Hong Kong Study Circle Wilde Cup for new discoveries 2009-2010.

The Webb and Wilde Cups for 2010 will be awarded at the joint meeting on Sunday 9 May 2010 in London. The four entries for the Wilde Cup for 2010 are presented below. Those members not attending the 9 May meeting can mail, FAX or email their votes by 7 May to:

Nick Halewood,
Midoricho 1-9-204, Ashiya-shi,
Japan 659-0042.

FAX 81-797-31-9816

E-mail address:

No. 1

The Only Known Example of the 64mm x 11mm “SHOP CLOSED” Instructional Marking

“SHOP CLOSED" – Only known example of this size, 22 years earlier than Proud's ERD

Webb did not report a “SHOP CLOSED” marking in his chapter on instructional markings. Proud reported two different examples. His type I160 used 26.7.26-1.8.26 is, according to the illustration in his book, 54mm x 8mm in size. His type I162 was used 10.6.27-23.3.33 and was 47mm x 12mm in size. The cover illustrated below bears an unrecorded 64mm x 11mm “SHOP CLOSED” marking, with a Hong Kong date of 4.7.04 on the back.

No. 2

An Unreported Postman’s Beat Chop from Aberdeen

Aberdeen was one of the police posts that opened in 1912 and very little is known of its operations. Mail is rare and cancellation evidence sparse. Bishop, Morton and Sayers (1934) reported that Aberdeen “has now no obliterator, so all letters posted at its P.O. are sent to Victoria to be dealt with. Consequently specimens of this postmark are rare but not unknown” (p. 25). The revised edition, now Lobdell and Hopkins (1949), emends its reference to Aberdeen by giving a fixed date for the withdrawal of an obliterator – 30 April 1929 (p. 210).

Our next reference source, Thorndike and Shek (1959), gives fuller information: “The Aberdeen P.O. is a postman’s rural delivery office; the small public office is open for the sale of stamps, etc., only when the two local postmen are not out on their rounds. Locally-posted letters were formerly (prior to 1929) collected into the Aberdeen office, date-stamped and sent to the G.P.O. in closed mails; they are nowadays collected direct into the G.P.O.” (pp. 91-92). This language makes it clear that the description of the ‘small public office’ is post-war.

In Proud’s first edition of Hong Kong (1989) no details of the post office are given beyond earliest and latest strikes of the first hammer and the existence of a second, philatelically used. A proposed closing date of 30.4.29 is given. In the second edition, the date of closure of the office is again given as 30.4.29, and the following information is offered regarding the status of the office as of the post-war period: “On 10 November 1945 an agency was open which only handled mail and sold stamps, but did not cancel letters. It was about the size of a private garage and had a counter for sale of stamps and sorting mail, and a posting box, and appeared to do a considerable Post Restante business. It was only open for two hours daily by the delivery postman.”

The cover shown at the left requires us to re-evaluate the perception that the post office was, in fact, closed during the pre-war period. Instead, it seems that the 1945 description is more accurate. The envelope (a red band cover) bears a 1935 3¢ Silver Jubilee stamp, cancelled “18 MY/35”, and is addressed to an art institution on the Island Road, Little Hong Kong, or Hong Kong Tsai (the Chinese name used for the village community). It bears no backstamp but instead shows the alphanumeric postman’s beat chop “A1”. I do not believe that this combination has been recorded before (Proud alludes to A numbers as suffixed indicators of the splitting or extension of beats, known in several instances within the Hong Kong Central and Peak districts, i.e., 6A or 24A). In the 1930s, other post offices also used an alphanumeric system of beat chops, including Kowloon with its extensive sequence, but also Stanley and Yau Ma Ti. The significance of this item, then, is not just the recording of a new chop, of which scores are still to be listed, but the conclusive evidence of the ongoing postal activity in Aberdeen.

No. 3

Royal coat of arms handstamp for British Consulate in Tainan, Taiwan

According to the Treaty of Tientsin with China signed in 1860, foreign residents and trade were allowed at a further 11 towns, of which two, Tainan and Tamsui, were on the island of Taiwan (also known as Formosa).

Webb reported that Britain established a consulate at Tainan and a vice-consulate at Tamsui. He went on to say that no post office or packet agency was ever opened on the island. He also recorded a single example of the 1863 4¢ grey adhesive (SG9) cancelled with the Tamsui Vice-consulate’s coat of arms handstamp, presumably the example depicted at the left.

Anping, the seaport for Tainan, has a datestamp (apparently locally made) recorded in use between 1885 and 1895, when the island was ceded to Japan and the treaty port rights were withdrawn. Any mail originating from the Tainan Consulate not going via Anping, e,g., going to Tamsui, could only have been cancelled with the consulate’s handstamp. Other treaty ports kept their coat of arms handstamps solely for fiscal use, see Swatow example above at right.

For the new find, see at the top, on an 1885 20¢ on 30¢ orange-red adhesive (SG40), only the letters “IWAN” are visible, but it is enough to show that the spacing between the letters is far greater than that in the case of “TAMSUI”. Thus, it is believed to be “TAINAN, TAIWAN”.

No. 4

A Kiung-Chow British Consulate Marking

In the endless search for new markings on Hong Kong adhesives for our virtual security marking collection (see: http://rodsell.com/hksmsic/hksmsic.html), I have obtained the following three items showing a distinct “BRITISH CONSULATE, KIUNG-CHOW” strike:

To the best of my knowledge, the only other British consulate for which a marking was used on Hong Kong adhesives was the British Consulate in Bangkok (a similar oval marking, 36 x 26 mm, with the Royal Arms in the center. Editor: see Jn. 353/11, Figure 4). After careful examination under a high-resolution magnifier and color manipulation with photo software, I may safely conclude that the Kiung-Chow markings are underneath the respective Hong Kong postal strikes. This is important because, first, it implies that in each case the Kiung-Chow marking would have been applied on departure, maybe as a security marking, the Hong Kong strike being applied on arrival; and second, it would also be strong supporting evidence that the marking is genuine, assuming that the Hong Kong strikes are genuine, which seems to be the case.