Estate Planning for Philatelists
With a number of scientific firsts to her name, including the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize, Marie Curie is a worthy subject for a stamp, as Chris West explains.
Stamp Collector caught-up with Stephanie Bradley of Yorkshire-based legal firm Ramsdens Solicitors to find out how she became involved in the philatelic market and how she helps stamp collectors with specialised collector wills. Stephanie is an associate at Ramsdens, who has worked for the law firm for nearly 20 years, specialising in wills, probate, estates and related legal work. Stephanie is a regular at York Stamp Fair and other philatelic events throughout the year.
How did you become involved in looking after collectors and collector wills?
I have worked at Ramsdens Solicitors for 19 years and worked alongside the late Mike Roberts, who was a keen and very experienced philatelist. Mike spotted a gap in the market for collectors many years ago and with his professional career as a will writing solicitor found a rather clever way of fusing together his work and hobby. This led to participating in stamps fairs and society meetings, as well as the York Stamp Fair to promote this unique service to stamp collectors. I attended many events and shows with Mike over the years, including London 2010 and 2020 (2022), and over the years have built up a very good knowledge and understanding of the philatelic world. This has led to developing relationships with collectors and related organisations in the philatelic industry, and I can now proudly offer the same services as Mike and continue this legacy in loving memory to him.
Why should collectors think about what happens to their collections after they are gone?
We don’t like to think about leaving our loved ones behind or what would happen upon our death. I appreciate these things are difficult to talk about sometimes and can often feel overwhelming and upsetting. However, as a collector you will no doubt have devoted a significant amount of time creating a valuable and meaningful collection to you, and without any expressed wishes to your loved ones, they may be lost in what to do when confronted with the unfamiliar world of philately! This means they could donate your collection, or even sell them for pennies on the dollar, when the collection holds a much more significant sentimental and/or monetary value.
My top tips for collectors would be to create specific wishes on what you would like to happen to the collection you have accumulated. Do you want them to go to a museum for preservation, or to your local society to be shared among fellow collectors. Do you want them to be sold and the proceeds distributed to certain people in your estate? Should the sale be a local auction or with a larger auction house that has access to the international market? You can choose more than one path, but it should be clear in your will and in the instructions you leave behind.
I would also encourage all collectors to have a detailed schedule of their collection. You may know what you have, however, would your loved ones? This could include any specific detail of the items that your family would need to know, for example is it one of a kind, its rarity, any expert certificates or special features.
The saddest situations always involve a collection left to an heir who knows little about the hobby and has even less interest in continuing with the collection, so any instructions you can leave behind will make lighter work for your loved ones. Do not let your passion and all your hard work go to waste!
What can collectors do to ensure their collections are valued correctly once they are gone?
If you would like your collection to be sold upon death, I would recommend speaking to a dealer or auction house that may be able to facilitate that sale for your loved ones. There is a vast number of auction houses who can offer a high-level of service, and your family may not be familiar with them or know how to contact them after you’re gone, so again it would be useful to leave this information behind. All of which can be included within your will.
Does it cost a lot to add something about a collection into a will?
To include specific instructions about your stamp collection in a will does not inflate the cost of preparing and finalising a will. On average, a will of this nature would cost around £300plus, excluding VAT, depending upon other instructions on your remaining estate. However, a personalised quote can be provided to you upon receiving instructions.
How would a solicitor know about the value of stamps? How is the monetary value of a collection calculated?
As solicitors, we do not present ourselves as valuers of philatelic collections and rely on specialists to help with the valuation of collections for probate purposes. We do, however, pride ourselves on the relationships we have built with reputable auctioneers over the years and have a good
knowledge and understanding as to who may be best placed to value a certain area and would draw upon their field of expertise to help and assist in this regard.
What other advice would you give to collectors wanting to plan for the future?
Collections can take years to create, sometimes even a lifetime. Whilst it’s never fun to think about the future and growing old, some good organisation and pre-planning can preserve the integrity of your collection for years to come. Also, don’t just think about what would happen upon your death. If a collector becomes mentally incapacitated, then their collection may need to be sold to raise funds for any care needs. The need to sell your collection could be for many reasons, and if I learnt one thing from Mike Roberts, it was that collectors should always have the pleasure and excitement of selling their own collections, after all, it’s their pride and joy!
