FAMOUS COLLECTIONS
The "mania" in the 'sixties--Some wonderful early
collections--The first auction sale--Judge Philbrick and his
collection--The Image collection--Lord Crawford's "United
States" and "Great Britain"--Other great modern collections--M.
la Rénotière's "legions of stamps"--Synopsis of sales of
collections.
To fail to emphasise the broadly democratic character of the world
of stamp collectors would be to overlook an important aspect of the
popularity of this science, or, as it is to the majority, the "hobby"
of stamps. I have already indicated the dual side of the collecting in
the 'sixties, when the boy-collector predominated in numbers, but the
adult student had the influence that gave "Philately" or "Timbrologie"
a permanent place among the recreative studies. A note on the "Postage
Stamp Exchange" in _The Express_, in April, 1862, indicates the
benevolent toleration on the part of the outside public and the press
concerning the new "mania." "... We may mention that the mania has
been increased in such a degree as to lead to the formation of a
postage-stamp exchange, the locality being Change Alley, leading out
of Birchin Lane. There every evening about fifty boys, _and some men,
too_, may be seen industriously exchanging old disfigured stamps, most
of which are carefully fastened in books. The earnestness and assiduity
with which the 'trade' is carried on is very remarkable."
"'Some men, too,'" says Mr. Mount Brown in sending me the paragraph,
"is very lovely." It would be idle to disguise the fact that the mantle
of bare toleration of the "mania" has not been entirely discarded by
the uninitiated, and it has been a very disconcerting privilege to have
for chairmen at lectures on postage-stamps, at literary and scientific
institutions, gentlemen who have introduced the subject by confessing
that they had once been collectors themselves, _but that was when they
were at school_. The press, however, has shown a greater respect for
the substantial basis of scientific interest which underlies the hobby,
and to-day _The Daily Telegraph_, which has led the modern journalism
in the matter of regular specialised articles, has its column of
"Postage Stamp" notes every week, and so too has _The Evening News_.
To-day, the press frequently discusses interesting new issues of
stamps, and much publicity is now given to that _argumentum ad
populum_, the remarkable prices which are constantly being realised
in the stamp-market. Considering that stamp-collecting can scarcely
be regarded as having started prior to 1860-61, the prices of stamps
quickly attained respectable proportions. In _The Young Ladies'
Journal_ of December 14, 1864, there is this paragraph:--
"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
½ 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:--
Contents of the collection, September, 1861 Stamps 673
" " " 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]
Here indeed was a collection, probably as near to the collector's
elusive ideal of completeness as has ever been attained in a general
collection. Writing from memory, in January, 1890, he gives the
following list of special items he remembers to have been amongst the
6,300 unused stamps:--
Bergedorf Nov. 1, 1861 ½ sch. violet.
3 sch. rose.
Saxony 1850 3 pf.
Great Britain 1840 1d. V.R.
Switzerland: Zurich 1843 4 rapp.
" " " 6 rapp.
" "Vaud" -- 4 centimes.
" " -- 5 "
Tuscany 1849 1 soldo.
" " 2 soldi.
" " 60 crazie.
Naples 1860 ½ T. arms.
" " ½ T. cross.
Reunion 1851 15 centimes.
" " 30 centimes.
"Indies" 1854 ½ anna red.
New Zealand 1855 1s.
New Brunswick 1857 1s.
Nova Scotia 1857 1s.
British Guiana 1856 4 cents carmine.
Peru 1858 ½ peso.
Buenos Ayres April, 1858 3 pesos.
" " " " 4 pesos red.
" " " " 4 " brown.
" " " " 5 " orange.
" " Oct. " 4 rl. brown.
" " " " 1 peso brown (:IN Ps).
" " Jan. 1859 1 peso blue (:IN Ps).
" " " " 1 " " (TO Ps).
"On the other hand, Spain, without its colonies, was represented in
my collection for the period of 1850 to the end of 1856 by 79 unused
stamps, 80 postmarked stamps, 8 essays of the Madrid stamp (bear), and
was very complete." Even on the extenuated scale of the modern Gibbons
catalogue, the total of varieties of the issues 1850-56 only numbers
125.
