes, the scarce 1920 5c on 50c without CONDOMINIUM millésime, and 1977 varieties. In the meanwhile all 1d missing overprints are shown here.
A number of other contributors helped to improve these pages:
Stan Jersey (†) and Dudley Priester from USA, John Yeomans and the "Mele", "Namba 2"
and "RMD" (†) collections from Great Britain, the "Aore" collection from Australia and many,
many others contributed some superb examples of early postal history,
and they also present some choice stamp items not found elsewhere. On some pages there
are images of items originating from auctions and dealer's offers. In these cases the
sources are named at the place were they are presented.
Many thanks to them all for participating!
Site maintenance: Roland Klinger
If you are interested in stamps of the Pacific Islands, you may want to link to the Pacific Islands Study Circle.
P I S C
P I S C
Association Philatélique des Collec-
tionneurs de Timbres Poste des
Anciennes Colonies Françaises
C O L F R A
tionneurs de Timbres Poste des
Anciennes Colonies Françaises
C O L F R A