The next step?
Ramsdens Solicitors would be more than happy to help you plan for the future and can offer a free no obligation consultation to discuss these topics further. We have numerous offices in and around Yorkshire, and I regularly attend stamp shows where we could arrange to meet, or even offer you a home visit at no additional cost. As a loyal supporter of Stamp Collector magazine, we are offering all subscribers a 15% discount on our will writing services.
Contact Stephanie
Bradley on 01484
848986 or by email (stephanie. bradley@ ramsdens.co.uk) for further information or an informal philately chat.
Following on from an in-depth guide to ‘Philatelic Conservation’ in last month’s edition of Stamp Collector, this time we tackle the very important but often avoided topic of what happens to your stamp collection after you are gone.
The woman on this stamp has an extraordinary number of ‘firsts’ to her name. She was the first female to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win the prize twice (and is still the only person to win two prizes in different scientific disciplines: physics and chemistry), and the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris in an era when there wasn’t so much a glass ceiling in academia as a reinforced concrete one.
Marie Curie was born Maria Skłodowska in 1867 in Warsaw, then part of the Russian Empire. Her father, a maths teacher, was denied promotion because of his anti-russian views. Her mother died when she was ten. She was a bright pupil, but she was not allowed to go to university because she was female.
Maria did not let adversity stop her. She enrolled in the clandestine ‘Flying University’, set up for excluded women, which met to hear lectures at the homes of students or the teachers, regularly changing locations to avoid the attentions of the police. Teachers faced arrest: undaunted by this, she later joined their ranks. In 1891, she moved to France and signed up for the University of Paris, tutoring to pay her way. She met fellow-scientist Pierre Curie in 1894, and they were married the next year. Her wedding dress was a lab coat because she didn’t have another outfit.
The mid-1890s were a time of new discoveries, and new questions, in physics. X-rays were discovered in 1895. In 1896,
Henri Becquerel noticed rays emerging from a sample of uranium (he left the sample on a photographic plate, which became fogged). What were these? How did they come about?
The Curies threw themselves into research – led by Marie. To learn more, they had to search for other elements with this property, which she named ‘radioactivity’. Working in a ramshackle laboratory, they discovered polonium (which she named after her home country), then radium. The latter became a media sensation, with compounds containing the new element suddenly trumpeted as magic solutions for anything from toothpaste to cancer treatment. The
Curies became celebrities – something she loathed. They did not become rich, as they had not patented their ideas, preferring to share them with the scientific community.
Pierre was killed in a street accident in 1906. Marie was devasted but continued with her work to refine and investigate radium.
During World War I, she pioneered the use of X-rays in military hospitals. ‘Petites Curies’, mobile radiology units, were driven to all the major battlefields by Marie herself or volunteers she had trained.
It was only later that all this exposure to radiation caught up with her. She died in 1934, aged 66. Even in death she notched up another ‘first’, becoming the first woman to be buried in Paris’ secular cathedral, the Panthéon (the first on merit, anyway: the very first was the wife of a famous chemist).
Her name is now associated with the charity that supports the terminally ill. The Marie Curie cancer hospital had been founded in St John’s Wood in 1929 but was destroyed by a bomb in 1944. A group of volunteers sought to find another way of perpetuating her name and alighted on the idea of palliative care for cancer sufferers. In the 1990s, the charity expanded its work and now cares for people with all kinds of illness.
This stamp was issued in 1971 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of her second Nobel Prize (Figure 1). It is part of a longrunning series of Swedish issues celebrating prizewinners that started in 1961 and continued annually to the end of the century.
The first issue of French stamps hit the post office counters 175 years ago. The design, famous and loved as ‘Cérès’, bears witness to an eventful period in history. As the Musée de La Poste in Paris demonstrated in an exhibition, the primary aim at the time from a postal history perspective was to standardise the price of postal mail. Before 1849, the French only received an average of three letters per year. The postal rates were complicated, and the graduated prices for a letter were sometimes very high, with the recipient paying the postage. Up to 40km, a tax of 20 centimes was charged for a letter weighing less than 7½g. If the distance was more than 900km, the same letter cost six times as much, one franc and 10 centimes.
