Auctions
Part 3 of expansive Kugel collection of worldwide stamps and postal history in Feb. 11-12 Cherrystone auction

By Charles Snee
The third part of the massive
collection of worldwide stamps and postal history formed by Alfred F. “Al”
Kugel (1930-2022) will be sold by Cherrystone Philatelic Auctioneers during a
Feb. 11-12 sale at its gallery in Teaneck, N.J.
Each day’s session will begin at 10
a.m. Eastern Time.
Cherrystone offered the first part of
the Kugel collection in a sale held June 18-19, 2024. Part 2 of the collection
crossed the Cherrystone auction block during a sale conducted Sept. 10-11,
2024.
Kugel’s expansive holdings were
donated to the American Philatelic Society following his death.
Following the completion of a
rigorous appraisal on Aug. 1, 2023, Kugel’s philatelic material and literature
were released to the APS.
Invitations to bid on the sale of the
Kugel estate were sent following the completion of the Aug. 10-13, 2023, Great
American Stamp Show in Cleveland.
Requests for proposals were sent out
Aug. 28, 2023, and the APS received seven responses.
“Cherrystone was selected from a
field of seven firms from the United States and Europe, vying for the honor of
bringing the Kugel Estate to market,” the APS said in a news release published
Feb. 28, 2024, on its website.
According to Cherrystone, the Feb.
11-12 auction features more material that Kugel “assembled over a multidecade
effort to build an expansive collection of philatelic and postal history items
focused on military conflicts of the 19th and 20th centuries.”
The third part of Kugel’s extensive
collection “spans global conflicts and military mail from the late 19th century
through modern times, with a focus on the break-up of Austrian, German, Ottoman
Empire and Russian Empires, military campaigns in the Balkans, with Bosnia
& Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro, Allied Interventions in China during
the Boxer Rebellion and in Russia during the Civil War as well as the two World
Wars and their aftermaths,” Cherrystone said.
A fascinating exhibit offered on the
first day of the sale focuses on 1900-41 postal history of the American forces
in China.
The exhibit documents “the history of
the American military involvement in China, from participation in the
multinational intervention to suppress the Boxer Uprising until the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor,” Cherrystone said. “The story gives emphasis to the
large variety of postal markings used on mail from the U.S. Army, Navy and
Marine personnel deployed to China, with earliest and latest known postmarks,
Registered mail, incoming markings, various Military Stations, studies of rates
and other relevant information, eloquently conveyed by Mr. Kugel, who spent
several decades acquiring this material.”
For more details about the exhibit,
see the 5-minute video that accompanies the lot description on the Cherrystone
website.
Cherrystone is offering this American
forces in China exhibit with an opening bid of $4,500.
Collectors of postal history
associated with the 1900 Boxer Rebellion will want to take a close look at
Kugel’s postal history collection of Australian forces in China.
The collection consists of 14 letters
or postal cards displayed on 13 exhibit pages.
One of the more eye-catching items is
a China 1¢ postal card that Cherrystone said was “sent from FPO [Field Post
Office] 1 (Peking Legation Gate), via Hong Kong to New South Wales.”
That card is displayed on the exhibit
page illustrated nearby. Below the card is Kugel’s narrative explaining the
postage on the card:
“Although cancelled by the Indian
FPO, the Chinese postage did not pay for the transmission of this card either
through the Indian field post system within China or in the international
mails. The soldiers’ concession rate was fully paid by the pair of half anna
C.E.F. [China Expeditionary Force] stamps.”
Cherrystone lists this important and
notably rare collection of Australian forces in China postal history during the
1900 Boxer Rebellion with an opening bid of $7,000.
The sale concludes with 36 large lots
and collections from a variety of locations.
The catalog for the Feb. 11-12
auction of part 3 of the Kugel collection can be viewed and is available for
download on the Cherrystone website, with online
bidding options available through Cherrystone and Stamp Auction Network.
Information also is available from Cherrystone Philatelic Auctioneers, 300 Frank W. Burr Blvd., Second Floor, Box 35, Teaneck, NJ 07666.
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