Five highlights from The Crown & Dragon stamp auction

Our partners JCAuctions are hosting an exciting auction next week.

You can view all of the more than 700 lots, focusing on GB, British Empire and Commonwealth and China stamps, here.

With low reserves and estimates throughout you should check out the full sale.

You can set your bids with JCAuctions, who’ll manage your buys for you.

Here are five highlights to whet your appetite.

Great Britain 1840 1d black from Plate 2, SG2

Every collection needs a good Penny Black.

So how about an imprimatur from Plate 2?

Plate 2 was used from April 22, 1840 to May 9, 1840 and produced 7,659,120 stamps.

This isn't one of them.

Imprimaturs are test prints, the final proof of the pudding before a plate goes into production. The plates are tested with an imprimatur, then hardened, with heat treatment, so they last longer in production. A second imprimatur - or registration sheet - taken then is the best possible condition reproduction from that plate in its final state.

And that’s what we have here.

The letters TI in the two bottom corners locate the stamp to the bottom row of the plate, four columns in from the right on the 12 by 20 grid.

This stamp has been cut from a sheet by scissors, as all stamps were until the invention and adoption of perforations in the mid-1850s.

It is in superb condition, with four clear margins.

There can only be 23 examples of this item, which is accompanied by a 1985 Royal Philatelic Society certificate & 2007 British Philatelic Association (BPA) certificate.

With a Stanley Gibbons catalogue value of £15,000 you may be pleasantly surprised by the reserve and estimates on this item.

China 1897 1c on 3c deep red 'Red Revenue’, SG88

Red Revenues are among the most recognisable and beloved of all Chinese stamps.

In 2009, a block of four (along with a sheet of 25 5 Candarin stamps) was sold for nearly $18 million in a private transaction.

They’re beautiful, with incredible, intricate design on a wonderful shade of red - symbolic of luck in China, and later of the People’s Republic of China.

Red revenues were printed in the UK, and pressed from tax into postal service with these overprints when stamps ordered from Japan failed to arrive on time.

That adds rarity to their attractive design.

That multimillion dollar example comes from just two sheets over-printed with too-small Chinese characters.

This one is from a later sheet, and is much less rare, but it is a superb example of this emblematic issue of Qing Dynasty China.

With an estimate well below its catalogue value this is an excellent opportunity to snatch up one of the most sought-after stamp issues in world history.

Great Britain 1854 6d Dull lilac (Wmk Reversed), SG59

There’s a magnificent madness to the decision of the British postal authorities to issue embossed stamps from 1847.

Having pioneered a revolutionary system based on fast, efficient, high-volume machine printing they introduced a line of stamps that had to be produced - slowly, laboriously and often inaccurately - one at a time with a hand press.

Collectors now might feel the beautiful finish of this wonderful stamp - dull lilac is a downbeat name for such a lovely shade - was worth it, but the experiment only lasted until 1854.

That’s when this example was stamped out in Somerset House.

The nameless postal worker did a great job, though unfortunately the paper was turned around the wrong way, giving us a reversed watermark that adds to this stamp’s scarcity.

The face value of 6d was enough to send a package to Belgium, and not a throwaway sum in mid-19th century England. That didn’t put off collectors who spotted the gemlike longevity of this design straight away. Many of them were so struck by the lovely shape they trimmed their purchases to the print, making these four, big margins another mark of distinction.

Engraver William Wyon’s work has never looked better, and the price on this BPA-certificated piece is every bit as attractive as the stamp.

CHINA 1943 Huainan Area $1 machine surcharge on 20c on 'Pigeon' blue, SGEC185

If any stamp tells the story of its difficult birth it’s this simple but charming and heroic three-colour print of a pigeon from war-torn China, 1943.

It’s hard to overstate the human misery of the Second Sino Japanese War - called the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in China and now usually considered part of the global Second World War.

By 1943 China’s communist and nationalist forces had backing from the western powers and were driving the Japanese invaders back.

Huainan in Anhui province in the East of China was in 1943 part of the communist-controlled East China Liberated Area. The East China Civil Affairs Bureau was doing its best to bring something like normal life back to the atrocity-ravaged east of China.

And, so this naive and revealing design was produced.

A highly symbolic and historically weighty issue, this stamp comes with certification from The China Stamp Society Expertization Committee.

Is this the stamp that will start your journey into Chinese stamps - one of the most exciting areas of the world philatelic market?

MOROCCO AGENCIES 1948 Spanish Currency 1s brown Olympic Games, SG181a

The London Olympics celebrated on a British stamp in Spanish currency named for a territory that was a French.

What’s going on?

The complexities of colonial rule across a single stamp.

British stamps for use from Morocco were initially issued in Gibraltar, though later issues like this one were printed in London.

The French governing authorities in Morocco granted Spain two thin strips of territory at the very north and south of the country from 1912.

So, King George VI’s face on this celebratory issue for the 1948 Olympics in London was overprinted with Spanish currency and the agency title.

This fascinating issue is in superb, unmounted mint (hinged in margin only) condition, with full original gum. This left-margin, vertical pair shows the sheet number 012386.

Such a specialist use means a small issue, and only a single sheet of 120 of these stamps has been discovered, from which this is is a visually spectacular gem.

There’s a Royal Philatelic Society certificate of authenticity with your purchase, which you’ll see is open to bids far below its catalogue value of £3,000 and up.