British Guiana 1 cent black on magenta shines at PhilaKorea

My flights are finally booked for my trip to PhilaKorea! This time I will be attending with added responsibility – as the UK Commissioner. I have received a few entries – none of them remotely connected with Korean material – so the ‘official’ nature of my visit is confirmed. Chances are that more UK exhibitors will decide to enter, as there are still over 5 months until PhilaKorea opens – we shall see.

But the big news for PhilaKorea is that the presence of a philatelic icon has been secured for the show. The famous British Guiana 1 cent black on magenta – the world’s most valuable stamp – will be displayed at Seoul. This is certainly a major public relations achievement for the PhilaKorea organisers, as it guarantees that the press will give it huge coverage locally.

I can only imagine the crowds of school kids, whose teachers will now definitely bring them to see the stamp world’s equivalent of the Mona Lisa. Even though Leonardo’s painting is far more attractive, this may be a once in a lifetime opportunity for many (collectors and non-collectors alike) to see what all the philatelic fuss is about, particularly when the British Guiana stamp is worth far more per square centimetre than the ‘Lady from the Louvre’!

An interesting story is developing around the validity, and even accuracy, of some catalogue entries. Just recently, it was noticed that an additional plate had been added to Scott’s South Korean listing for the 1948 Observatory issue. Personally, I think that Scott has the best English-language listings of both North and South Korea. Last year, I helped rewrite part of the early North Korea section.

The ‘new discovery’ was actually published in Scott’s 2020 edition, but it has taken until now for it to be more widely noticed. After all, who buys a new edition of a catalogue every year, when the information they want only covers a relatively small number of pages? I don’t. I also do not rely on catalogues to tell me what a stamp is worth. Auctions and eBay do that far more accurately!

The addition of a second plate, with a high catalogue value, was based on information presented to Scott. It was known that the two printers involved in the issue produced stamps of differing shades. That’s not abnormal. However, the basis for adding a ‘new’ plate comes down to a supposed size difference of 0.13 mm, or 0.005 inches (5/1000 of an inch for those who like fractions!). Incidentally, that measurement is the size of one pixel. I challenge anybody to be able to distinguish such a minor difference without the use of a scanner and measuring software. Of course, everyone carries such equipment with them to shows and stamp dealers!

Anyway, this microscopic difference has now been comprehensively shown to be irrelevant. Stamps in the same block, from either printer, naturally vary in size by one or two pixels as a result of standard production tolerances in printing in the late 1940s. The catalogue definitely needs to be corrected. A full article by Jin Hur detailing these findings will appear in the next issue of Korean Philately.