On Jan. 17, 2023, H.R. Harmer Fine Stamp Auctions will be offering a public auction, the eighth of 10 installments of the Erivan Collection of United and Confederate States Postal History. This collection represents one of the most comprehensive and important holdings of American postage stamps ever assembled, and its appearance at auction marks a watershed moment for the hobby of philately.
Highlights from the past few years include an envelope carried by Pony Express to Abraham Lincoln, which sold for $330,000, and the famous “Blue Boy” stamp of Alexandria, Virginia, which realized an impressive $1.18 million.
This upcoming sale includes an 1846 envelope from Boscawen to Concord, New Hampshire which bears the only example of the Boscawen Postmaster Provisional stamp in existence. When it last sold in 1989, it was valued at $176,000.
Before the federal government issued its own postage stamps in 1847, individual post offices were permitted to issue their own postage stamps for use within that office. Boscawen was one of 11 municipalities to have issued its own stamps, and with only this one surviving example it ranks amongst the rarest postage stamps
ever created. “The odds that any mail with the stamp would survive are very low, but the fact that this example has survived over 175 years is extraordinary,” remarked H.R. Harmer President and CEO Charles Epting. “It was a product of necessity, and it forces you to reconsider what a postage stamp even is, because we are used to elegant, engraved, and artistic postage stamps. The Boscawen Provisional is primitive and basic. It doesn’t even have the name of the town on it; it only has the postage rate. It has the minimum amount of information to even make it stamp. It may not be a lot to look at aesthetically, but historically it is of the utmost importance. It is, without a doubt, one of the most significant items in all of American philately.”
The value of the Boscawen Postmaster Provisional cannot be measured in merely monetary terms—it is a key piece of Americana and New Hampshire state history. Erivan Haub (1932 to 2018), a German businessman and philanthropist with a love for American history, spent decades curating a collection of United States stamps and postal history that documents the rise of America in the 19th Century and beyond. Mr. Haub preserved some of the most precious artifacts from America’s past, and this coming January the Boscawen Provisional will once again have a chance to make history on the auction block.