As noted on my home page I am having
difficulties with the site following a change in my hosting package. The
latest torture Network Solutions is inflicting on me is the loss all
images linked to my pages. I aoplogise for the inconvenience while I
sort this out.
Hirschig collection
My grandfather on my mother's side was Adrianus Jacobus Hirschig born around 1873 probably in Amsterdam or Alkmaar. His stamp collection was housed in two successive 'Schaubeks' albums and later transferred to a Stanley Gibbons 'Ideal' album. Later still my mother rehoused parts of it in other albums. In addition there are many loose stamps and in particular very many loose used classic Netherlands 1864 - 1891 stamps.
The collection is in truth neither very notable nor useful (nor incidentally especially large - it is by no means at all an undiscovered 'treasure horde'). In grandfather Adje's hands at least (I'm not sure he actually began the collection) it became just an accumulation of stamps though I do think he started a systematic collection of Dutch postage due stamps which is attractive and most of which I want to keep. Overall there are relatively few complete sets and save for the parts my mother eventually rehoused it was always presented rather untidily (the postage due collection for example was kept in a ruled school exercise book and this by a man who was extremely wealthy!).
There are nevertheless some good classic stamps to be found and I propose over the next few months to sell those parts of it that don't especially appeal to me to raise cash to develop the French and Dutch collections (at least) that I would like to continue and in particular to auction some of it on eBay in small lots.
It is therefore incumbent on me to describe the provenance of the collection in a little more detail such as I know it and of course to deal with the problem of forgeries which is unfortunately not negligible.
First of all you can email me your queries about the collection here at my personal email box (put 'Hirschig' in the subject line in case I ever have to use an anti-spam filter and please don't use the site box which I never look at). I ask you to note that in conformity with eBay etiquette (and I do value their service) I'm not interested in entering into private treaties although naturally I'm also enquiring of one or two leading auction houses. Dutch collectors can email me in Dutch, which I read very easily, but I'm afraid I'm only able to reply in English.
You can view some scans of the Canada holding (as an example) in Adje's 'Ideal' album here (and which also contains some more information about the pricing and timing of the auction lots) as well as download a zipped file of high resolution scans of those pages here. These are the only album pages I plan to scan and the lots themselves will of course have been transferred to stock cards for the auction.
It might be worth mentioning, and what I didn't really appreciate until I started removing stamps from the albums, that most of the classic stamps have flaws and especially thins. I think this might be because some at any rate were glued rather than hinged into their first home and also because one of the Shaubecks albunm was evidently attacked by damp (the family story is that the collection was buried in the back garden during the 1st World War but I can't really see why it should have been as Holland was a neutral power). At any rate I shall describe the flaws in my listings.
Regarding the collection I think it must have been started by Adje's father Dr. Christianus Jacobus Johannes Hirschig who was an Amsterdam physician but also spent many years as a ship doctor in the Dutch royal navy and which would explain the somewhat random worldwide spattering of early stamps. Conceivably also it was begun even earlier by Christianus' father Dr. Antonius Hirschig, a minor luminary in Dutch arts and letters whose iconic poem 'GESPREK TUSSCHEN DE SCHIM VAN MIJN DOCHERTJE, IN HETZELFDE GRAF MET HARE MOEDER RUSTENDE, EN MIJ OP DEN VERJAARDAG MIJNE OUDSTE DOCHTER' ('LINES WRITTEN ON THE OCCASION OF THE POET'S ELDEST DAUGHTER'S RECENT BIRTHDAY RECORDING A CONVERSATION BETWEEN THE POET AND THE SPIRIT OF HIS LITTLE DAUGHTER LIENTJE LYING AT PEACE IN THE SAME GRAVE AS HER MOTHER'S') is currently being translated by me and will be uploaded to this site as soon as the work is done but one can't rush these things.
Dr. Antonius married a couple of his daughters into the patrician De Lange family of Alkmaar thus securing the family fortune (later they were to hit big time with a marriage into the van Vollenhoven family and there was also a direct family connection with the Dutch painter Anton Mauve's family - his mother was a Hirschig but I can no longer find the archive I gleaned this from - from whence springs presumably Adje's brother Anton Hirschig's eventual association with Vincent van Gogh and at least one enterprising internet blogger has Anton as actually murdering Vincent but unfortunately his writing is so inept as not to be worth noticing but I don't entirely pooh-pooh the notion and might have a go at inventing the whole history myself one of these days).
