Featured The Royal Collection

While watching "The Kings Speech" in the early hours of this morning as I could not sleep it was mentioned by King George VI (Bertie) that he always wanted to build models, but his father King George V would not allow it, as he had to carry on with his stamp collection so I thought Ii would look it up, and although there is far too much to put into 1 posting on here it made for an interesting read i have to say.

The Royal Philatelic Collection is the most comprehensive collection of Great Britain and the Commonwealth Stamps in the world, and was started by Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, the second son of Queen Victoria, and King George V in the early 19th Century and is still added to up to today and beyond.

The collection iused to be housed a Buckingham Palace but was moved to St James Palace where it is still housed today.

King George V was elected Honorary Life Vice-President of the Royal Philatelic Society on March 1893, and once wrote to a colleague say “I want to have the best collection of British stamps, not one of the best”
The 1d was bought from the Earl of Kintore's collection, while the unused Two Pence 'Post Office' Mauritius was acquired at auction in 1904 for a then-record price of £1,450.

A courtier asked the Prince if he had seen that "some damned fool had paid as much as 1400 pounds for one stamp". "Yes," came the reply. "I was that damned fool!"

The Collection is housed in 3 different coloured album sets, Red for KGV, Blue for KGVI and Green for QEII, and ulike the Crown jewels and The Royal Buildings that belong to the country, the stamp collection is the sole property of the Queen.

A lot more detail and images can be viewed at the link below, does make for some fascinating reading

Steve

http://www.royal.gov.uk/the royal c...ccollection/theroyalphilateliccollection.aspx

 

To be honest i would just like to be able to look at it, the early Victoria and Edward must be amazing

 

Can i just ask our American counterparts, do they know if the Presidents have a collectuion like this of USA stamps passed from President to President like the fabled "Book of secrets"?

 

If so, I never heard of it. Will have to do some research on that one.

 

i had never heard of the book of secrets till National Treasure, maybe they need to make a film about it if there is a secret collection they have there to maybe help reduce the deficit lol

 

You need to have an OBE for that

 

Nice that this thread is up again.
Visited the link and enjoy looking and reading on it. I have some Royal stamps and hope to have more of the classics in the future.

 

It was probably about 1960 or 1961 that My father bought me my first stamp album.
(I wish I still had it).
It cost two shillings and was called "Trusty"...pre-printed pages of course.
The inside cover had information about Stamp Collecting, including that President Roosevelt was a stamp collector.
The really strange thing is that I assumed famous stamp collectors also used several "Trusty" albums, bought in Woolworths for two shillings. It is always interesting the way a collection can develop from a single pre-printed album to a spring-back album....to several albums....to a shelf in a bookcase...to all of the bookcase....to most of a room.
But I still wish I had that old album.

 

I know what you mean. I am trying hard to not be a stamp accumulator. I can easily see how people amass thousands of stamps.

 

Guilty with alibi: I have a lot of friends that had lots of stamps that didn't want them. Others I bought in collections: sometimes you buy the book for just one page.

 

I don't think so. There is, however, a "national collection" of U.S. stamps. It is held and maintained by the Smithsonian Institution.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt's collection was auctioned after his death.

Don

 

I wonder why no one in his family just kept his collection or continue the hobby. Thanks for answers.

 

Zararina:

I don't know why the Roosevelt family auctioned FDR's collection. Certainly, they didn't need the money! Probably just like most families -- no one else interested in collecting. There are two or three books about FDR's collecting and this one (available from Amazon) may have some answers about why his collection was auctioned:

i

Molokai is a book collector too. Perhaps he has read this book and can answer your question.

Most, if not all, of the lots auctioned came with some authentication and they still can be found occasionally for sale on eBay.

 

You can still find some of the stamps sold from the FDR collection as many of them were tagged with a statement saying same.

 

Gunny, you just need to give in. A collector can't have too many stamps!

Don

 

Wish I was his next door neighbor... trade him a cup of sugar...! Maybe even cut his grass for free!!

 

And Gunny: I can throw a couple of hundred at ya to prime the pump!!

 

Thanks, but I have more than I can handle right now. On top of that, there is a local show tomorrow that I don't have the will power to avoid. Hopefully I can limit my purchases to some interesting covers.

 

This is very interesting history about Franklin D Roosevelt, I didn't realise he collected stamps and if his family auction off his collection its sad because it could of been use as part of an american heritage item in the Smithsonian museum, but its their choice.