PHILATELY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2817, 11 March 1908, Page 70

PHILATELY.

Bt Pkmjejs. >■ —

A Dunedin collector recently received the following epistle from Bavaria: — "Sir, — If you address to me rare elder poetalcards, you will get same number-of the rare Bavarian bookpostcards 3 printed directly on 2 Pfg., covering about this stamp, Should this offer not be of interest for you, you may tie so kind to hame it .over to a stamp collector no ho will- surely be very tankfull j to your. Obliged adavance,— Yours truly, .Otto Brothers." The South Wales and Monmouthshire Society arc fortunate in having enlisted the warm sympathy and co-operation of the municipal authorities of Cardiff in their efforts to promote an annual philatelio exhibition in the town. It is now definitely Announced that the first of these annual shows will be held at the Cardiff Corporation Museum on January 28° of next year. It -will bo quite a modest affair, this first exhibition — purely local, and confined to members of the society. But the society hope it will grow into an important annual funotion — and so <io I! At the society's annual meeting on November 25, by the iway, Mr E. P. Crowtber, who Is acting as ihon. secretaery of the Exhibition Committee, remarked that as far as he knew this ;Wae the first occasion on which municipal support had been given to philately. Lie Timbre-Post, the first journal printed in the French language, was commenced by !M. Moena on February 15, 1863, and was continued without a break till December, 2900. This publication deservedly occupies a. high position with philatelists. Thirtyeight volumes were published, some of which are out of print. There is an edition on coloured paper, each month of a volume being printed in a different colour, but it is scarce. How many stamps of British New Guinaa «reie surcharged "Paupua"? There were E9490 of the id, 70,170 of the 2d, 25,230 of the 2&d, 8100 of the 4d, 11,550 of the 6d, 13,590 of the le, and 13,410 of the 2s 6d. The 4d stamp is the rarest. Then comes the 6d. The commonest is the 2d. It is said that no more can be surcharged, because the above totals include all that remained of the old issue, and no further . printing is likely to take place in England. !A new design is to be expected. Happy as "the man who has the eet complete. "When the British authorities /took over jthe management of the Fiji Islands on October 10, 1574, the change was -.signalised philatelicftlly by the postage stamps being toyerprinted "V.R." The surcharged issue jof January, 1872, was then in use, but as money, weights, etc., had, on the annexation, to conform to British standards, the , surcharged values, though not cancelled, were ignored officially, aim the stamp© considered to be of their original face value. ■The overprints, applied locally, were of two types—Gothic capitals or Roman capitals — and the stamps are scarce, particularly fche 3d. The latter is probably so because St w*s in use hut a short-time, the value not being required, and its place being itaken by a 2d, made by surcharging the 3d with this value. When the stock of 3d stamps -gave out the 6d was utilised for the surcharging. Here, again, the stamps are rare, the black surcharges particularly So, but all are of great interest owing to /various typographical errors in the composition of the overprints and surcharges. From the editorial articles in the latest (Metropolitan Philatelist we gather that many stamp "collections have been deposited as security for loans— or, in plainer English, pawned, during the recent monetary stringency in America. "We have saved three well-known collectors from serious loss," says our contemporanr, "and are J prepared to help others of Ijir customers ] who have need of cash." The moral is Brawn that a good stamp collection is always a valuable asset to fall hack upon Jin a time of t*«nporar*- nred. t)eparted.— Stamp collectors have read of the death of Sweden's worthy ruler, the (venerable King Oscar, whom they had come ito know so well from his portrait on the Sater issues of that estimable country. They mourn the loss of the kindly and Scultured man most sincerely, even though they may soon give thought to the prospective changes in the issues by reason of King Oscar's death. It is proposed to abolish the "ship" type at present used for all the stamps of the German colonies, and to give to every «olony its own particular type of stamp. It Ss hoped that suitable and artistic designs will he ohosen. In fact, the Durer Society Bias offered a prize of £160 for fiie hcet (designs for a series of colonial stamps for iJermanj'. If a nineteenth century collector was asked what stamps he most desired in hie i early .daye, he would usually answer, "A | set of three-cornered Capes" ; and the popularity of these still continues if judged toy the many thousands that have passed through the hands of leadinsr dealers since Hhe present century began. Mr Castle, before the Royal Philatelic Society, recently igave an account of these, or rather of the provisional usually called "wood-blocks." and a» the name is now co constantly used even in the catalogues, and many inquiries are made of editors as to the fact, a few ■words in explanation may well be given rare. Owing to an expected shortage of supply in stamps from London, the mail journey then taking at least fi^e weeks each way, and no telegraph caoles, early in 1861 a local firm was asked to prepare and did engrave two steel dies of a similar type, and reduplicated these in to make up 64 for a sheet. The engraving naturally was far from equal to the work of Messrs Perkins, Bacon, and Co., .who supplied po many millions of the 'original stamps. It is supposed that as hook illustrations in those days were called / *'wood-cuts," and these stamos were below the quality of the others, that they must Jiave been hurriedly r,roduced from wood Engravings, and so the term got fixed in people's minds. Incidentally, the writer may mention that he has some scores of

box-wood blocks engraved in the . sixties which produced results as fine as these. 1 I NEW ISSUES. Cayman Island. — Last week we chronicled a second provisional, and this week the Colonial Stamp Market has shown us a third. All the Id stamps having been surcharged id, there is now a shortage of the former, and consequently some of the 5s stamps have now "been surcharged Id. Papua. — The permanent set is beginning to make its appearance, the first specimen being shown me by Wilcox, Smith, and Co. -A-<JHesiv-e. JDosign, "Papua" inetca-cl of " Britieh New Guinea." ; the centre part is printed from the old plat-a probably whilst the frame with new title and value is litho graphed. Halfpenny : Light green and blacK, wmk. crown and double-lined A upright, jierf. 11. , Persia. — Le Journal dcs Philatelistes says that a new set of 16 values is to be iesued on January 1, 1908. - They will be from 1 ohahi to 30 krans, and the 13 chahi and higher values will bear a portrait of the new Shah. We suppose that these things are being made in Paris, and will, as usual, be on sale there long before they ever reach Teheran. French Congo.— We learn from L'Echo de la T. that -this territory has been divided into four portions : Gaboon, which has stamps already; Moyen Congo, and Tchad and Oubangui, which doubtless will be furnished with separate issues of stamps and with a few of those -enterprising officials whose eminent services (in their own estimation) are so ill-requited by an ungrateful country.