page_title: Hiroyuki Kanai
section_title: Philately
hierarchical_section_title: Hiroyuki Kanai / Philately
caption_attribution_description: English: This is an illustration of the unique “Bordeaux Cover”, or “Bordeaux Letter”, which has both of the Post Office Mauritius stamps. Source: http://www.glenstephens.com/bordeaux.jpg Deutsch: Der einzigartige „Bordeaux-Brief“ mit sowohl einer blauen Mauritius als auch einer roten Mauritius. Quelle: http://www.glenstephens.com/bordeaux.jpg
context_page_description: Hiroyuki Kanai was a Japanese businessman, writer and philatelist.
context_section_description: At first, Kanai was a general stamp collector but after World War II he specialised in the philately of Japan, Finland and the British colonies. Through philatelic contacts he became aware of and eventually owned a unique collection of the Red and Blue Mauritius "Post Office" stamps, when he procured a total of six pieces of 27 known copies of this valuable stamps, which was the largest ever owned by one person. In 1971, he bought the Bordeaux Letter, a cover with both the one penny red and two penny blue stamps addressed to Bordeaux, for 120 million yen. At that time this was about 1 million US dollars, which would possibly equal about 6 million US dollars today. In 1988, he initially sold the Bordeaux Letter; the balance of the Kanai's Mauritius stamps were sold by David Feldman in 1993 at a Zurich auction. That part of the Kanai collection, being 183 pages of the classic issues of Mauritius, is listed by the Guinness World Records as the "Most expensive stamp collection". He received many awards and worked most recently as Director of the Stamp Museum Kobe.
caption: Bordeaux Cover with 1d red and 2d deep blue Mauritius "Post Office" stamps sold by Kanai in 1988 was last auctioned for CHF 5,750,000 in 1993
exif: {}