PROFESSIONAL PHILATELIST EXTRAORDINAIRE.
For 40 years and more, Angus was one of the best known Postal History experts in the world; he was a collector, a dealer, an International exhibitor & judge, a student, a researcher and - for many collectors - a personal friend and an inspiration. I, myself, was hugely fortunate in meeting Angus at the very start of my career (thanks to an introduction from GeoffManton). I still find it very hard to believe that, in 1979, I was able to walk straight from University into the Bond Street offices where Angus (and his clouds of cigar smoke) was always to be found, poring over piles of covers and the 1,000s of auction catalogues in which he could spot a bargain faster than anyone else I have ever met. For some 10 years I acted as Angus' auction-viewing "eyes" because diabetes had slowed him down during the 1970s; I did the viewing and he then decided on what to bid, but along the way I absorbed a huge amount from his seemingly limitless fund of P.H. knowledge.
Angus' ancestors came from the tiny Scottish village of Dumess (at the very north-west comer of our island), and maybe it was this connection with the remotest kind of landscape that attracted him to the deserts of Yemen and the icy volcanoes of Iceland when it came to forming his own collections. There was certainly something of the Viking pioneer about him (his bearded visage was well known in stamp shops and exhibition halls from San Francisco to Aberdeen), and his haggling skills would have served him well in any desert market. He aimed to acquire and to stock the very best and rarest covers from almost every country in the world, but he liked to charge prices commensurate with the items' rarities; hence his famous reply, "How much more than the marked price would you like to pay?" to any enquiry about "discount" from his stock prices. Over the years he must have handled most of the rare covers from every country in the world; his distinctive pencil 'costings' are still to be seen on the backs of thousands of gems in all the major collections today.
Angus started dealing seriously in Postal History (in his 20s) during the early 1950s, and so he could have chosen to form a major collection of almost any topic, or any country in the world, over the following 50 years; in the event he chose Iceland and Yemen as his main collections. It seems likely that he felt that collecting these two unusual areas would reduce the potential for upsetting his clients to a minimum - because so few of them were collectors of these two countries that he would seldom have to bid against them. He subsequently added 'fun' collections of the 'Norwegian Missionaries in Madagascar' issues, his local Postal Histories (Croydon and then Rye plus the P.H. of his favourite holiday location, Lyme Regis), and the state of Utah as a U.S. connection. His wife, Betty, also formed significant collections of British Coffee House mail and ofG.B. 2d Blues both on and off covers.
Angus' family decided to retain the various collections after his death in 1995, and now that more than 10 years have elapsed, their children (Alex[andra] and Roddy) have decided that it is time for the 'Parker' collections to be returned to the collecting community. The Iceland (with the Norwegian Missionaries) and Yemen collections are featured in separate Cavendish catalogues, while the Coffee Houses (including the Bryant Lillywhite collection that Betty acquired intact in 1983), Utah and other G.B. Postal History will be included in Cavendish's worldwide auctions over the following months.
It has been a huge privilege to be entrusted with the task of sorting through Angus and Betty's vast collections of Postal History, and I have felt that Angus was looking over my shoulder much of the time, as I worked for him again after so many years. It was certainly uncanny to unearth many items still accompanied by the notes that I had made about them back in the 1980s. I was probably the first person ever to see all the collections sorted and spread out in order, because Angus only mounted and wrote up a small proportion of the items that he acquired in his long and busy collecting life. There was one steel trunk of albums and mounted pages, but four more steel trunks of loose covers, auction lot envelopes/folders, etc. It was a bit like being let loose in Aladdin's cave.
I hope that these two catalogues will prove to be a lasting tribute to a great man and a great collector. Angus and I had a lot of fun during the years that we worked together, and I would like to think that he would be reasonably satisfied with his pupil's efforts! I must also thank Ken Baker for describing the Yemen Collection, and likewise thank Tarik Alireza and Kemal Giray for their advice on some of the more obscure aspects of that very difficult area, while I am grateful to Ian Kellock for his work on the Norwegian Missionaries' issues.
James Grimwood-Taylor, 26th February 2009.