Stamp Collecting.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLI, Issue 6, 5 August 1908, Page 8

Stamp Collecting.

Four new stamps are reported as completing the new set: 3d,light pink; 3/ deep violet; 10/ bluish green; and £2, red brovm. • • • For the use of the French post office in Morocco the new 1,2, 3, 4 c. stamps have inscribed “Maroe” instead of “peetes.” • • • ’A ten-dollar stamp has been issued in Jahore for postage and revenue purposes. It is doubtful if this will be much used for franking letters. • • • A new issue of stamps is reported from Persia. The design is like the former one, but the centra is occupied by the portrait of the new Shah. The values are 2 kran, dark green; 3, blue; 4. yellow; 5, dark brown; 10, rose; 20, black; and 30, violet. Previously the 1 kran, 0. 9. 10. 13 and 26 ch. were isued of thia set. • • • Refer:' g again to the King Edward ■ VII. Laud stumps taken by Lieutenant

Shackleton’s party and sent beck by the Nimrod, which left before the land' had* been reached, the “Loivden Phila.teliet”’ has the folllowing: “The credit (?) of this absurd travesty remains with the New Zealand authorities, and forms another chapter in the remarkable postal history of that eolony.” • • • Of the new issues of stamps in 1907, which totalled 899, only 269 emanate from the British Umpire. • • • A id green stamp armistype and Id rose have been ordered for Bermuda, and the next 2Jd will be entirely in blue in accordance with Postal Union arrangements. • • • The face value of the new set of stamps for Zanzibar is £3O. There are four designs, and the highest value is £ 13 10/. Probably the higher values may turn out to be only fiscals. • • • The 1 mark pale mauve stamp of Bavaria 1876-9, unused, sold for £5 15/ in London at auction. • • • "Judged by outward indications of tho last two years, philately and its literature are booming to an extent scarcely thought of even at the end of last century, when stamp collecting had been increasing by leaps and bounds from the period of the jubilee celebration of the first uniform postal rate in the United Kingdom. The permanency of this collecting hobby is scarcely doubtful no.*>, though many reforms are still want, ing in methods adopted by those who collect, and in the procedure of many of those who supply the articles offered, which some of us have warned others of for many years past. The trials of single and doubly fugitive inks, surfaced and ordinary papers with the multiple watermarks, etc., have caused much speculative buying; while others, impressed by the treasures publicly exhibited two years ago, have been going so heavily for all the old issues, that many dealers’ stocks have been denuded of their best specimens, and their scarcity is causing a decreased demand until stocks can be replenished.”—“Stamp Collector.” • • • A set of 16 stamps was issued by the Spanish settlement Rio de Oro on the West Coast of Africa in 1905, the values ranging from 1 eentesimo up to 10 pesetas. Two yeans later another set was issued, and later on some Provisionals. The real philatelic value of these stamps may be gathered from the following extract from an article that appeared in the “Deutsche Briefmarken Zeitung,” headed “Can continuously perpetrated bold swindles be suppressed?” “The Spanish Gold Coast ( that is Rio de Ord) harbours only 30 whites, of which possibly only five to ten can write, viz.: two officers, two commercial gentlemen, one priest, and probably five out of the 25 Spanish soldiers stationed there. The Spanish military administration of the sandy West Coast of Africa is very likely established merely for the protection of fishermen coming as far as there from the Canary Islands. Moreover, the military station is the only existing settlement. Close to the station is a native village, the inhabitants of which standing socially very low. Dried fishes, also some shells and mussels are the sole export articles from Rio de Oro, and the only steamship communication is with Las Palmas twice monthly. It is certain no stamps of Rio de Oro have up to 17th October, 1906, been used at the station, and even on December 18, 1906, ordinary .Spanish stamps have still been used officially, though it was then made known that Rio de Oro stamps were to be issued on the Ist January, 1907. If they really were issued on New Year’s Day, 1907, we could not ascertain.” • • • Replying to this, the editor of the journal gets home neatly with the wellmerited comment: — "King Edward will doubtless be delighted to learn that his fellow-citizens (to use the word "subjects” would doubtless give dire offence) in the Antipodes regard him with a friendly, if somewhat patronising, eye; but we can assure our confrere, whose ideas of courtly etiquette are perhaps founded upon those prevalent in the South Sea

Islands, that in this quarter of the global neither “military men,” nor thoee who desire to be extra livil, "fall dow» «■ their knees and worship” their kiogt AU these violent professions of independence, on the part of people who seem to be afraid to be courteous for fear of being thought servile, have really, nothing to do with the case. The question is what is the most appropriate emblem to be placed upon the stamps ef a very important part of the British Empire.” The following extract is from the Toronto “Mail and Empire” of April 2.— "Postage stamps valued at upwards of 100,000d01., forming a consignment in process of shipment from New York to Newfoundland, have been washed ashore at the (Island Cuttyhunk from the wreck of the steamer Silvia. The stamps are of the current Newfoundland issue, and were being shipped by the American Bank Note Co., of New York, to the Newfoundland Government.. They came ashore several days ago in> a single box, which was cast aside by the male wreckers, but was quickly seized by the women. Many sheets of the stamps have been given away, and; some are said to have been sold. They are in two and five-cent. denominations. One woman is said to have possession of all the five-cent. stamps, valued at £80,060. The stamps are not listed, on the ship’s manifest, the insurance adjusters here state, but were shipped as cash in charge of the purser of tho steamer.”