Sloper #63811

In Bulletin 425 I mentioned, that my Sloper perforator #67529 has a sister also found in South Africa and later sold to a collector in
Czechoslovakia. This was a misunderstanding between Toke Nørby and myself. It was in fact sold to his friend in Slovenia Mihail Fock.
When Mihail passed away the Sloper perforator was donated to the Slovenian Federation – Filatelisticna zveza Slovenije (The Slovenian
Philatelic Association) and is now part of the their small Museum.

I got in contact with Igor Pirc also a Slovenian friend of Toke Nørby and Mihail Fock. Igor has been visited the small museum to take
some pictures for me, thanks to him.

Roy Gault found the original worksheet in the Sloper archives and that solves the mystery of how it ended up in South Africa. Machine
#63811 was produced as part of an order by Messrs. Ward, Sloane & Co. Ltd., 5 Finsbury Square, EC2. I’m not an expert in British streets and towns, but for me it seems to be an address in London. [Ed: Ward, Sloane & Co. Ltd. are described as “export merchants” in the London directories of the period. The company went into liquidation on July 10th 1928, just over a year after these machines were ordered and sent to South Africa.]

The order was placed on March 26th 1927 for 20, No 1 std. Sq. Bk. Pullover link motion slide machines each one to take 7 dies (#63794
to #63813). For each machine as part of the order were two set of figures 1 to 0 and sixteen letters A,B,E,G,H,M,P,R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Y,Z.
The order was packed and forwarded to Southampton for shipment to per SS Edinburgh Castle.
The SS Edinburgh Castle was built in Glasgow in 1910 and was used by the Union-Castle line between Britain and South Africa.