POSTAGE STAMPS.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17700, 28 February 1923, Page 12

POSTAGE STAMPS.

A YEAR'S HARVEST,

(Bv Fred J. in London "Daily Telegraph.")

' The rear that if Posing lias been an eventful one, opening up niu-h new interest for the devotees of tlw postage stani:;. The now of new issues nas Kept tie general collector well occupied m keeping pace with novelties as they have appeared, and the sum of these is probably as high, as during cr.y year since I9ld. Fresh pages have had to b c opened up to accommodate new stamp-issuing countries. The Irish Provisional tiove.nuient- and Irish Free State issues are tiie most notable ot these. The first provisional were issued in Dubim on February 17tu, and the first Free estate stamp, in the map desien, on December 6th. The map was misleading in Uister without denoting any boundary-line, and within a few days the stamp was withdrawn and replaced by a '2d stamp or Great Britain, bearing a new overprint, "Saorstat Eireann 1922'' (meaning '•lrish Free State"). The change was made without any official notice being issued to the public, and I learn that all the current British values will be issued with similar overprint.

Other new countries the Colonies which have made their philatelic debut during the year are B&fouda, Kenya, Karelia. Tanganyika, and Ascension. All except the last have been dealt with m this column, but it is worthy of note that for Kenya and Tanganyika a newcoinage system was introduced in place of annas and rupees, and consists of cents and shillings, ICO cents equalling Is. Ascension's first stamps are only just to' hand. Hitherto this small island has been under tne control of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, and its posts have been conducted as on a warship, and English stamps have been used. Henceforth it will be administered from St. Helena, and ttie first issue consists of the old-type stamps of St. Helena (with views of Government House or the Wharf), overprinted across the top "Ascension" in black or red. Of these I have had the id green and black, Id green, IJd red, 2d grey and black, 3d blue, 8d lilac and black, Is black on green paper, 2s blue and black on bine paper, and 3s violet and black. As my readers may remember, St. Helena obtained a set ot stamps in a new design last summer, and no doubt any subsenuent supply of Ascension stamps will be overprinted on the new style of stamps. Colonial Stamp Changes. Collectors of British Colonial stamps have received numerous additions to their collections, due in the main to several changes of a technical character in the manufacture of our Colonial | issues. A large number of the stamps j have appeared during the year with tne new script "C. A." (Crown Agents) water-mark; many others are due to the changes of postal tariff involving new values in some cases, and alterations of colour schemes in others. There has been an unusual lack of uniformity in the colours of stamps of such values as id, Id, lid, 2d, 2id, and 3d sent out by the Crown, Agents to different Colonies. In former days these all conformed to a uniform colour scheme, which has been upset to sdiSe extent, in the divers efforts to adopt the new tariffs of the Universal Postal Union, which ar e complicated by currency questions. Yet another circumstance that has provided many new varieties of Colonial stamps is the experimenting with various coloured papers, especially the yellow and the green papers, on which certain denominations ar e printed. The latest kind of yellow paper caused a mild sensation in one Eastern Colony recently, when the postal authorities discovered copies of a mauve stamp on white paper which should have been on yellow. Forgery was at once suspected; the stamps were traced to the user, who had noticed nothing unusual about them, but remembered that they had received an accrdentel bath. The yellow pigment is. soluble m water, and after a few minutes immersion'a white paper is produced; this will no doubt be a Source of much confusion to collectors in the future, as they will find white paper varieties that are not in the catalogues and will be at a loss to account for

In addition to the new Colonies and countries new eras have opened for Malta and Egypt. Early in the year ' • *°£ ,f tanj Ps of Malta wer e overprinted "Self-Government," and were superseded by definitive stamps of native design m August, Egypt, £tter having been transferred f£m the foreign section of albums and cataBritish Empire section, las now been retransferred to th e "foreign." The ■tKyptian stamps have been overprinted with a crownuTndan Arabic ir*£i pt £n" signifying "Kingdom of Egypt." As a small set-off against all these avenues for new varieties, we can now close several pages in our albums as the year has brought the separate jsauea for Montenegro Serbia, and the f«E3S post offices in China to an end Tne general issues for the Kingdom of the Serbs Croats and Slovenes do duty for Greater Serbia. China will now induct all her own postal affairs, and'we have seen the last of the nunWul British, French, Italian, JaZ£f Russian, American, and German 0 S printed issues which were used in the foreign post offices. tiw