100-Year-O1d Water Village Stamps
By Ignatius Stephen

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Bandar Seri Begawan - A 61 -year-old Bruneian businessman thinks he holds a unique collector's item of Brunei stamps depicting the Water Village a hundred years ago.

JB lqbal Singh Babra, who collects Brunei and North Borneo stamps, has been interested in philately and astronomy for over 50 years. He is also a member of Royal Philatelic Society London.

He said regular definitive stamp sets were issued on February 26, 1907, showing the Brunei Water Village and canoe view during the reign of Sultan Mohamed Jamalul Alam, the 26th ruler of Brunei, The stamps were engraved and printed from recess plates producing sheets of 60 stamps in five horizontal rows of 12. The stamps, totalling $2.38, were printed in bi-colour. They were in the denominations of one cent, two cents, three cents, four cents, five cents, eight cents, 10 cents, 25 cents, 30 cents, 50 cents.

They were line-perforated in 14x14 dimensions. All the stamps were printed on Multi Crown CA Watermark Paper in England by Thomas De La Rue & Co (Now, the company has ceased all stamp printing activities and concentrates on currency printing.)

Brunei was not a member of Universal Postal Union in 1907 but there was enough UPU pressure to print the stamps in line with its colour code.

This design of a river view and canoe, with many changes in colours, watermarks and perforations continued till 1952, for almost 50 years, when there were several examples of reverse and inverted watermarks, Mr Singh said.

There are colour proofs of one cent stamps in the issued colours of all the denominations with same watermark on Crown CA paper, ungummed and imperforated.

Specimen copies in circulation in February 1907 were overprinted in black. For reference, the market price for the mint set of 1 1 values of $2.38 stamps is B$600, B$900 for used, and if the set is on the cover dated 1907, the price should be approximately $22,500, Mr Singh said.

Brunei stamps have never been popular at home due to the high humid climate whereby stamps tend to get tropicalised, changing the paper colour and damaging the original gum. People in those days lived mainly in Kampong Ayer, so they did not write letters to friends and relatives.

But outside Brunei, especially UK, Brunei stamps were and still are very much in demand by collectors, Mr Singh said.

Fellow philatelists may contact Mr Singh on his mobile phone 8874920. -- Courtesy of Borneo Bulletin

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