The first four-figure price for a stamp collection was obtained in
1878, when the magnificent collection of Sir Daniel Cooper, Bart.,
K.C.M.G., was transferred to the ownership of Mr. Philbrick, Q.C., for
£3,000. Sir Daniel's public career, chiefly in connection with the
promotion of "Advance, Australia!", is still well remembered, but it
is significant of the character of the assemblages at Mr. Stainforth's
rectory that this distinguished Australian should have been one of
their most active promoters in 1861 and the following years. He was,
with Mr. Philbrick, one of the founders of the Philatelic Society in
1869, and was the first of the line of distinguished occupants of the
presidential chair of the now Royal Philatelic Society. It is only
natural that, with his intimate associations with Australia, the early
stamps of that continent and of New Zealand should figure strongly in
his collection. It was he who supplied the data which enabled the young
philatelic giant, Mr. E. L. Pemberton, to announce the existence of a
pre-Rowland Hill stamped envelope in New South Wales, leading to the
discovery of the embossed letter-sheets of Sydney, 1838.
On March 18, 1872, there was held the first auction of rare
postage-stamps at the rooms of Messrs. Sotheby, in Wellington
Street, London. The experiment was made with what was described as a
_portion_ of an American collection, and the only reason the _whole_
collection was not offered was that the time of the public was too
valuable to spread over three days! A criticism in the columns of
_The Philatelical Journal_ of April 15, 1872, attributes some of the
prices, even then considered low, to the distrust of amateurs when the
owner was bidding. I give a few of the prices realised. Lot 6 was the
15 cents error, United States, 1869, with the frame inverted: "This
fetched a _good price_" in the opinion of the contemporary philatelic
writer, being knocked down to Mr. Atlee for 36s. My friend, Mr. E. B.
Power, in his priced work "United States Stamps," 1909, prices this
stamp at $2,500 unused, $150 used. Lot 12 was a 5 cents Brattleboro:
"a beauty, was bought in at £3; it would have sold well but for the
owner's bidding," &c. I suppose a Brattleboro, especially "a beauty,"
would find ready competition in three figures to-day. Other lots
_bought in_ were:--
Lot 15, St. Louis, all three varieties of the 5c. £2 13s.
Lot 16, " " " " 10c. £2 7s.
Lot 17, " 20 c., "unique" £6.
Lot 18, " 20 c., "variety not unique" £8 12s.
The 5 cent St. Louis used is now catalogued at £25, and the 10
cent at £30; a _pair_ of the 20 cents, these stamps being part of
the treasure-trove of the celebrated find of 1895, was sold in the
'nineties for £1,026. Some of the Blood locals were bought in, but
Mr. Pemberton secured for £5 a copy of the very rare _pink_ Jefferson
Market P.O. stamp.
"Here," says our chronicler, "occurred something amusing; the
auctioneer probably fancied that as this was unique and exciting
competition, it was a _handsome_ stamp, so as the bidding rose
described it as 'beautifully engraved,' which created great laughter,
for it was a foully hideous thing, and the engraving apparently done by
a blind man with a skewer." Altogether there were many rare American
locals, the majority of which fell to Sir Daniel Cooper, Mr. Atlee, and
Mr. Pemberton. Then came "some miscellaneous lots, sets of used, &c.,
of which some fetched exorbitant prices, for instance, four varieties
of 5 cents, green, eagle, Bolivia, were sold for 14s., the 5 cent lilac
for 23s., the 10 cent brown for 17s. The early Luzons (Philippines),
used, were good lots and the 5 and 10 cent 1854, with 1 and 2 rs.,
fetched in the aggregate £6 9s., so they were no bargain."
Lot 150 was the ½ T. Naples, arms type, bought in for 40s., and the
cross type was bought in for 9s. Lot 160 was "a remarkably good 13
cent of the commoner type of the 1852 figure Sandwich Islands, which
the owner boldly started at £6 and bought in for an additional ten
shillings, _a very full price indeed_." Nevertheless it would have cost
£90 or more to-day.
The record of this sale deserves more attention than I am able to
give it here: the event was certainly one of extraordinary interest,
though it was considered at the time something of a failure, and was
not repeated. The next auction sale of stamps did not take place until
sixteen years later. But I must spare a few lines for my chronicler's
peroration.
