Brunei Stamps Collection 1906

YES!!!!! It took me a few months but I finally managed to get the entire 1906 set. For this who do not know, the 1906 set is the very first official stamps issued by the Brunei postal authorities. There was an early 1895 set which was done by a private entrepreneur who got the right to sell the stamps outside Brunei in exchange for running a postal service (it went defunct in about 1902/03). However not all philatelist accepted that as an official set as it was not done by the postal authorities.

This particular collection is worth some RM$2,400 for mint and about a thousand more for used stamps. Up to yesterday, I had 10 of the 12 stamps. I could not find the 5c and $1 stamps. So when an entire set came up I had to purchase the entire set just to get the two missing stamps. I ended up paying about US$350 for the entire set. The difficulty is that this set was seen as a temporary replacement stamps for the ones which was issued in 1907. So only limited stamps were available. For instance the $1 stamp - only about 2,000 were printed. So trying to assemble the entire collection was very very hard.

Sultan Hashim handed over the general administration of the State to a British Resident on 2nd January 1906. Plans were made for a complete postal service, with the official inauguration of this service on the 11th October 1906. New stamps were ordered from the Crown Agents and, pending their arrival, surplus stocks of the Labuan Crown issue were overprinted and surcharged by the Government Printers in Singapore.