The British Colonial Stamps of North Borneo

The Early Stamps of North Borneo

As a beginner collector, collecting North Borneo stamps would be not so interesting since numerous forgery exist.

In the North Borneo stamps album,  there were plenty of forgery stamps, most of them unused condition which were available more a decade, selling as mint stamps. 

Myla Collection is a family stamp collections, we collect numerous genuine stamps as well as forgery. We develop a philatelic blogspot, whatsoever input in this blogspot most of stamp images are from our collection.

Producing forgery stamps were not so easy and a lot of effort had been done to enhacing a quality forgery stamp, especially to copyright 100% similar to the original. We called them as “Less People Travel-By”,  acquires expertise & technology to create imitation or forged stamps.

Due to unwatermark, two very famous forgeries early stamps of North Borneo were attributed to Rene Careme of Paris and Francois Fournier of Geneva. The forgeries stamps were mostly with different shades of colour. The paper was thicker and perforation was inconsistent and variable. However, some of them were very well printed would be identified by Philatelist expert.

In this event, most of the North Borneo stamps belongs to Myla Collection were source from local Sellers and few were brought from the international Sellers.

The North Borneo stamp begun in 1883 illustrating Coat of Arms, perforate, unwatermark, it is comprised of Three face values of 2 cents, 4 cents and 8 cents, trilingual consists of English, Arabic and Chinese. These stamps were issued by The British North Borneo Company, where the Capital was Jesselton (Kota Kinabalu).

1883 North Borneo 2 Cents Scott #1 Brown, Coat of Arm, Unwmk., Lithography, Perf. 12, MNH, Genuine & Elusive stamps, CV $30 (MNH) & $60 (Used)

1886 North Borneo 1/2 Cent Scott #25 Rose, Coat of Arm, Unwmk., Lithography, Perf. 14, MNH, Genuine

1886 North Borneo 1 cent Scott #26 Orange, Coat of Arm, Unwmk., Lithography, Perf. 14, MNH, Genuine

1886 North Borneo 1 cent Scott #27 Brown, Coat of Arm, Unwmk., Lithography, Perf. 14, MNH, Genuine

1887 North Borneo 1/2 cent Scott #35 Magenta, Coat of Arm, Unwmk., Lithography, Perf. 14, MNH, Genuine- dot between ‘½’ and ‘cent’ & upper right Chinese character is not connected at right

1887 North Borneo 1 cent Scott #36 Orange, Coat of Arm, Unwmk., Lithography, Perf. 14, MNH, Genuine

1887 North Borneo 2 cents Scott #37 Red Brown, Coat of Arm, Unwmk., Lithography, Perf. 14, MNH, Genuine

1887 North Borneo 3 cents Scott #38 Violet, Coat of Arm, Unwmk., Lithography, Perf. 14, MNH, Genuine

1887 North Borneo 4 cents Scott #39 Rose, Coat of Arm, Unwmk., Lithography, Perf. 11 _1/2, MNH, Forgery

1887 North Borneo 5 cents Scott #40 Slate, Coat of Arm, Unwmk., Lithography, Perf. 11 _1/2, MNH, Forgery

1892 North Borneo 6 cents Scott #41 Lake, Coat of Arm, Unwmk., Lithography, Perf. 14, MNH, Forgery

1887 North Borneo 8 cents Scott #42 Green, Coat of Arm, Unwmk., Lithography, Perf. 11 _1/2, MNH, Forgery

1887 North Borneo 8 cents Scott #42a Green, Coat of Arm, Unwmk., Lithography, Imperf. , MNH, Forgery

1887 North Borneo 10 cents Scott #43 Blue, Coat of Arm, Unwmk., Lithography, Perf. 11 _1/2, MNH, Forgery

1892 North Borneo 1 cent on 5 cents Scott #57 Slate, Coat of Arm, Unwmk., Lithography, Perf. 14, MNH, Genuine, CV$8.00

Basing on Scott Catalogue, the C.V for numerous early stamps of North Borneo are relatively very low, whereas there a lot of stamps in the market could be classified as forgery or fake.  As a stamp collector, there are no much valuable that we could gain although it was original stamp. Hence, before you collecting North Borneo stamps, you should ask yourself for the outcome.