"The results of this sale are so far satisfactory that they prove that
Philately is not yet on the wane, _and never will be_. It is a young
science, but before many years pass, we shall regard £5 for a valuable
stamp as calmly as we do now the pound sterling for an ordinary
specimen; and those who have been the mainstays of the dealers will
undoubtedly find that their outlays, however extensive, will produce at
least cent. per cent. What are we to think of the matchless collections
of Mr. Philbrick, Sir Daniel Cooper, Mr. Atlee, Baron Arthur de
Rothschild, E. J., and others, gathered together with unflagging toil
and patience, but all of which contain practically unattainable things?
And will not these in the course of years inevitably become of fabulous
value?"
Four years after the Cooper collection was sold for £3,000, Mr.
Philbrick, to the deep regret of all his British colleagues, sold his
general collection (not the Great Britain portion) to M. la Rénotière
in Paris, for the then record price of £8,000. At his death, which
occurred so recently as Christmas, 1910, it would have represented the
comfortable fortune of, say, £50,000! It would be a shorter task to
say what was _not_ in this truly wonderful collection than to attempt
a list of its gems, for the absentees were almost _nil_. The best idea
of the strength of this collection must be gathered from the valuable
papers Philbrick contributed to _The Stamp Collector's Magazine_ and
_The Philatelic Record_, chiefly under the pseudonyms "Damus petimusque
vicissim," "An Amateur," and several "By the author of the 'Postage
Stamps of British Guiana,'" and by his collaborated work with the late
Mr. W. A. S. Westoby, "The Postage and Telegraph Stamps of Great
Britain." Here I may fittingly place on record a souvenir I recently
acquired of this collaboration and close friendship between these
two most renowned of the students of stamps, whose work is a classic
in the literature of Philately, and is still constantly referred to,
being only in some respects superseded by later authorities. The letter
itself amply justifies publication in entirety here, as it throws
an interesting light on the philatelic evidence before the Joint
Committee on Postage Stamps appointed by the Postmaster-General, the
"confidential" report of which was printed in 1885 ("Bibl. Lindesiana,"
p. 159).
"11, EARL'S AVENUE, FOLKESTONE,
"_December 29th_.
"MY DEAR PHILBRICK,--
"After seeing you on Saturday I wrote a letter to Mr. Jeffery
saying that you had told me the substance of what passed,
and that I most thoroughly endorsed what you had said about
forgery. It was not the difficulty of forging a stamp which
constituted their protection, so much as the difficulty of
disposing of the stamps when forged.
"I further said that if they determined on having a surface
printed series not combined with embossing they must allow
me to point out what I considered to be a fatal error in all
Messrs. De La Rue's designs, and this was the introduction of
a lined background, the lines of which were almost coincident
with the lines of shading in the head. The merit of Bacon's
design was that he had a light head thrown up by a dark
background, and I could scarcely point out an instance where
surface-printed stamps had not either a solid background or
none at all, like the Hungarian of 1872. As they would possibly
not like a solid background I suggested to them to adopt a
standard profile of the Queen's head, and for all the stamps up
to 1s. to reduce it by photography to the size of the head on
the 2d., and for those above they might reduce it to a larger
size, so as to keep the same likeness through all, and to put
it on a plain white ground, and I sent them a 2d. from which I
had removed the lined background like as I have done in the 1d.
annexed.
"That if they would excuse my making a further suggestion
it would be that for all the stamps up to 1s. about four
colours would suffice, if the framings were made different and
distinctly visible, ... thus:--
------------+------------------+-----------------+-----------
{ ½.| pink {1d.| blue { | {6d.
Green { 1½d.| like the {2d.| like the { 2½d. | olive {9d.
{ 3d.| present 5s. {4d.| 2s. { 5d. | {1s.
------------+------------------+-----------------+-----------
"I have had a very courteous reply from Mr. Jeffery, thanking
me much for the letter, and saying he would lay it before the
Committee at the next meeting.
"I forgot to mention one thing I said. That I knew that stamp
collectors were not regarded with too much favour by the
authorities, who were inclined to regard them as too curious
and desiring to look into mysteries into which even angels were
forbidden to look, but that they ought to take a very different
view, for we were the greatest protectors against forgeries
of stamps that they could have. Not one came out, but was
immediately denounced in the publications circulating amongst
collectors and the forger's trade stopped.
