Part Of Royal Stamp Collection On View

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30911, 18 November 1965, Page 22

Part Of Royal Stamp Collection On View

[London correspondent of “The Press.”]

LONDON, Nov. 11.

Part of the Royal stamp collection which has just gone on its first public exhibition in the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, has been authoritatively described as “the cat’s whiskers.” Authoritatively because the comment came from Sir John Wilson. 67-year-old Keeper of the Royal Philatelic Collection for more than 27 years.

The exhibition illustrates the history of postage stamps and postal covers in their first 40 years in Britain. The founder of the collection was King George V, and the copy of the 1891 Stanley Gibbons catalogue, specially bound for his use, Is in the stamp room with his ticks alongside his stamps. Letter From King

Also in the exhibition is a letter written by the King when he was Prince of Wales, to Mr J. A. Tilleard, first keeper of the collection. It was addressed in a bold hand from York Cottage, Sandringham, on January 14, 1904, and concerned the King’s bid for the 2d. "Post Office Mauritius.” “You can send me a telegram here if you have secured the ‘Post Office,’ ’” wrote the Prince. “Better say merely ‘Stamp is yours.’ ” Evidently the Prince did not want people to know what he paid for the two-penny stamp, but the price in 1904 was £l4so—today it might fetch £30.000, Sir John Wilson estimates.

In a letter to Mr Tilleard in 1903 the Prince said: “... but remember that I wish to have the best collection and not one of the best collections in England.”

The philatelic curiosity in the exhibition is the only known used example of the 2d Tyrian plum. This new design was to have been issued on May 6, 1910, in Edward VIIs reign, but he died early that morning. Stopped Issue The stamp had gone to all the post offices, but they managed to stop the issue and withdraw the lot. However, the day before one of the Prince of Wales’s friends had persuaded somebody in the Post Office to

release him a copy before the date of issue and had addressed it to the Prince on an envelope at Marlborough House. “When the envelope arrived, the Prince of Wales was King.” The friend may have been the 26th Earl of Crawford and Balcarries. the leader at that time of the scientific and historical approach to stamp collecting. The Queen today has a personal stamp collection, according to Sir John Wilson —“she sticks her own stamps in.” He did not know whether the Royal children had their own albums. According to some reports the keeper would probably prefer the children to learn something of the history which the stamps illustrate before they began collections. And in any case it is easy to understand Sir John Wilson’s point that members of the Royal family were apt to feel that personal collections would be a little “puny” alongside the extremely valauable Royal collection.