My grandfather's relation with the de Lange family was not only familial but also business. He was a successful civil engineer involved in building sea dykes which became one of the de Lange family businesses and through it Adje became extremely wealthy and eventually able to set up family in a grand period house 'Postwijk' in Baambrugge, Holland where indeed my mother was born and where he remained until 1921 after which he retired to Jersey in the Channel islands eventually to die at Torquay, England in 1947.
Despite this wealth however he did not lavish it by any means on his stamp collection and I am puzzled and at a loss to decide what the attraction really was. In the end I don't think it was anything to do with any real love of fine stamps. Rather I think he just liked to horde stamps and which he often did folded in sales advices from his investment bank - I don't mean to imply he owned it but I think he had about 10% of it at one stage - De Lange (naturally) and De Moraaz of Alkmaar (it did not survive the '30s Depression for long and was eventually incorporated into ANB - I often muse bye the bye that mathematicians interested in modelling theories of evolution could do a lot worse than study the history of banking houses). The images below shows one such little horde of the Germany 1880 3pf. Green SG 39a (all these images are thumbnails - click on them to bring up a larger image).
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and yet despite accumulating hordes such as these sometimes running into hundreds or even thousands of examples and despite possessing a collection containing at least some of the most valued and sought after classic stamps he was still capable of picking up a strip of stamps like the one illustrated below from 'De Goedkoope Postzegelhandel' ('The Cheap Stamp Dealer' - snazzy eh?).
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And what is so strange about this lies not so much in the general tackiness of the set (they are actually gummed to the strip and not hinged) but that he already possessed these stamps in their dozens. It is in fact the 1880 set of which his horde of the 3pf. Green is shown above. However it's possible they were accumulated at different times and at 1880 my grandfather was still only a young boy.
But this strip does bring into relief another question of more serious concern. You can't see it from the strip but look at this close-up below of the 5pf. Purple.
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In the first place of course it's extremely poor and not worth collecting even if you accept heavily cancelled stamps (for myself I can't abide those pseudo cancelled stamps in the corner with full gum). But it seems to me the question does arise whether or not it's an outright fake. Well it's only worth a few pence but stamps weren't forged merely for collectors at that time but also for postal use.
Now look at this - the great classic rarity in Adje's collection which we've always known in the family to be essentially worthless because it's so damaged but still ... (it's the Spain 1851 2r. Red and I show our 6c Black in the same set beside it by way of comparision).
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Well I'm no expert but I've always thought that a fake and I was chatting the other night to an experienced philatelist I had uploaded the image to and that was his opinion as well. It's simply not very attractive compared to its much poorer cousin beside it and it's not a stamp I propose to put on eBay but it will eventually go into an alternative collection of curiousities along with the 'cheap stamp dealer' strip above I am planning (unless of course I get an expert opinion that it's OK but needless to say I'm not prepared to chance £500 or so on an expertising certificate for this).
It is troubling this question of fakes. Consider this single stamp from the Ionian islands (it's the 1859 2d Red SG 3 used and currently priced by SG at £180).
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Again it's rather poor and faded and given that I can't think of much of a reason for why it's there (my great-grandfather sailed the oceans of the world and not the Mediterranean sea) my first thought has to be that it's fake as well and indeed taking it out of the album and noting its newsprint quality paper and the lack of a watermark this is another stamp that will be joining the goedkoope curiousities in Adje's exercise book and not finding its way onto eBay even though I do quite like the head and don't find it quite as unattractive as the 2r. Red above.
So I shall try to be sensible about forgeries for both our sakes and in any case certainly operate a fair 'returns' policy.
Each lot will come tastefully labelled with a genuine W. H. Smiths sticker certifying the lot as provenance the Hirschig collection and mentioning my vanity gutsite for good measure you won't be able to peel off so easily (but on the cellophane and not the stamps, stupid - relax). I did think about wrapping them in one of Adje's crappy bank (been there, done that, it sucks) advice notes but I don't have enough. I might put up a few at the end for charity if the auction is successful.
I hope these remarks are useful. Do email if you like and I shall update this page's parent page with details of such lots I've listed on eBay as time passes. I'm new to eBay so I'm starting with some easy lots to work my way in.
Finally, in response to several email enquiries, I haven't decided yet whether to offer what is left of the Great Britain collection (it was cherry-picked during the 1956 Suez crisis when the collection was impounded in Egypt). The few remaining British colonials will be offered however.
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