Mearis' City Despatch Post, Baltimore Md., 1c-2c Black on Gray, Se-Tenant (103L3a). Horizontal pair, Kelly Types F-A, Positions 3-4 in our plating analysis (Golden Sale 817) as well as the Lyons plating analysis (Penny Post Jul. 2020), original gum, each stamp initialed "MWM", large margins to just touched at left ornaments, few minute pinholes

EXTREMELY FINE. ONE OF THREE RECORDED SE-TENANT PAIRS OF MEARIS' CITY DESPATCH POST STAMP -- TWO OF WHICH ARE AVAILABLE TO COLLECTORS -- THIS BEING THE UNIQUE EXAMPLE OF 103L3a WITH "POST" IN SMALLER OUTLINE LETTERS.

In the Kelly CCP series and other articles on Baltimore locals, as well as past auction catalogues, the se-tenant pairs offered in this sale (this and the following lot) have always been described as the only two known. Although they are the only two pairs available to collectors, there is an overlooked pair in the Tapling collection at the British Library. In fact, the Tapling pair is a vital key to reconstructing the Mearis' City Despatch Post plate, because it fits between the two pairs offered here. The three pairs were originally joined together in a block of six.

According to information conveyed by George Sloane to Denwood Kelly, the two ex-Caspary pairs (lots 1796 and 1797 in this sale) were found by Caspary in the "junk box" of a Parisian dealer and acquired for a nominal price. The block had to have been divided sometime prior to or between 1881 and 1891, the period in which Thomas K. Tapling was active in building his worldwide collection (he died in 1891, according to Dr. Stanley M. Bierman's The World's Greatest Stamp Collectors). The block was probably sent to Europe and divided there, with one pair going to Tapling. Why Tapling's contemporary, Ferrary, never picked up the two remaining pairs, we cannot guess. Nor is it clear how one pair from the block could be placed with Tapling, while the other two wound up in a dealer's miscellany.

Illustrated in Kelly's CCP series (Vol. 50, No. 3, p. 150) and the Lyons Penny Post article (Jul. 2020) . Ex Caspary, Boker and Golden. With 1999 P.F. certificate

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