MUCH IN LITTLE

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 16, 20 January 1933, Page 2

MUCH IN LITTLE

ROMANCE OF STAMPS

SOME HIGH PRICES

Buinniaging in the family attic, ; a schoolboy in Georgetown, British Guiana, found an old envelope.on which was a one-cent stamp. He kept it for some years, and thdn sold it" to a dealer for six r'sliillings. .The-dealer.; sold it to Thomas Eidpath r :of.: Liverpool^ land,, for :£i2o; 'y'"" -^' ■■'■'-?■'- .:i::'-)si . ;ThuS John.^.."^^^ 1!^-^^*^^ Magazine,'' follows" •the' history1 -of-one famous stamp among the-tnany of-which .he writes. "This, one: happened .to- be. the only known specimen of •the'famous-one-cent, magenta, the' third "issue of the jfirst' stamp ever, put out by-British. Guiana. "'....." ~ .'"".:"",■" : To resume the.history:^ ' v' . Eidpath sold it to Count yon Fferrain for £140, and after the. World "War it was sold at auction; for; £. 6500. The purchaser- was Arthur Hinds, of ITtica, TSew York, who thus' broke all records, of prices paid for solitary stamps. Today that one-cent magenta is. catalogued as worth £10,000, Mr. Tunis tells us. The possibilities of stamps as a port^ able and not easily detected form of wealth) internationally negotiable, are illustrated .by this romance of real life:— ■:■, ■ .-, :.' -..■■..;. ~ ■::: During the revolution in Eussia a young Tsarist went quietly, about St. Petersburg buying up his friends' stamp collections. . He managed to pick up some bargains for little money, because at that time people were not thinking about stamps. The young Eussian took the cream of these collections ..with the best stamps from his own, put them in envelopes about his body, and departed.- You can carry a, lot of stamp values in one envelope if they, happen tobe the right stamps. He worked his way.to Odessa, got out as a sailor oj a boat to Constantinople, and spent some time there, selling a few valuable stamps to buy his passage to the United . States. There his stamps-had become greatly increased in value, and he sold enough in America to put himself throngh college and law school. To-day that Eussian is a prominent member of one of the oldest law firms in lower Manhattan. . .-.-.■..■■.•.-•... IN SMALL SPACE. Your collection: may .'be. valued at 5, 50, or 500 dollars] -but there :it is between the covers of a volume, that you can carry under one arm. '. Many famous collections have been so carried. When the Tsar of Eussia was banished to Ekaterinburg, after the'Bevolution, about the only thing lie took with him was his stamp collection, .wortb then somewhere around 250,000 dollars.' This was split up and later sold'in Paris by the present Eussian Government for more than three times that sum.

, Now wo are- brought nearer home with this bit of comedy-drama:— Scene: the post office in Washington Time: before 7 o'clock on the morning of Friday, Ist January, 1932. Although the building has not yet been opened officially for business, lines have already formed at every window that sells stamps. When the windows are actually raised, these lines, which are growing larger every minute, stretch clean across the floor and out to the street. At 8 o 'clock so great is the crowd that additional windows are opened, but immediately new lines form. At nine and again at ten others become available, but so rapidly does the mob of purchasers increase that by "eleven the last window has been opened, and twenty-sis long lines wind across the room. Twenty-six windows selling stamps when on a normal morning a few are sufficient! . . ° . For the first time that morning Uncle Sam was selling tho new Bicentennial issue of George Washington stamps Those slow-moving lines in the big postoffico building could be duplicated at about the same =time in the post offices of every city^ throughout tho United States. , ■ ■ •' . • ■. They were composed of stamp" collectors who were purchasing the complete set and mailing letters addressed to themselves on tho opening day of the