A ROUGHLY PRINTED CARD SHOWING THE DESIGNS AND COLOURS FOR THE UNIFIED "POSTAGE AND REVENUE" STAMPS OF GREAT BRITAIN, 1884.
THE FIRST POSTAGE STAMP OF THE PRESENT REIGN, TOGETHER WITH THE POST OFFICE NOTICE CONCERNING ITS ISSUE ON NOVEMBER 4, 1910.
This class of document should be the more accessible to collectors from the little interest attached to them by the officials to whom they are generally sent. How little they appreciate their evidential value was brought home to me in a painful disappointment a year or so ago. Having been on the Continent for a few days, I returned to find among my correspondence an offer from an elderly man who had kept a post-office for a long period of years, and he had saved in a series of portfolios all the printed notices sent out from the General Post Office to postmasters from the 'fifties until the end of the nineteenth century. I had had some curiosities from this individual before, which led him to offer me these papers when he came upon them in a clearing-up mood. I was then engaged on a section of my history of the English stamps, and wrote off immediately upon my return home. To my utter dismay he replied that, not having heard from me, after a few days of waiting he had burnt the lot to get rid of them!
THE OFFICIAL NOTICE OF THE ISSUE OF THE NEW STAMPS OF GREAT BRITAIN FOR THE REIGN OF KING GEORGE V.