“There are a good many more than twelve hundred,” replied the teacher with a smile. “And I don’t go in for ‘freaks’ much, either; nor revenues. Revenues in themselves would keep a man busy.”
“What do you mean by freaks?” asked Willard.
“Oh, ‘splits’ and ‘blanks’ and surcharges and such. Of course, though, I have a few surcharges.”
“And what is a split, Mr. Chase?”
“A split is a stamp of, say, two-cent denomination cut diagonally across. Each half equals in value a one-cent stamp. Some time ago when an office ran out of one-cent stamps it would cut up a lot of twos. Sometimes a ten-cent stamp was split to make two fives, and in one case three-cent stamps were cut in such a way that two-thirds of them did duty for a two-cent stamp. Later, when the government ran out of a certain issue they merely took a stamp of a lower denomination and surcharged it, that is, printed over it the larger denomination. I have a friend who makes a specialty of provisional stamps, such as ‘splits’ and ‘postmasters.’ He pays no attention to anything else, and has two full books already, I believe.”
“Some stamps cost a lot, don’t they?” Willard asked.
“Unfortunately, a good many of them do,” Mr. Chase chuckled. “There’s a rumor that someone paid seventeen thousand dollars not so long ago for a pair of Mauritius postoffice stamps, one-penny and two-penny. Those are mighty rare and I’ve never seen them. Then there’s the British Guiana one-cent and the Niger Coast Protectorate; one of the latter—I forget its list number—is perhaps the rarest stamp in the world, since only one of its kind was ever printed.”
“My!” said Willard. “That must be worth a lot!”
“So much that it’s never had a price put on it, I guess. Some of our own stamps are worth quite a lot, too. Take some of the Postmasters’ Provisionals, for instance. Only one copy is known of an issue from Boscawen, New Hampshire, and whoever has that surely has a prize.”