"I have written you a long lot of twaddle, but I have tried to
sound the trumpet of the Philatelist--what Bunhill Row will
think I do not know nor care; I said their manufacture was
good--the best--but that the least said about their designs
and colours the better. I also said that as to the lettering I
agreed with you that it was practically useless _if_ the stamp
was properly obliterated and the saving slips done away with.
"The kind of stamp I suggested that they should have the design
made of as a trial was the 2d. head turned the other way, when
they could see the effect.
"Ever yours very affectionately,
"W. A. S. WESTOBY."
I am not entering upon any details of the Philbrick collection, for the
most I could give would be a bald citation of an almost untold list
of rarities. Imagine--if you can--a complete list of all known stamps
up to 1880, imagine also some of the rarities not merely in duplicate
or triplicate, but in the course of advanced plating of the settings
(especially in British Guiana), and you may get some idea of what was
in this great collection--and is still preserved in the collection of
M. la Rénotière. His two used "Post Offices" of Mauritius were the
first known copies of these rarities, and were at first considered
to be an error of the inscription "Post Paid" of 1848, instead of a
distinct issue of 1847. They came from the correspondence of a M.
Borchard, whose widow found no fewer than thirteen of the twenty-five
copies now known. The first pair was exchanged for a couple of
"Montevideos," which had, in the eyes of the lady, so M. Moëns tells
us, "the supreme advantage of having a place indicated for them in the
Lallier album, where the 'Post Office,' like many other stamps, were
not indicated." The two stamps were used on one envelope, and were
postmarked together with one impression of the "Inland" handstamp,
the 1d. specimen having the left upper corner defective. M. Albert
Coutures, a youngster of twenty, secured the stamps in the "swap," and
afterwards (October, 1865) parted with them to M. Moëns through the
medium of a Bordeaux merchant, M. E. Gimet. The price Moëns paid must
have been a mere trifle, as he parted with them to Mr. Philbrick on
February 15, 1866, for a few pounds. The record of these stamps Nos.
1 and 2 in Moëns's "A History of the Twenty Known Specimens, &c.," is
therefore briefly--
Year. Owner.
1847 Borchard.
1864 (?) Coutures.
1865 Gimet.
1865 Moëns.
1866 Philbrick.
1882 La Rénotière.
To-day their "weight in gold" would, of course, represent but an
infinitesimal fraction of their market value.
[Illustration: THE UNIQUE ENVELOPE OF ANNAPOLIS (MARYLAND, U.S.A.) IN
LORD CRAWFORD'S COLLECTION OF STAMPS OF THE UNITED STATES.]
The Image collection was sold in the same year as the Philbrick
albums. Mr. W. E. Image was yet another of the _vieille garde_ of
Philately, though he ploughed a lone furrow during the early years of
his collecting, which began in 1859. His collection, sold for £3,000
in 1882, deserves to be especially noted, as it was in one sense the
basis of the great national collection now at the British Museum. The
late Mr. T. K. Tapling, M.P., was the purchaser, and so magnificent was
his new acquisition that he at one time thought of parting with his own
and continuing the Image collection. At this juncture, the death of Mr.
Tapling's father enabled him to amalgamate the two collections, his own
with that of Mr. Image, and to launch out upon the grandly conceived
collection bequeathed in 1891 to the nation.
Mr. Image at first compiled his collection almost entirely by
correspondence, and did not see the inside of a dealer's shop until the
'seventies. He is said, however, to have never refused a good specimen
of a stamp he lacked, save on one occasion, an historic one. Moëns
offered him for £240 the two Post Office Mauritius, but he declined,
as he hoped to get another chance at a more moderate figure. That was
in the 'seventies. Image lived to the advanced age of ninety-six (b.
1807), and within a few months of his death a copy of the 2d. Post
Office alone was sold by Messrs. Puttick and Simpson for £1,450.
But if he lacked the "Post Offices," there was an abundance of other
rarities. Philbrick travelled to Bury St. Edmunds to see Image's
wonderful unused 6d. orange of Victoria ("beaded oval"), a stamp which
in the Mirabaud sale (1909) fetched £140. The copy from the Avery
collection attained in 1910 a price still higher. British Guiana,
Guadalajara and the American locals were amongst the specially strong
sections of this collection.
