£20,000 STAMP COLLECTION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15551, 7 March 1914, Page 5 (Supplement)

£20,000 STAMP COLLECTION.

RELICS OF A COMPETITION.

In the year 1839 the Lords of the British Treasury organised a competition with prizes of £200 and £100, for suggestons for the best means ' of putting into practice Rowland Hill's ideas concerning prepaid letter«sending. . Many of . the, entries received' in this competition, which had' 2600 entrants, were to be seen recently when. Mr. R. B. Sparrow exhibited to the members of the Junior Philatelic Society some portion of his £20,000 purchase of the late Earl of Crawford's collection.

The display consisted of "Great Britain Postage Stamps, Proofs and Essays," and to the few uninitiated members of an ardent stamp-collecting audience it proved intensely interesting to find the various experimental stages of a stamp before it was launched on the country for sale. Even when—perhaps, after numberless trials and minor alterations— design of a stamp had been decided upon it might be printed in half a dozen colours for the purpose of determining the best shade for the issue. On the other hand a new stamp might possess little which was actually new, being nothing more than a fution of two or three other stamps.

Many crumbs of infnimation were to be picked up by the non-collector as to what made a stamp of value. There were, for instance, six English stamps issued in 1864 which Mr. Sparrow spoke of as bo-' ing worth £250. In the year mentioned two sheets of stamps were sent to Cardiff which were not perforated, though they should have been, and it is this irregularity that gives value to the "Cardiff Red." Yet another example is furnished by an issue of a lOd stamp in 1867 printed upon the wrong paper. Of these four only are known to exist, and the value of one is £175.