In 2014, Peter Cockburn’s award-winning collection of South East Asian stamps and covers – comprising more than 500 items – was auctioned by Spink. Covering all aspects of the revenue aspect of collecting, it included extremely rate items whose individual values was estimated at up to $70,000. In 2021, he was elected as President of the RPSL.
How did such an esteemed collector first become intrigued by the possibilities of philately? Like many collectors, Peter reveals that what began as a boyhood pastime soon evolved into an interest that affected the course his life would take.
‘When I was very young my uncle returned from South Africa after the Second World War and brought with him masses of orange trees and tiny wartime diminutive stamps,’ Peter says. ‘Usually in tobacco tins! At school some time afterwards I was encouraged by a schoolmaster and a small society where we swapped stamps and looked at better collections than our own.’
Peter, who is well-known as an authority on stamps of the British Military Administration (BMA) in Malaya, was most drawn to a visual aspect of philately. ‘Not a particular stamp,’ he says, ‘but a design – and that is the
