The plate block, which comes with a clean 2002 Professional Stamp Experts certificate, possesses fresh color, and all six stamps are well centered.

A standout item from the June 7 sale of the Erivan collection of worldwide rarities is described by Corinphila as the earliest recorded use of the Canada 1851 12-penny black Queen Victoria to the United States.

All told, the lots sold during the auction realized a total (with the 18 percent buyer’s premium) of $3,065,935.

Part 1 of the Evergreen sale will focus on stamps from Great Britain and the British Commonwealth.

Additional highlights in the Cherrystone sale include China Red Revenue stamps, extensive listings of flight and zeppelin covers, rare booklets and more.

One of the more eye-catching U.S. booklet items in the Larkin collection is a used pane of six of the U.S. 1907 1¢ Benjamin Franklin booklet stamp.

The sale emphasizes China and “offers a number of attractive Shanghai Large Dragons, solid Dowagers and Red Revenues, Coiling Dragons, Junks, etc.,” Kelleher and Rogers said.

Erivan Haub (1932-2018) was a billionaire and retail businessman whose prodigious collecting interests spanned the globe.

The four-day Westpex sale, which includes more than 2,300 lots, will offer an enormous array of U.S. stamps and postal history, Civil War postal history, Confederate States, U.S. possessions, British Commonwealth, general foreign issues, and U.S. and worldwide collections.

One of the philatelic crown jewels of the collection is an 1868 1¢ blue Benjamin Franklin stamp with a Z grill, known to collectors as the 1¢ Z grill.

The auction includes more than 1,500 lots and features United States material from the collections of David E. Bays, Gary A. Kosvic, Lady Connoisseur and William Rider.

In the introduction to the catalog prepared for each sale, Siegel president Scott Trepel revealed his 35-year friendship with the anonymous collector whom he calls “Dragonfly.”

An example of the extremely rare U.S. 1851 1¢ blue Benjamin Franklin type I stamp is part of the franking on a striking bronze floral valentine cover mailed from Deep River, Conn., to Westbrook, Conn.

Two lots in Bonhams’ auction of costumes and props from The Crown are framed digital prints of stamp essays featured in the show.

European countries represented in the sale include Austria, Germany and colonies, Italy and colonies, Luxembourg, Norway, Iceland, Portugal and colonies, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

What makes this $5 Columbian strip of four all the more remarkable is the pristine state of its mint, never-hinged gum.

During the leadoff session on the morning of Jan. 9, Cherrystone will offer an unused block of 10 of the Argentina 1899 5-peso orange and black Allegory of Liberty with the vignette inverted.

One of the centerpieces of the Barlow collection of U.S. machine cancels is a postcard bearing a marvelous strike of the Seattle, Wash., Exposition Station cancel featuring a stylized U.S. flag and “Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition” on the flag’s stripes.

The opening lot is a March 30, 1858, folded letter franked with a vertical bisect of the 2-real yellow green Hidalgo used as a 1r stamp that was mailed from Fresnillo to Zacatecas.

The eight-day auction series will feature 12 separate catalogs.