We are excited to present our collectors of Egypt with an exclusive opportunity. We have curated a fresh set of stamps, available for a private sale.
This is an exceptional ensemble: corner sheet marginal blocks of four from the significant year of 1926, marking the inauguration of Port Fouad.
The Port Fouad Story
The Kingdom of Egypt was created in 1922, with King Fuad I installed as its first ruler. He was a passionate philatelist and this was evident in the specially prepared Royal misperforated and Cancelled on reverse productions.
New issues began to appear with increasing regularity, many featuring the bust of the King’s Head in a suit or in full Military regalia and sporting the emblematic “tarboosh” hat. In 1926, the King celebrated his 58th birthday with a special high value stamp showing himself as a naval commander, and this was closely followed by a pictorial set of three markings for the International Navigational Congress.
But Fuad was not content to rest there. Before the year was out, he announced that 1,500 examples of his birthday stamp, plus a limited number of the ship stamps, would be overprinted ‘Port Fouad’ to celebrate the inauguration of a new town being built to relieve congestion in Port Said. The 5m brown, 10m red and 15m were printed in sheets of 50 with a gutter separating two panes of 25, with the rarest 50pi value in a sheet of 25.
Word spread like wildfire that these would be a profitable investment, but the officials in charge of stamp production had worked that out already and bought up most of the available stocks themselves. In the post offices there was intense disappointment, which rapidly turned to anger. Riots broke out, and the New York Times reported that five people died in their quest for the stamps.
The ‘Port Fouad’ overprints are now catalogued at between ten and a hundred times the price of the original issues. But the catalogues fail to recount the human cost.
Port Fouad complete mint set
1926 Inauguration of Port Fouad complete mint nh set of all four values in bottom left corner sheet marginal control blocks of four, wonderfully fresh and extremely fine, very few such sets on corner blocks exist, possible the finest in existence, an outstanding showpiece
Provenance: King Carol of Romania
Expertise: Signed Gulio Bolaffi & Yakup Nakri
Price on request