There have been so many really important collections formed since
the Philbrick collection that almost any entry into details becomes
invidious in a brief review. The collections of to-day are, as I have
indicated, on a more broadly historical basis than was general in the
early days of the study, though even the collections of Dr. Gray, Sir
Daniel Cooper and Judge Philbrick, and others, were on a sound basis
of historical research. Philately has had no more precise or more able
historians than Judge Philbrick and his collaborator, Mr. W. A. S.
Westoby, while to Dr. Gray we are indebted for the history of most of
the English essays of the first period.
[Illustration: PART SHEET (175 STAMPS) OF THE ORDINARY ONE PENNY BLACK
STAMP OF GREAT BRITAIN, 1840.
(_From the collection of the Earl of Crawford, K.T._)]
But the collections of Lord Crawford have carried the historical and
scientific aspects of Philately to more profound depths, and the
stamps have been collected on a more lavish scale to provide ample
reference material not only for present but future study. Condition,
too, has received more attention, and is now a primary consideration.
The collections are mostly arranged in countries or groups,
and few suspect the wealth of material as yet not disclosed, among
the sections which have not yet been publicly displayed. The United
States collection, when shown to the New York Collectors' Club a few
years ago, opened up a new aspect of Philately to the collectors in
the States, and gave an effective stimulus to the serious side of
collecting in America. The collection is very fully written up in the
Earl's own writing, much of which was done on board his yacht, the
_Valhalla_. The collection contains practically all that could be got
together to illustrate the postal history of the United States, and
makes the mention of particular items useless. The _unique_ envelope of
Annapolis, however, is especially noteworthy, and also the 10 cents,
black on white, adhesive stamp of Baltimore, of which but three copies
are known.
[Illustration: NEARLY A COMPLETE SHEET (219 STAMPS OUT OF 240) OF THE
HIGHLY VALUED ONE PENNY BLACK "V.R." STAMP, INTENDED FOR OFFICIAL USE.
(_From the collection of the Earl of Crawford, K.T._)]
Of Great Britain, too, Lord Crawford has a large number of well-filled
albums, including some extraordinarily large blocks ("part sheets"
would describe them better) of the imperforate line-engraved stamps.
There is nearly a complete sheet of the 1d. black "V.R." (219 stamps
out of the 240), a part sheet of the ordinary 1d. black (175 stamps),
and all but six rows of a sheet of the scarce 2d. blue, "no lines,"
which was the companion stamp of the 1d. black, and was issued on May
6, 1840.
[Illustration: PART SHEET (LACKING BUT SIX HORIZONTAL ROWS) OF THE
SCARCE TWO PENCE BLUE STAMP "WITHOUT WHITE LINES" ISSUED IN GREAT
BRITAIN, 1840.
(_From the collection of the Earl of Crawford, K.T._)]
The collections of Mr. Leslie L. R. Hausburg, have, next to those of
the Earl of Crawford, attracted widespread attention and the unstinted
admiration of philatelists. They have hitherto dealt chiefly with the
Australasian portions of the British Empire, but latterly have been
extended to a number of foreign countries. Mr. M. P. Castle, J.P.,
has formed several great collections, as will be noted in the list of
sales which concludes this chapter, and Mr. Henry J. Duveen has one of
the three finest collections of Mauritius, including the superb "Post
Offices," both unused, from the Avery collection, and a matchless
block of four, unused, of the 1d. Post Paid, for which wonderful item
its possessor paid £1,000. These "Post Offices" are the ones which in
1910 carried the record price for this popular pair of rarities up to
£3,500. Mr. Duveen's Switzerland collection is also a very notable one,
and contains the block of double Genevas, and the part sheet of "large
Eagles" from the Avery collection, and the beautiful block of fifteen
Basle "doves," which was the subject of a recent find in Berne. Baron
Anthony de Worms is the owner of a fine collection of Great Britain and
the collection _par excellence_ of Ceylon. Mr. Harvey R. G. Clarke's
collection of New South Wales is justly celebrated, and in the less
costly countries the honours of possessing the most perfect collections
are distributed by no means exclusively among the very wealthy. In
stamp-collecting the personal search is often more productive than
lavish expenditure without personal effort.
