U.S. & Worldwide Stamps & Postal History

1871-1900 collection formed by Baron Maejima Hisoka (1835-1919, who founded the Japanese postal service and is known as their "Father of the Postal System". As a Meiji bureaucrat, he was sent to England in 1870 to study the workings of the General Post Office, and upon his return to Japan in 1871, his proposals for the creation of a similar system in Japan were quickly approved. The Japanese post office began operation in April 1871 with a daily service linking Tokyo with Osaka, with 65 post offices in between. Baron Maejima personally coined the Japanese word for postage stamp (kitte). In 1874, Maejima hired a foreign advisor, Samuel M. Bryan, to negotiate a postal treaty with the United States, and to assist in the admission of Japan into the Universal Postal Union in 1877. By the time Maejima retired in 1881, the Japanese postal system had expanded to 5,099 post offices and was continuing to grow. He was honored on several Japanese postage stamps). The album includes a selection of 60 mostly unused early Japanese stamps (1/86) all stuck down to pages, also 32 unused stationery cards, entire envelopes and wrappers (this section alone is stated to catalogue Yen 3,450,000 $32,300), plus unused Lombardy-Venetia, Belgium, Bermuda, Hawaii, South Africa and other British Colonies, also Netherlands, Guatemala, Uruguay and others, strength in postal stationery, with the Baron's personal notations and seal. A wonderful historical item
Estimate: $15000