"I was contacted a couple of months ago by a friend about a sample book discovered in China (or Hong Kong) with three Vietnamese paper items in it and which were offered to Kelvin Cheung of Spink & Son, the branch of a London-based auction firm in Hong Kong. My friend and Kelvin did not know exactly what they were so my friend knew I probably had the knowledge about them. When I saw the images, I literally jumped up from my chair! They were samples of the earliest of Phan Boi Chau's notes and completely unknown to anyone knowing they actually exist, and they were absolutely unique. Their existence had to remain confidential until Kelvin owned them.

"I did not hear or read more about them until I received an email from a authenticator at PMG. My name had been given to the authenticator to work on getting them slabbed. I got some better images, colors (I am partially color-blind!) and measurements of them and rewrote my catalog pages to include the three notes so the authenticator could read the complete story about them. There are now five unique pieces known! We worked on the label and a grader completed the work for them to be slabbed. I am praying that I got everything right about them!

"I contacted Kelvin about what happened and we corresponded about it. I sent him my new draft pages for all of Phan Boi Chau's unique pieces and he asked me to allow him to put them in his auction catalogue. I agreed and one of his staff, Joseph Lam, worked on the catalog pages."

Wow! What a great discovery. Howard provided several sample pages and some are shown here. Thanks! It will be an interesting sale. -Editor