[Illustration: THE UNIQUE BLOCK OF THE "DOUBLE GENEVA" STAMP, THE
RAREST OF THE SWISS "CANTONALS."
(_Formerly in the "Avery" Collection, but now in the possession of
Henry J. Duveen, Esq._)]
In America there are some collections of great note. That of Mr.
George H. Worthington has been referred to elsewhere. Mr. Henry
J. Crocker, a San Francisco magnate, had the misfortune to lose about
£15,000 worth of his stamps in the disastrous fire which followed
the earthquake of 1906. This included eleven out of forty-three of
his albums, but luckily his greatest work, the Hawaiian collection,
was safely in England at the time of the catastrophe. A wonderful
collection of Japanese was completely destroyed. Mr. Crocker has no
fewer than sixteen of the Hawaiian "Missionaries"; outside of the
British Museum, his is the only copy of the 2 cents, Type I.; he has
four used copies of the 5 cents, two of them being on the entire
envelopes; and there is a unique item in an unbroken strip of three
13 cents "Hawaiian Postage" on entire. Two of the stamps are Type I.
and the other Type II.; he has also an unused and two used copies of
each type. Of the "H.I. & U.S. Postage" 13 cents stamp there are two
specimens, one of each type used together.[19]
[Illustration: PART SHEET OF THE SCARCE 5C. "LARGE EAGLE" STAMP OF
GENEVA, SHOWING THE MARGINAL INSCRIPTION AT THE TOP.
(_From the collection of Henry J. Duveen, Esq._)]
Of other American collections, that of Mr. Francis C. Foster, of
Boston, impressed me as much as any that I have seen across the
Atlantic. Mr. Foster has been interested in stamps probably longer than
any other living collector in the United States, and his collection
now comprises the United States, the possessions, and British North
America. In the general issues of the Republic he has a superb set of
the _premières gravures_, and all the early issues are extensively
shown, together with the beautiful proofs and essays associated with
them. The Confederate States Postmasters' stamps include the 5c. Athens
used on the envelope; the 5c. and 10c. Goliad; and the Livingston,
Alabama. The late Mr. Thorne, an old New York collector, showed me his
collection in 1906, which was of great proportions and was exclusively
composed of blocks of four, a state in which he had the greatest
difficulty in obtaining even many modern stamps. His collection, or
some of it, has been disposed of by auction in America. The late Mr.
J. F. Seybold, of Syracuse, had the credit of fostering the cult
of collecting the used stamps on the entire envelope or letter,
which from the historical point of view is extremely useful. His
collection, however, was bought for about £5,000 by Mr. J. T. Coit, and
subsequently realised nearly £7,000 at auction.
[Illustration: A PAGE OF THE 5 CENTS AND 13 CENTS HAWAIIAN "MISSIONARY"
STAMPS.
(_From the "Crocker" Collection._)]
Of the great collections of the Continent, that of M. Philippe la
Rénotière is the greatest ever brought together, but its owner has
not been in the habit of exhibiting it, and the number of living
philatelists who have seen even portions of it must be extremely few.
He has certainly got together in the aggregate a collection greater
than the Tapling one, and he has absorbed in the process the albums
of Sir Daniel Cooper and Judge Philbrick, and has had the pick of all
the greatest collections which have come on the market for many years.
It was estimated years ago that he must have spent a quarter of a
million of money on the collection,[20] and as he commenced about
1864, the extent of his treasures has brought him to be regarded as
a philatelic Comte de Monte Cristo. The unique British Guiana 1 cent
stamp of 1856 is in this collection, together with five Post Office
Mauritius, including one of the _two_ known copies of the 1d. unused.
Other great rarities are mostly represented by several copies.
[Illustration: HAWAIIAN ISLANDS 1851. THE 5 CENTS "MISSIONARY" STAMP ON
ORIGINAL ENVELOPE.
(_From the "Crocker" Collection._)]
The collection of the late M. Paul Mirabaud, a wealthy Parisian banker,
was exceptional for the beauty of the condition of the stamps it
contained, and at the auction sale many of the stamps fetched prices
much beyond the standard quotations of the catalogues. The Swiss
portion, which formed the basis of a most sumptuously illustrated
work written in collaboration by M. Mirabaud and the Baron A. de
Reuterskiöld, was sold privately.
