Stamps of Bruce Henderson

I have always gone for A5 sized sheets, but for the same reasons.

Collectors down through the ages have always regretted not buying "more" of stamps that later shoot up in value.

But the main reason why some stamps DO shoot up in value is because few people did buy them. On the other hand, most collectors I know have piles of random stamps they have bought, which will never achieve any decent re-sale.  Sic transit philatelia!

Funny story behind that photo. You will notice that the Mayor and the postie are both smiling at the camera, while I am gritting my teeth and worried. We were all riding on the footpath in front of the ornate City Council palace, and the photographer was perched right on the edge of the path. So I had to avoid smiling at the camera and concentrate on not crashing into the photographer nor steering the bike into the gutter!  Hence no smile from me.

But I can smile now, as the exhibition went really well.  And the "re-enactment bike-ride" got lots of covereage in the local newspaper over 2 days, which probably helped steer visitors to the exhibition.

For New Zealand's big national stamp exhibition the following year (at Palmerston North), I wrote to the organisers offering to do a similar bike-ride at the opening (and print special cinderella stamps for it), for the media.  But they responded saying no thanks, as they had already arranged with a Chinese member of parliament, Pansy Wong, to liase with the media and do all the necessary public relations.

But a week or so before that show opened, Pansy was implicated in some scandal involving her husband and some corrupt deals in China, so had to resign from parliament, so the exhibition ended up getting absolutely NO media coverage at all!

Moral of the story: If you are involved with a public show, ALWAYS have some interesting event for the media!

Japhyland 2011 40th birthday of Grant, the Japhyland head honcho, on a signed FDC.  The silver text at the left of the cover is thermography, a heat-embossing process, which makes it look like cast metal.

I mentioned Japhyland stamps earlier, and here are some of the set showing Japhyland's founder.  His son runs Bijzland, which has been slightly more stampiferous. 

This set was a "surprise" birthday present for Grant: one of his friends sourced the photos, sent them to me, and I printed the stamps and FDCs in secret, and presented them to Grant at the party.  He then affixed stamps to the covers, and fetched his postmark out and cancelled them, then each guest was presented with a signed autographed cover.

I think there were ten (or maybe 12) stamps in the set, so after tearing up the sheets, each FDC got 5 random stamps affixed, as the small envelopes could not fit the full set.

Any collectors seeking these could write to the Bijzland Agency address mentioned earlier, but address it to Japhyland Information Service. I'm sure he would be amenable to trading some.

Hello, I am Bruce Henderson, philatelist, of Auckland in New Zealand.

I became a philatelist at age 9, and a printer at age 13.

Fusing these two interests meant I needed a vehicle to hang my creations on, and so dreamed up the concept of an imaginary sultanate in tropical Asia: Occussi-Ambeno.  

This land (which actually exists: atlases published before 1975 show it as a tiny enclave on the isle of Timor) was extensively promoted by my public relations mailouts in the late 1960s and 70s.  

Occussi-Ambeno began in 1968,and has issued stamps each year since.  In 2008, we celebrated our 40th anniversary of independence from Portugal, the former colonial overlord, which makes O-A among the oldest fantasy lands around.


My first fantasy land was Waikoa Island, in 1965.  It celebrated it's half-century in 2015.



As I’ve grown older, and technology has improved, I have always taken advantage of whatever is around to enhance the life and productions of my fantasy land.  For instance, I recently did a bookbinding course, and whilst there, produced passports for O-A.



When a teenager, I collected “the world”, but later, sold my collection and headed off for overseas experience.  I had a few years in amazing Australia, living in Bondi, NSW, Cairns, Far North Queensland, and Perth, WA for a while, but didn’t meet any philatelists while there (not that I was particularly looking).  After returning to NZ, I resumed philately in the 90s, and today, concentrate on the stamps of

Zanzibar, Katanga, South Kasai, Samoa, Lundy, Austria, Tuva, Bahamas, and Cayman Islands, and have managed to form great collections of all these lands.  And recently, I've started on Hungary.

When I was at high school, I was introduced to letterpress, a most wonderful print medium with which I have remained fascinated  (commonly called “typography” or “surface printing” by stamp catalogues.)  

Upon leaving school, I bought my first press, an English-made Adana 8 x 5, which I still have.  More recently, I was fortunate to be given a Heidelberg platen press: the Rolls-Royce of printing machines.

This press is fully automatic and produced most stamps of O-A and some other friendly lands for many years, until the modern digital era, when I got a laser-printer, and moved to full-colour stamps.  In 1986, I was offered an old 1896 treadle perforating machine, so bought that, making me self-sufficient in stamp production.

Today, I continue to design and print the odd few O-A stamps, but also print stamps for many other fantasy lands, as well as Cinderella issues for any clubs and people I can assist.  Like a stamp with you, your child, grandchild, or pet?  

Just email me details and photos, and I will be happy to help.  (Some mint recent commem sets of your country or minisheets are the preferred barter for such services.)



And of course, I am happy to correspond with anyone keen on the lands I collect.  Catch me on bh (at) graphic-designer . com

Some of you may have read my "biography" in the "Cinderella Philatelist" written by Geir Sor-Reime, but sadly, he condensed this article too much and missed a lot of important detail.   The full version is here as a pdf (but without the photos):
 http://www.angelfire.com/country/mevu/Geir-article-on-BRH.pdf

regards, Bruce.



Great to see that 1968 set of Timaru Bike Post locals illustrated earlier in this thread! Those stamps now fetch high prices in New Zealand dealer auctions.  Sadly I no longer have a set myself.