"We had almost heard nothing of late of the postage-stamp collecting mania, till suddenly the formidable announcement is made by advertisement that an amateur is ready to sell his collection—for what sum would it be thought?—nothing less than £250."

Had the doubting Thomas[17] (for I dare say gentlemen edited ladies' papers in those days, much as they undertake the duties of "Aunt Molly" and the "Editress's Confidences" in the ladies' journals of to-day) had the foresight to buy a collection worth £250 in 1864, it would have been worth not less than, say, £25,000, probably more, to-day.

The collecting of stamps has at all times in the history of Philately been enjoyed by young and old, by men and women of all ranks and stations. Kings have shared this pastime with the humblest of their subjects, and do so to this day. His Majesty King George V. once wrote of stamp-collecting to a friend that "it is one of the greatest pleasures of my life." A letter "enthusing" on the delights of stamp-hunting reached me the other day from a correspondent who claimed to be "only a working-man." There are few old stagers amongst collectors who have not encountered, and perhaps even been stimulated by, the boastful eagerness with which a youngster in his 'teens tells you of bargains got from Gibbons's books, or of a rare "snap," an unnoticed variety priced as the normal from Peckitt. For the Strand is full of bargains to-day, to the personal hunter who has the right knowledge.

Having alluded to the wide differences in ages and in stations of collectors throughout the philatelic period 1862-1911, it will be interesting to follow the more notable collections in their vicissitudes. M. Alfred Potiquet, one of the very earliest collectors, whose catalogue is of extreme rarity in its first edition, was probably an almost solitary example of the collector of unused stamps only, in the first days of the hobby. It is strange that in these later days the collectors on the Continent, almost to a man, prefer used stamps. But to return to Potiquet: he was probably the first collector of importance to sell his collection outright, which he did about the time the second edition of his catalogue was issued by Lacroix. The collection was a small one, about five hundred stamps, all unused, and he sold the lot to Edard de Laplante in 1862 for five hundred francs, of which sum the purchaser had to borrow one half to complete the deal. But, if the reader considers that five hundred francs represents approximately £20, he will appreciate the purchaser's bargain when told that the collection included the New Brunswick 1s. (representing to-day £70); the Nova Scotia 1s. (£55-£65 to-day); the Natal 3d. and 6d. embossed in plain relief, which now are almost unattainable, except as reprints; Tuscany's 60 crazie (now worth £35) and the 1 soldo (£7 to £8); and the 4 and 5 centimes "Poste Locale" stamps of the transitional period of Switzerland, which catalogue at £100 and £10 respectively; and add to these many of the early issues of the Americas, the prices of which are now leaping up in the catalogues, and of which we know Potiquet to have had a good number, including the very rare error, the half-peso of Peru, printed in rose-red instead of yellow, through a transfer of that denomination getting mixed up in the making up of the lithographic stone for the 1 peseta. The above error is priced £13 used, but an unused copy would be worth very considerably more. He had also the 1 real and 2 reales of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company stamps, on blued paper.

Who was the amateur whose collection was referred to in the Young Ladies' Journal in 1864? It was possibly the "long cherished album" of that "worthy embodiment of Christian and gentleman," the Rev. F. Stainforth, the chief gems of which passed about this time into the possession of Mr. Philbrick. What price the reverend invalid (he survived the sale but eighteen months) received has not been handed down to us, but as Mr. Stainforth had been in the swim from the beginning, as he was a ready and high bidder for "any real or supposed rarity," and as his album was a general reference collection at the Saturday afternoon rendezvous at the rectory of All Hallows, London Wall, it goes without saying that it was rich in stamps that to-day would be of the greatest value. At least two of the St. Louis Postmaster stamps were included. The first "Patimus" British Guiana known was in the Stainforth collection, a rarity with the motto of the colony Damus petimusque vicissim, wrongly spelt "patimus," an error which, as Mr. Edward L. Pemberton pointed out, laid the colonists open to "the charge of selecting that which was beyond their ability to spell," but which was purely an engraver's error. The Stainforth collection was also rich in the American locals, and it was to this collection that Mr. Mount Brown was indebted for the useful lists of these stamps in his catalogues. From the little we know of the reverend gentleman's collection, we may be sure it would have well justified the remarkable price of £250 even in 1864 or 1865.

Few—very few—collectors of that period, and indeed of later times, withstood the temptations of a rapidly rising market or the emergencies of pecuniary embarrassments; many sold their collections when prices seemed to be great but were, as events have proved, still in their early stages. One collector retained his collection from 1859 to 1896: its owner, Mr. W. Hughes-Hughes, of the Inner Temple, started collecting in the former year, but ceased active collecting in 1874, from which time his album was latent until 1896—with the exception of some items lent for display at the London Exhibition of 1890. Happily for our instruction, Mr. Hughes-Hughes was one of those methodical men who keep a strict account of expenditures, and he had spent £69 on his stamp-collection in those fifteen years. In 1896 he sold that collection for £3,000. It was then cheap at the latter price, for it contained among its 2,900 varieties a yellow Austrian "Mercury" unused; a 4 cents British Guiana of 1856, on blue "sugar" paper; the 12d. black of Canada unused; plate 77 of the 1d. Great Britain unused; and, mirabile dictu, an unused copy of the 4d. red "woodblock" error of the Cape of Good Hope, a stamp which afterwards fetched £500. One could go on to the rare used stamps, and so "pile on the agony," but let it suffice for the present to say that the collection contained many gems, especially in those classic early issues of Victoria, Trinidad, Mauritius, France, Reunion (the 15 centimes), Mexico, Naples (the 1/2 Tornese in both types), Tuscany, Saxony, &c., the very names of which countries conjure up for the present-day philatelist visions of pocket-money for millionaires.

Hying back to the Continent, the troubles in France led to considerable disruption of the philatelic life, and no doubt many collectors and their albums were parted. M. Oscar Berger-Levrault was the producer of the earliest privately printed lists of stamps. His firm of typographical printers, which had been established in Strasburg (the city of Gutenberg associations), had to move from Strasburg to Nancy, as a result of the German annexation of Alsace and Lorraine. The work of setting up, in a new centre, establishments for his four hundred workmen left M. Berger-Levrault no time for stamps from 1870 to 1873, and this lapse in the continuity of his collection was so serious a gap that he decided to sell, especially as he had to undertake long bibliographical researches into his family history. He has told us something of his collection, but not the price it realised in 1873. Here is a brief statistical outline:—

Contentsof thecollection,September, 1861...Stamps673
"""August, 1862..."1,142
"""April, 1863..."1,553
"""July, 1864..."1,857

These figures are without counting varieties of shade. In 1870 the collection contained 10,400 stamps in all, including 6,300 unused, and more than 1,400 genuine essays. "I was only short of fifty postage-stamps known at that date," he writes, "as also a certain number of Australian stamps, with their various watermarks, which I had begun to study towards 1866, with my old friends and collaborators, F. A. Philbrick and Dr. Magnus."[18]