The following synopsis of the chief sales of collections (whether
by auction or privately) covers only those which are known to have
realised £1,000 and upwards; there are many more which have doubtless
been sold for amounts well into four figures, but the transactions, or
at any rate the amounts, have not been disclosed. The amounts given
below must not in every case be taken as the exact purchase price;
where not exact they are approximate.
-------+----------------------+------------------------------+-------
YEAR. | COLLECTION. | CHARACTER. |AMOUNT.
-------+----------------------+------------------------------+-------
| | | £
1878 |Cooper. |General. | 3,000
1882 |Philbrick. |General. | 8,000
1882 |Image. |General. | 3,000
1885 |Burnett. |General. | 1,000
1890 |Caillebotte. |General. | 5,000
1891 |Colman. |British Colonies. | 2,000
1894 |Winzer. |General. | 3,000
1894 |Castle. |Australia. |10,000
1894 |Philbrick. |Great Britain. | 1,500
1895 |Harrison. |United States. | 1,330
1895 |Harbeck. |General. | 3,000
1895 |W. Cooper. |General. | --
1895 |J. E. Wilbey. |General. | --
1896 |Hughes-Hughes. |General. | 3,000
1896 |Ehrenbach. |Germany. | 6,000
1896 |Earl of Kingston. |British Empire. | 1,800
1896-7 |Blest. |New South Wales, New Zealand, | 4,750
| | and Queensland. |
1897 |F. W. Ayer. |General (dispersed gradually).|45,000
1897 |Dr. Legrand. |Part of General. |12,000
1898 |Russell. |General (unused, strong in | 4,600
| | British Colonies). |
1898 |H. L. Hayman. |General. | 4,000
1899 |Pauwels. |General. | 4,000
1900 |M. P. Castle. |Europe. |27,500
1901 |W. T. Willett |Great Britain (with Nevis). | 2,000
1902 |Major-Gen. Lambton. |British Colonies. | 3,400
1902 |C. Hollander. |South Africa. | 1,500
1903 |J. N. Marsden. |General. | 2,350
1903 |E. J. Nankivell. |Transvaal. | 3,000
1904 |P. Fabri. |General. | 3,000
1904 |A titled collector. |Selection of great rarities. | 4,700
1904 |Prince Doria Pamphilj.|General. | 2,000
1905 |M. P. Castle. |Australia. | 5,750
1906 |W. W. Mann. |Europe. |30,000
1906 |A. Bagshawe. |Straits Settlements. | 2,000
1907 |V. Roberts. |Cape Colony, Queensland, &c. | 3,800
1907 |Tomson. |West Indies. | 6,800
1908 |P. Mirabaud. |{Switzerland, £8,000 }|
| |{Rest of Collection, £22,000 }|30,000
1909 |Sir W. B. Avery. |General. |24,500
1909 |J. W. Paul, jun. |General. |11,400
1909 |J. F. Seybold. |General. | 5,000
1911 |Miguel Gambin. |Argentina. | 6,000
-------+----------------------+------------------------------+-------
FOOTNOTES:
[17] Earlier in the same year this boudoir gossiper had answered no
fewer than three correspondents, "Mercury," "Daniel," and "Milly"
at one shot thus: "We cannot encourage 'exchanging foreign stamps,'
for we do not see the smallest good resulting from it. This foreign
stamp-collecting has been a mania, which is at length dying out. Were
the stamps works of art, then the collecting them might be justified.
Were they, in short, anything but bits of defaced printing, totally
worthless, we would try to say something in their favour. There are now
so many lithographic forgeries in the market that he is the cleverest
of the clever who can detect the spurious stamps from the true."--_The
Young Ladies' Journal_, April 27, 1864.
[18] The pseudonym of Dr. Legrand.
[19] See further "Postage Stamps of the Hawaiian Islands in the
Collection of Henry J. Crocker," described and illustrated by Fred J.
Melville, London, 1908.
[20] "The Stamp Collector," by W. J. Hardy and E. D. Bacon, 1897.
X
ROYAL AND
NATIONAL
COLLECTIONS