Chats on Postage Stamps

by Frederick John Melville

Five Pounds is a high facial value, but that sum invested in the purchase of the telegraph-stamp, or of the postage-stamp which superseded it, would now be represented approximately by £100; but in the case of the Five Pounds postage-stamp, the paper must be "blued"—"naturally," and not through the medium of the blue-bag—and the colour should be of a vermilion almost merging into orange, and not the scarlet-vermilion in which this stamp finished its career in 1902.

In a somewhat different category are the various Official stamps, but as they were obtainable up to about 1890 by any respectable applicant at Somerset House, the earlier varieties may fairly be included. Sets bought during the 1884-90 period appreciated very little until towards the close of the last century, when they attained high prices, the One Pound "I.R. Official" in brown-violet, on Imperial Crown paper, being the rarest, even rarer than the similar stamp on the Orb paper, which without the Official overprint is rarer than the normal variety.

Of subsequent Official stamps, not obtainable for the asking, special mention should be made of the three high values of the Edwardian issue—Five Shillings, Ten Shillings, and One Pound: in 1903 mint PAIRS of the three stamps were sold for forty guineas, and single sets for £25. Nowadays, pairs—the particular ones above referred to were subsequently severed—would probably fetch a sum running into four figures.

It may be interesting to record a few of the notable rises in value, in the space of a comparatively short period, of stamps issued in one or other of the British colonies, or in some foreign country.

In March, 1878, there was an unexpected shortage in Barbados of the then current One Penny stamp, and the island Post Office authorities supplied the deficiency by means of a provisional: they perforated the large Five Shillings stamp down the centre, surcharging each half "1d." These makeshifts in due course reached England, and orders were duly sent out for a supply for the stamp-market; one dealer's order was actually held back by the Barbados postmaster until the arrival of a further supply of the ordinary One Penny, when a supply of that stamp was sent him. Other dealers and collectors probably fared as badly, and an unused pair, or even a single copy, of this rare stamp supplies an example of unearned increment which would delight a Chancellor of the Exchequer on the look-out for more subjects for taxation. What a nice little nest-egg would a shilling's-worth of those stamps now represent!

Of the circular British Guiana stamps of 1850-51 it is hardly fair to speak, as they were issued and became obsolete before even the oldest philatelist ever thought of collecting; but if any far-seeing individual had then invested the modest sum of thirteenpence in the purchase of an unused copy of each of the four values, and had had them "laid down" until the present year of grace, or even until so comparatively far back as 1890, the sum they would realise in open market would not fall far short of £2,500. So, too, with the very rare large oblong type-set stamps of 1856, one of which—the One Cent, black on magenta—is literally unique.

The smaller stamps of 1862, printed from ordinary type with a frame of fancy ornaments, and issued on a shortage of One, Two, and Four Cents stamps, were for some considerable time fairly common, being obtainable for a few shillings, or sometimes, if one were fortunate, for pence; now a used set of the commonest variety of each value costs nearly £30.

Canada provides a rarity, dating back to 1851. A stamp—and it is a beautiful piece of work—of the apparently peculiar value of Twelve Pence was issued, but for some reason a very small portion of the large supply was sold, the remainder disappearing without a trace, never to be found even to this day: that stamp is now worth two thousand times its original cost. The reason for the value being expressed somewhat quaintly was that, whereas "One Shilling" was a fluctuating amount according to locality, "Twelve Pence" was the same everywhere.

It goes without saying that it is the rarities which have appreciated the most, and therefore a list of the stamps which ought to have been secured as an investment is practically a list of the rare and scarce stamps.

Beautifully engraved, of chaste design, and of quaint shape, the Cape "triangulars" are, and always have been, favourites; but they have been out-distanced, as regards profitable investment records, by the two roughly-executed stamps, of similar design and shape, printed from hurriedly made stereotyped blocks to meet a temporary shortness of the ordinary One Penny and Fourpence.