Lot 9 Mark's Stamp Company 1904 World Stamp Catalogue - Fascinating Read - Toronto's Early Stamp Wholesalers

One of Toronto’s earliest and most successful stamp businesses was Marks Stamp Company, located on Euclid Ave in the city. If you have collected Canada for a long time, you will no doubt be familiar with the covers that they sent to customers, franked oftentimes with stamps used more than 10 or 20 years out of date.
This lot is their 1904-1905 worldwide stamp price list. A look inside reveals that these were stamp wholesalers, advertising their stamps in quantities of 1, 10, 100 and 1000. They cover the entire world in 30 pages, with the last 9 pages advertising packets and job lots. As expected, you will find a lot of stamps that are thousands of dollars today, priced at mere pennies in 1904. What is surprising to me though, are the stamps that were relatively expensive back in the day, compared to how little they have appreciated since. For example, in the price list you can find 100 5c blue Nova Scotia stamps in used condition for $12.50, which was a lot of money. To put in perspective, 10 top quality mint Jubilee short sets to the 50c was $15 in the same list. Those sets today would have a catalogue value of over $10,000 in VF condition compared with less than $1,000 for the 5c blue Nova Scotia stamps.
So, reading this catalogue kind of hammers home the age old truth that the best way to invest in stamps is to buy those stamps in top quality that are scarce, without spending too much on very rare stamps that have a much thinner market.
Another interesting takeaway from this catalogue concerns the discussion of grading at the front – very vague and loose descriptions of quality, but at the same time centering is mentioned as a factor distinguishing the top grade from the rest. This is interesting, because it proves that the concept of centering is not new – it has been around for 120 years now. It’s just that it wasn’t considered as important then.
The first page, being the cover has separated, but otherwise the catalogue is intact, though there are some holes in a few pages and the usual edge creases and tears that are to be expected of what is essentially a 120 year old brochure.
Our best estimate of the value as a historical item is $25.