Deserted isle boasts of $80M stamps

Press, 1 September 1977, Page 17

Deserted isle boasts of $80M stamps

American collectors have rushed to buy up the world’s first 23-carat gold postage stamps, advertised as issued by “the Government of Staffa.” The demand from wealthy investors has been so great that “the Staffa Postal Authority" has minted a colossal SBOM worth of the gold stamps, each one “a philatelic treasure, steeped in 11 centuries of tradition.” In fact, the gold stamp is steeped in controversy. Staffa is an uninhabited Scottish island, less than a mile long, lying off Mull. It has no post office, no airport to handle traffic bearing Staffa's air-mail stamps, and no government. The la«t inhabitant rowed awav in 1798. abandoning it to the puffins and sheep.

The Laird of Staffa, Alastair de Watteville, told the “Sunday Times." “We do have one letterbox on the island, but as far as I can remember we haven’t emptied that since about 1975.” In America, however, the trade in Staffa gold stamps is booming. A glossv brochure distributed bv the Calhoun Collectors Society.of Minneapolis exhorts investors to buy: “The stamps are heirlooms the moment thev are made, from the fabled island, a milestone in the annals of philately. The Government of Staffa. Scotland, honours in

stamps with a surface of 23 carat gold the major gold nations of the world.” The whole venture is the inspiration of Clive Feigenbaum, an English entrepreneur who lives in Harrow and runs the London and New York Stamp Company and G. F. Rapkin, a stamp album firm.

He specialises in helping small islands to produce and market stamps and labels, which have brought him into conflict with many in the philatelic world. Around the British coast about 15 islands occasionally issue stamplike labels, aimed mainly at the tourist trade. In the case of Staffa, Feigenbaum began producing stamps under an agreement signed with the previous Laird’s mother.

Since then there has been a never-ending flow of paper stamps. Nothing has gone uncommemorated

— nudes, birds, boy scouts, flowers, and even Winston Churchill, who shared his stamp with a United States lunar spacemodule. In 1972, Alastair de Watteville, who lives in Chichester, became the Laird. He bought Staffa when he saw it advertised by an estate agent. The former owner, an army chaplain, had become disillusioned after his plans to build a $1.75M hotel-and-chalet complex on the island had been thrown

out by the Scottish Secretary of State.

De Watteville and Feigenbaum appear to disagree about how Staffa’s self-styled postal authority has operated since. The Laird says he knew nothing about the gold stamps until he read of them in an American magazine. About 18 month ago, he says, Feigenbaum sent him a few and asked him to stick them on some letters. He did this and posted them in Mull.

De Watteville emphatically denies ever signing a contract authorising Calhoun’s of Minneapolis to use his signature or a facsimile in selling the stamps. Calhoun's president, Stafford Calvin, says his firm obtained the Laird’s signature from Feigenbaum.

And Feigenbaum says: “I really cannot remember how Calhoun’s got the Laird’s signature. It wasn’t in the contract because it didn’t crop up at the time. The Laird agreed verbally, and in other ways. Alaistair de Watteville is a gentleman.”

The Laird is clearly annoyed by Feigenbaum’s activities: “I’m rather cheesed off, I may say, at not getting a slice of the action. None Of the SBOM is coming my way.” De Watteville says he receives small quarterly payments from Feigenbaum, in line with a con-

tract signed in December, 1975. Early this year the Laird sent some of the paper stamps to the British Post Office and three months ago heard that it frowned upon the use of the words “postage" and “airmail” On the stamps. “The paper stamps are now in abeyance and have been since then. But we haven’t been selling the stamps up here since 1975.” he says. But from whose imagination did the Government of Staffa spring? Stafford Calvin, of Calhoun’s says: “That must be an early brochure before we knew too much about Staffa.” There is no doubt, however, about the runaway success of the stamps. More than 200 individual designs have been produced by Feigenbaum, each selling at $20.50 in limited editions of 20,00040,000 commemorating anything from the American Bicentenary to Mother’s Day. Two sets have sold out, netting SI4M.

Calhoun’s places a heavy emphasis on the philatelic value of the stamps, which is essential if they are to be prized by collectors. The stamps, it says, “could be used to mail a package to the mainland.”

The Laird, however, says the gold stamps have never been sold on the island: "The price of them was so high in relation to the price of a boat fare."

Staffa’s Royal Silver

Wedding issue—lent by Stirling and Company, Ltd.

Fares to Staffa are $15.5, and the gold stamps’ face value is $10.2.

The claim that they are genuine postage stamps is considered laughable by most philatelic authorities. The British Philatelic Federation’s secretary, Herbert Grimsey, says: “They have absolutely no validity as postage stamps. They are gimmicks.” Stanley Gibbons describe Staffa stamps in their latest catalogue as “tourist souvenir labels.” Last week in London one stamp dealer was selling job lots of 168 Staffa stamps, face value $47, for only sl2.—By Rob Rohrer, “Sunday Times,” London.