[V]
THE
SCOPE OF
A MODERN
COLLECTION
THE SCOPE OF A MODERN COLLECTION
The historical collection: literary and philatelic—The quest for rariora—The "grangerising" of philatelic monographs: its advantages and possibilities—Historic documents—Proposals and essays—Original drawings—Sources of stamp engravings—Proofs and trials—Comparative rarity of some stamps in pairs, &c., or on original envelopes—Coloured postmarks—Portraits, maps, and contemporary records—A lost opportunity.
The scope of the modern collector extends beyond the collection of actually issued stamps. He uses the stamps as a starting-point, but in the historical collection he works—as it is said the writers of detective stories used to do—backwards. He traces to its earliest inception the service which ultimately gave us the postage stamp. The collection is literary as well as philatelic: stamps are preceded by documents, prints and postal records of all kinds. The essays, as we term the suggestions for stamp designs submitted by artists, inventors or printers to a Government or other issuing authority, are of a high degree of interest and should be included in the historical collection, which will also show, where possible, the engraver's proofs taken in the course of his work, the finished die-proofs in black, plate-proofs in black and in colours, and the stamps, generally of the first printing, which are overprinted with the word "Specimen," or its equivalent in other languages, and are sent out to show postal officers what the newly-authorised stamps are like.
It is in this broad field that the collector in these days gets the most enjoyment; here he may heighten the pleasures of the hunt for philatelic and associated rariora. So many wonderful tales have been told of the fabulous fortunes acquired in the finding of a few old letters bearing stamps, that many a deal is frustrated by the uninitiated owner having too fanciful an idea of the value of his goods. It is rare in these days for such an incident to happen as I witnessed about twelve years ago. A gentleman, who had been turning out some old papers, came across an unsevered block of eight five-shilling British stamps which had been sent to his father, presumably as a remittance, somewhere in the early 'eighties. Here was £2 lying idle for years, but having luckily noticed them in clearing out these old papers, the gentleman thought he would see if they were still exchangeable at a post-office. At the first post-office he visited, he was told that the stamps were of an old issue, and that to get them converted into cash he would have to take them to Somerset House. On his way thither he noticed a stamp-dealer's show case, and apparently the possible interest of his specimens in the stamp-market then first occurred to him. He called in, and simply asked if the dealer would give him the £2, to save him the trouble of going on to Somerset House. The dealer, who had probably never seen an unsevered block of eight of the five-shillings "anchor" of 1882, obliged him readily, which he could well afford to do, as he passed on the stamps the same week to a collector for £75.