WRITER BECOMES POSTMASTER GENERAL
The government of the Second French Republic, founded on 25 February 1848, endeavoured to offer the population concrete improvements to their living conditions. This was to include a postal reform, initiated by the writer Étienne Arago (1802–92), who became Postmaster General as a result of the barricade battles (Figure 1). On 24 February 1848, the day of Louis-philippe’s abdication, he succeeded in seizing the Hôtel des Postes and taking the post of director. His brother, François, was also represented in the provisional government of the Republic, and their father, Bonaventure Arago, had proved himself as director of the mint in Perpignan. Étienne Arago was thus confirmed in his position as director general of the postal service.
During his brief term of office until his resignation in November 1848, the use of postage stamps was decided and introduced.
At the same time, he realised plans to significantly reduce the price of letters by standardising them by weight throughout the country, regardless of distance.
FOR FRANCE, CORSICA, ALGERIA
A poster notice from the postal administration to the public, implementing the decree of 16 December 1848, stated that the new postal tax would be coming into effect on 1 January 1849, with any letter circulating from office to office throughout France, Corsica and Algeria taxed at 20 centimes for a letter weighing up to 7½g, 40 centimes for those over 7½g and up to 15g and 1 franc for those over 15g and up to 100g (Figure 2). Letters or parcels weighing more than 100g were charged an additional fee of one franc per 100g or fraction thereof. Chargé and registered letters cost double the postage. They had to be franked, while mail items could still continue to be sent at the recipient’s expense.
THREE VALUES PLANNED
To make it easier for the public to frank ordinary letters without delay, from 25 December the administration promised to have stamps (estampilles) or postage stamps (timbres-postes) available, sold at the price of 20 and 40 centimes as well as 1 franc in all post offices and also by postmen on duty. This made it possible for senders to frank letters themselves and then drop them in the letterbox without any further formalities.
With regard to the first stamps, Director General Étienne Arago of the Republic’s postal service, explained that the three denominations would only differ in colour. They would be gummed on the back, and the sender had to stick them, as far as possible, in the right-hand
corner of the letter. The stamps would be printed in sheets of 300 stamps.
Postal directors and postmen on duty were obliged to keep sufficient stamps on hand to fulfill any demand from the public. In addition, all publicans or private individuals would be prohibited from interfering in the sale of stamps. However, these provisions did not to come into force until 1 January 1849.
TOO SHORT FOR REALISATION
The postal plans for the new rate structure were thus finalised. However, the realisation of the planned stamps soon reached the limits of what was feasible in practice. After the law was passed in August 1848, only four months remained for production. And a suitable self-portrayal of the new republic for the country’s first postage stamps still had to be created.
Thus began a veritable race against time, as journalist Annette Apaire described the development of the stamp motif in a special exhibition to mark the anniversary of the first issue: ‘The image of the state has indeed just found a new medium in the stamp. It is regarded as a kind of currency, its production is the responsibility of the Ministry of Finance, which supervises the postal system and regulates the details of its execution: It must be rectangular, printed in colour, depict the Republic, bear the number of its value, the designation “Postes” and the words “République française”.’
The Ministry of Finance commissioned the state mint (Monnaie de Paris) with the task. The Commission for Coins and Medals became responsible, as did the engraver general Jacques-jean Barre (1793–1855) and his son Albert Désiré Barre (1818–78), who was appointed his successor in 1855
(Figures 3).
ARETHUSA BECOMES CÉRÈS
But how should the Second Republic be depicted? Initially, a head of freedom had been considered, but the profile of the woman with the Phrygian cap that circulated on the large banknotes at the time brought back memories that were too bloody. As an admirer of Greek statues and drawings that his son had brought back from the Aegean islands, Barre’s first sketches were of a head crowned with oak leaves.
Further sketches showed a profile facing left, inspired by the nymph Arethusa, also known as Persephone, who once adorned several ancient coins from Syracuse (Figure 4). The city-state on the south-east coast of Sicily, founded by the Greeks, had experienced a phase of democracy with a powerful and popular assembly in its heyday between 466 and 405 BC, and was acceptable as a historical model.
