The Encyclopedia of motorcycles on stamps

Under this heading several volumes (catalogues) will be issued in the near future, containing all postal issues of material with motorcycles as subject.

The English collector and exhibitor John Hayward has, after winning gold medals with his motorcycle collection "The Iron Steed" at the exhibition in Jakarta (Indonesia) in 2012 and London 2015, decided to sell his collection. Next to collector and exhibitor John was also chairman of the BTA, the British Thematic Association, and therefore stayed involved in thematic philately.

But his interest in motorcycles did not disappear. He is still going to the TT-week at Man and knowing him he will for sure visit the Moto GP in Silverstone. There he will meet his fellow collector and friend Gerald Lovell, who is a collector of everything related to Silverstone. Gerald also edits envelops with signatures of riders, and with the revenue supports charity in Silverstone and the UK. That this is lucrative business is proven by his donations over the years of more than 100.000 £.

But let's go back to John Hayward. After some time without motorcycle stamps something began to tickle. He got the idea to sort and classify all philatelic material that has been issued around the theme motorcycle. The results will be collected in several overviews. As first an overview of all stamps has appeared. The selection is based on selection criteria from the various large world catalogues like Michel, Yvert, Scott and Stanley Gibbons. An image or for instance the word motorcycle in several languages, a motorcycle manufacturer, a motorcycle event etcetera, is reason to include a stamp.

The sheets, blocks and booklets will come in the next volume. According to plan this should appear at the end of this year (2019). After that postal stationery, occasional cancellation stamps, red frankings, motorcycle courier post, perfins and private value additions on envelops will be done.

The volume that has been issued now contains all stamps ordered by country, except for sheets and blocks. With the depicted stamps the date of issue and catalogue numbers of all the major catalogues are recorded. When known, data about the brand or event will be mentioned next to the description of the issue, and any deviations or printing plate errors.

The first impression is good. All stamps are included. Sometimes the quality of the image is not optimal, somewhat vague. My impression is that the overview is complete. There are even stamps that we don't classify as motorcycle stamps. Algeria has a stamp with something that looks like a helmet, but to my opinion has nothing to do with it:

Institutions & Companies & Businesses: logo Algerian Post

Also the description of this issue does not give any reason to regard this a motorcycle stamp. Apart from that stamps are included that we could also regard to be motorcycle stamps. For instance the issue from Spanish Andorra from 2004 with the Messerschmitt. With this 3-wheeler one was allowed to drive on the rode in the Netherlands with a motorcycle driving license.

Here two pages (page 2 and 71) from the overview:

Regarding the Polish stamps from 1955 (page 71) there are indeed different perforations:

Colnect (https://colnect.com/nl):
Mi.    928A perforation 12½ x 12¾
        928C perforation 12¾
Mi.    929A perforation 12½ x 12¾
        929C perforation 12¾

When there are members who are interested in this catalogue they can contact John Hayward, eventually through me, Nico Helling.
The costs of the catalogue are 25 euro (20 £) and it will be sent digitally after payment.

Nico Helling

First page of John Haywards price winning collection

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