OUR OLD STAMPS

Evening Post, Volume 105, Issue 4, 6 January 1928, Page 9

OUR OLD STAMPS

FORTUNES IN LABELS A UNIVERSAL HOBBY The paragraph published a few days ago, to the effect that for a mere song two of New Zealand's earliest postagestamps had been acquired by a lucky collector, brings to the fore again a hobby that kings and schoolboys alike indulge in. • To tho superior person a postage-stamp may be only a dirty bit of coloured paper, but to- the enlightened collector a stamp album is something more than a glorified form of scrap book. It is to him a compendium of fascinating knowledge and a mine of information. Its variegated contents bring vividly before him the history, geography, polities, peoples, and. customs of the lands from which they emanate, together with a thousand-and-one curious, and sometimes romantic, incidents. These tiny bits of gummed paper arc silent recorders of tho progress of nations. Tho modest postage-label had its origin less than 100 years ago, Britain's first stamp being issued in 1840. The postage-stamp is now something more than a mere form of official receipt for money paid: it is a symbol of deep significance for those to whom its mysteries are revealed. It has become ono of the most powerful aids to communication that the genius of man has produced, commanding tho services of tho fastest trains and steamers and, in the days of progress, of aeroplanes too.' In the early «days of postage-stamps comparatively few were printed and used, and no one anticipated that some day there would bo collectors of post-age-stamps all the world over. Had this been foreseen, the foundation of many a fortune could havo been laid, for many an early stamp now costs a hundred pounds or more to buy, some even thousands. Tho first of New Zealand's stamps are not amongst the world's rarities, but none tho less they are very hard to acquire in good condition, and they are consequently valuable. At the beginning of ISSI a "Gazette" proclamation foreshadowed the introduction in New Zealand of "a system of prepayment, of letters by stamps." Four and a-half years elapsed, however, before the first New Zealand postagestamps were issued (July, 1855). They were engraved by that splendid craftsman, William Humphries, and bore the head of Queen Victoria in robes of State, and were printed in London. The steel plates for producing stamps of the values of Id, 2d, and one shilshilling were sent out to the Colony, and in the same year local printings were made by Mr. J.. Eichardson in Auckland. A few years later a sixpenny stamp was added for postage to England, for mails going to Southampton. Then a3d stamp was added as a supplementary, fed for letters dispatched by the quicker route via Marseille!. In 1862 the printing of New Zealand's postage-stamps was. undertaken by the. Government instead of being left, to private 'firmer,. This- was done in Auckland first, and .finally, in Wellington after the scat of Government was transferred in 1865. Since that date tho Government Printing Office has produced all tho colonially-piinted issues of New Zealand postage-stamps. The first stamp designed, engraved, and printed entirely in New Zealand was tho old halfpenny newspaper ' stamp, first issued nearly 60 years, ago.