Auctions

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

Jan 23, 2025, 11 AM
A standout item in Cherrystone’s Feb. 11-12 sale of part 3 of the Alfred Kugel collection is a marvelous array of covers focused on Australian forces in China during the 1900 Boxer Rebellion. One of the 13 exhibit pages in the collection is shown here.

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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