FOR STAMP COLLECTORS

Evening Star, Issue 20653, 28 November 1930, Page 2

FOR STAMP COLLECTORS

[By Watermark.] Any hews, notes, and items of philatelic interest will always bo appreciated. Address care Editor. Dominican Republic. —Special stamps are to be issued in aid of victims of the great hurricane which devastated the city of San Domingo on September 3. They will be engraved and printed by the American Bank Note Company, and the issue will be a limited one. Irish Free State.—The new commemorative stamp of this country was issued on October 16. Its face value is 2d, its colour agate, and its design (in oblong format) a view of the weir near O’Brien’s Bridge. The first postage stamps to carry the head of King Carol 11. were put into use by the Rumanian Post Office on September 19, printed in rotogravure, So far six values have been issued, showing a portrait of toe King attired in the uniform of toe Rumanian Flying Newfoundland. —A new provisional air mail stamp appeared in this colony on September 25 in the form of the obsolete 36 cents postage stamp surcharged “ 50 cents ” for air post purposes only. The International Philatelic Exhibition at Montevideo has again been postponed. It has now been decided to hold it in April, 1931. . H,M. the King of Spam: was president of the Committee of Honour of. the National Philatelic Exhibition which was held in Barcelona in May last. The gum used for the sixpenny Great Britain embossed issue of 1847 was tinted so that the printer might not make toe mistake of embossing stamps on toe wrong side of toe paper. The earliest portrait of King Edward on postage stamps came from Newfoundland in 1866, and that of King George V. from toe same colony in 1899. Abraham Lincoln, a familiar friend in our albums, was once a postmaster. This office he held at New Salem, Illinois, in 1883. Surety the strangest post office everl The mail was carried in his hat, so that when he was asked for a letter all that became necessary was toe lifting of his headgear and searching for the same. So we have an instance of a “ travelling post office,” for Lincoln could go wherever he wished and yet be in his office. It would be. amusing to know how he would fare if that particular town was postally circularised one morning. r . In honour of the sixtieth birthday of King Christian X. new postage stamps bearing his likeness within an oval frame of wafer-like design were introduced into Denmark on September 26 last, and will temporarily replace toe regular stamp senes of that country during a period of twelve months from that date. The,face values of the set of toe ; Royal birthday stamps (ten in number) conform to those of the superseded set. ; Two of the record prices realised at a stamp Auction in London for the season 1929-80 were £660 for the unique unused block of nine of toe 1c dull red of British Guiana (1858-59), and £550 for the* tenth recorded copy of the 4d “ inverted swan ” error of West Australia. A certain Australian stamp periodical, in recording the new issues of Yenjen; in Arabia, stated: “ Having declared- itsHlf independent of ; China,” etc. ‘And the editor 6f this 'particular journal is a noted philatelic “ big gun,” tool British Solomon Islands. —A 4£d denomination is about to be added to toe contemporary postage and revenue stamp series, printed in brown in the existing King’s head type. This may prove to be the forerunner of similar issues by other British protectorates and by toe dominions. It is reported that a 4]d stamp for combined postage and registration, may be restored to the British home series. Russia. —On the occasion of the recent flight by the airship Graf Zeppelin from Friedrichshafen to Moscow two special stamps were issued by the Soviet authorities in September—4o and 80 kopeks—and of the 50,000 copies printed of each denomination a considerable number was spoilt in transit from Moscow to Berlin owing to, the case containing them being left out in toe rain for the whole of one night. A Peruvian Mistake.—When Peru decided recently that she must issue some special stamps in connection with the Pan-American Child Congress which was to be held at Lima she forgot to reckon up the series of congresses correctly. Actually this is the sixth of .these 1 gatherings, but on the stamps it is described as the seventh. The stamps themselves are not very attractive, and toe four values were all sold out in Lima within a very short time.