Sheet of Canada’s famed Bluenose stamp tops $50,000 at Rasdale auction

Auction Roundup — Matthew Healey, New York Correspondent

In Chicago, Rasdale Stamp Co. held a sale of worldwide stamps Feb. 18-19.

One of the most dramatic and beautiful items in the sale was a full, imperforate sheet of what many consider to be Canada’s most beautiful issue of all time, the 1929 50¢ stamp featuring the schooner Bluenose (Scott 158a).

Canada produced a few imperforate and part-perforate sheets of all its stamps from 1859 to 1943. Few of these were regularly sold to the public, reaching private hands instead through exchange by the postal museum or as favors from government officials.

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The imperforate Bluenose sheet of 100, folded down the middle but believed to be unique, sold for $52,780, including the 16 percent buyer’s premium added by Rasdale to all lots.

A group of 11 engraved essays for Queen Victoria definitives, presumably made by one of the banknote companies around 1868, offered a rare glimpse into the alternative universe of unadopted stamp designs.

The 11 proof-size impressions, for denominations ranging from 1¢ to 15¢, were printed in green, blue or reddish brown. Some had minor faults. The group carried a suggested bid of $250 but sold for $11,600.

A lovely, unused example of one of the classic issues of Canada’s pre-unification province of Newfoundland, the 1s scarlet on mesh paper of 1857 (Scott 9), with good margins and bright color, went for $27,840.