While Arethusa, the legendary
patron saint of Syracuse, wears her hair pinned up with earrings and a pearl necklace, surrounded by dolphins on the tetradrachms, the Barres gave her a drooping hairstyle and dispensed with jewellery. A wreath of wheat ears, grapevines and olive branches was all that was needed to crown her as ‘Cérès’, the goddess of fertility, symbolising a peaceful France characterised by agriculture.
They set the head profile in a central medallion with a pearl border, surrounded by a rectangular frame with vertical wavy lines as a background. The state designation ‘REPUB . FRANC.’ was abbreviated at the top, the denomination was added at the bottom as a value bar to the left and right and ‘POSTES’ was inserted in the centre.
The final version was submitted to the Mint Commission and approved for execution with the consent of the Minister of Finance on 15 September 1848.
The original stamp die for the postage was presented on 18 October 1848. Exactly which detail of the ‘Cérès’ was drawn and engraved by father or son Barre will probably forever remain a mystery.
PREMIERE IN BLACK
At this point, it became clear that it would not be possible to produce enough of the three stamps in time for the beginning of the following year.
Perkins, Bacon & Co. in London, the producers of the world’s first stamps, had been visited and asked for an estimate. They could supply each sheet of 240 intaglio stamps for one franc. However, the delivery time was to be six months, long after the specified first day at the beginning of 1849. So, the decision was made in favour of production at the Paris mint (Monnaie de Paris), which also had experience in banknote printing besides their coin production.
In addition, due to time pressure, it was decided to have the smallest denomination of 20 centimes initially printed, and in the cheapest black colour. The only security measure against counterfeiting was a coating on special paper from Lacroix by the Paris printing company Pinard.
On 30 November 1848, printer Anatole Auguste Hulot (1811–91) delivered the first typographic printing plate in copper for 150 stamps of 20 centimes, followed by two more on 5 and 17 December. To print 300 stamps exactly the same way with a single stroke of the hand press, Barre commissioned the printer Lacrampe, who set up his own printing shop for the new postage stamps inside the Paris mint.
Taking into account the transport times to post offices in the most remote regions of France, there were only 20 days left to produce the initial stock of 25 to 30 million stamps, so printing was carried out around the clock.
From Monday, 1 January 1849, the black
20 centimes stamp was offered for sale in all post offices in France (Figures 5–6); the 1 franc red followed in various shades between January and December. Some covers appear to date from as early as 31 December 1848; there are also reports of the oldest known date of use of that day being cancelled in Algiers – was this a premature use or postmark errors if the date had not been changed after New Year’s Eve?
In total, the dark grey to deep black 20c achieved a high circulation of around 41.7 million. More than ten million remained unsold after the end of sales in October 1850 and ended up in the incinerator.
Further printings were produced in a blue colour after 22 February 1849 to make the cancellations easier to recognise and to prevent the improper removal of stamps for reuse. A problem also known from Britain’s Penny Black, which led to the change from black to red Maltese cross cancellations, and then to the stamp’s colour change to a Penny Red.
However, France’s blue 20c was not issued at all due to a change in the rate (Figure 7). Some were issued on a trial basis with a red overprint as a 25 centimes value; the first overprints known in classic philately. Both versions were almost completely destroyed, as were the first printings of the 40 centimes in light blue instead of orange (Figure 8).
MYSTERIOUS INVERTED HEADS AND REPRINTS
The 10 centimes ochre, 15 centimes green, 25 centimes blue and 40 centimes orange completed the first French ‘Cérès’ set between February and July 1850 (Figure 9).
A mystery, the reason for which remains unknown, is the reverse printing of the first issues, known as tête-bêche, when stamp clichés were inserted upside down in different positions on the printing plates
(Figure 10). This is certainly not a coincidence – possibly a secret measure against forgeries of complete sheets? With the exception of the 40 centimes, reverse pairs or larger units with one ‘head down’ are known of all values. Some of these are extremely rare philatelic treasures with six-figure quotations, while pairs of the black 20 centimes that are not so beautifully preserved occasionally appear at an affordable level.
To fulfill Sir Rowland Hill’s request for specimens of France’s first issue for his archive, official reprints were produced in 1862 in small quantities from all values with the original printing plates. At that time, the originals were long out of circulation and not even full sheets available in the archives in Paris.
To finish, I’ve included a tricolour franking of the first issue sent from Cognac on 12 October 1852 to New Orleans in the USA (Figure 12).