Lot 3318
Bermuda 1854 Perot Provisional, First Type, 1d red on bluish wove (X2A), the magnificent octagonal example with large margins, on flap of 1855 (16 Apr.) folded letter from the banker N.T. Butterfield of Hamilton to B. Wilson Higgs of St. Georges. SG O4.
SG £275,000 ($350,620)
CONSIDERED TO BE THE FINEST EXAMPLE OF A PEROT FIRST ISSUE STAMP.
Provenance: Ferrary, Burrus, Tomasini and Kapiloff
The Bermuda postmaster provisionals have been surrounded by considerable mystique and are the stuff of philatelic legend. Commencing in 1818, the local postmasters in Bermuda were permitted to retain for themselves the postage on inland letters (which was reduced to 1d per ounce in 1842, with the requirement that the postage be prepaid). During the day, customers could hand their letters to the postmaster with cash for the postage charge. After hours the post office provided slot through which customers could deposit their letters, along with cash for the requisite postage charge. However, it happened that sometimes the postmaster would discover more letters having been deposited than the corresponding cash for postal charges, with there being no way to ascribe which letters were unpaid. To remedy this situation, W.B. Perot, the Postmaster at Hamilton, issued adhesive stamps for prepayment of postage for letters posted when the post office was closed. These stamps were made from the current post office datestamp, from which the day and month plugs were removed, and on which he wrote "one penny" above the year date and his signature below it. The initial stamps, dated 1848 and 1849, were in black, but the black ink used by the Hamilton Post Office was replaced by red in May 1849. The later first-type provisionals dated 1853, 1854 and 1856 are accordingly in red. In addition, a second type of provisional, employing the Crowned Circle handstamp, was used in Hamilton in 1861 and at St. Georges from 1860.
A total of 11 examples of the first-type Perot postmaster provisionals are recorded, of which only two 1854-dated examples (on bluish wove) are known, the example offered here and one in the Royal Collection. It is likewise one of only two examples on cover, with the other (ex Sir Henry Tucker) bearing a repaired (albeit skillfully) stamp on the reverse of a folded letter from N.T. Butterfield to Henry E. Higgs of St. Georges. This example was also the first Perot postmaster provisional to be discovered, when in 1897 it was sent to Alfred Smith, the Bath, England stamp dealer, who described it in his Monthly Circular for July 1897. One of the pre-eminent pieces in Philately.
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