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The
Novice and the Hitman
Charles
Smith takes a
humorous look at planning
a collection with some good advice
about sources and costs.
Inheriting
a small collection can help
I
remember my grandfather well. He
was a big rather stern man in the wool trade, a Victorian to his boot tips.
Oddly for so big a man he also collected postage stamps, not in a very
determined way, but as they came to him through his connections in the wool
trade. Unsurprisingly I was to find that
Australia
figured largely in the collection! After
he died I inherited his rather elegant stamp album.
By then of course I had a family of my own, and the album remained in
the bottom drawer carefully wrapped and carefully hidden.
It might never have been opened but for Lawrence Block!
Have you read “Hit Man”? Do read it.
Block’s hero is a hit man guided by a hard talking wise cracking Mum
figure. When things get a little
fraught she recommends a hobby, reminding him that he collected stamps as a
child, an unlikely idea for so tough a character. Well, to shorten a long
story and to leave you to enjoy the quirky plot, he finances his collection by
contract assassination - and I suspect that this where we say “don’t try
this at home”.
The Belgians – never on a Sunday!
I was first amused, and then taken by a little story he tells of the
Belgians who once issued stamps that had a tag at the bottom.
If you wanted the letter delivered on a Sunday you paid a little more
and left the tag in place. Otherwise
in Sunday observance, no tag, and the postman kept the letter until Monday.
It sounded so improbable that out of curiosity I fetched out the stamp
album and, good Heavens, grandfather had collected a couple of these odd
Belgian stamps. I was charmed -
and hooked from that moment.
I started to collect the Post Office’s monthly offerings, found others,
began to put together a world wide collection.
But it all became much too big and I cast about for a better way to get
involved.
Beautiful examples of the engraver’s art
 Looking through Grandfather’s collection it came to me that some of the
early Empire and Commonwealth stamps were actually the most beautiful examples
of the engraver’s art, albeit in miniature.
A few minutes with a computer scanner and there enlarged on my screen
were wonderful things, as much a revelation to me as Tutankhamun was to
Carter. Here is an example from the
West Indies
. Do you like it as much as I do?
So
now I had to have a plan and in the end it went like this:
I
would cut my serious collecting teeth on one or two countries only.
I would choose a period and a country where the stamps were as beautiful
as these.
I would pick a small country with just a few stamp designs, so that I
could have examples of each – not all the stamps mark you – that might be
well beyond my purse.
I would choose one where there were few high values for the same reason.
And I would choose a cut off date – just as Block’s hit-man did – mine too
was 1952; the end of George VI’s reign.
Islands of the Commonwealth
I decided to look into collecting the stamps of the
Commonwealth
Islands
and was astonished to discover just how far the
British Empire
had once cast its net – from Ascension to the
Cook Islands
, perhaps ten thousand miles between them.
An old atlas in which much of the world was coloured pink, and the
Stanley Gibbon’s Commonwealth catalogue, soon produced a list.
Barbados was a good place to
start, just 36 designs before 1952
In the end I settled for
Barbados
of which you have seen an example, and
Bermuda
because it has beautiful ship stamps.
These two collections are coming together nicely.
I will tell you abut
Barbados
since that is where I started and your collecting might follow a similar
pattern. The first pages are for
the stamps of the Victorian age. Mine
are of course thanks to my Grandfather, but stamps of the period are still
widely available and surprisingly inexpensive. The Barbadians would have none
of the pomp of Empire and sat their Britannia on a pile of sugar sacks!
Then the heads of
Victoria
as was right and proper, and next stamps celebrating her Diamond Jubilee.
These were not to be followed by the usual rather severe portraits of
Edward VII or George V as you would expect, but by an ebullient procession of
stamps bearing the badge of the colony – wonderful sea horses drawing a
chariot across the waves.
Chariots with paddle wheels!
Now note – the Barbadians change the face of the driver with each
reign, first the queen, now the bearded king and finally the shaven king –
you will have to look carefully. Did I say the horses had webbed feet? They
do, and this set of chariots also has little paddle wheels.
 To round off the group we have stamps celebrating the end of the First
World War, carrying engravings of the Victory statue from the Louvre and
another of Victory from the
Victoria
memorial outside
Buckingham
Palace
where she stands today, freshly gilded. A few pictorials fit in here,
celebrating the tercentenary –
Barbados
was settled in 1625 –and the island as it is now.
To bring us up to 1952 there are large and small
stamps of George V and the same for George VI, all with tropical beaches and
Palm trees, and of course our old friends the sea horses.
Altogether there are just thirty six designs in our period, which is not
too bad, and we can set about having examples of each.
A word about those high
values.
 In a Bermuda collection there is a set of so called key-lines by De la
Rue, beautiful things in which the monarch’s head could be changed from
reign to reign. Stamps like this
were used across the Empire and Commonwealth. Yes, they are expensive, but
just one example from each reign will go into the collection for the time
being.
Which brings us to sources
and costs.
First, you will need a catalogue. Mine
was second hand and cost very little but new research goes on all the time and
I would recommend that you add the Stanley Gibbons Empire Stamp Catalogue
1840-1936. There is enough detail
here without being overwhelming. An
atlas is essential. For this
period find an old one in a charity shop because it will have the original
names of many of these countries. Buy
a good magnifying glass and a pair of stamp collector’s tweezers.
Don’t buy an album yet. That
can wait until your collection has begun to take shape.
Instead buy a couple of stock books – W H Smith have nice examples in
which you can move stamps around freely.
Set yourself a budget and
stick to it
The cost of stamps varies hugely. Set yourself a budget and stick to it.
Out of your budget try to buy the best example of each stamp that you
can afford. There is a lot of
helpful advice on this subject to be had from a little reading in your
library. In
the end I did what I should have done in the first place and joined a local
philatelic society.
How welcoming they were! There
is sure to be one near you and I recommend it strongly.
Make use of the club packet
system
Most clubs have a packet system, under which members pass around their
unwanted stamps often for a few pence at a time and here is the nucleus of
your collection. Stamp collectors
are endlessly helpful to each other and my collection has grown through the
kindness of friends. I am sure
yours would too. Stamp shops, approvals, catalogues are all available to you
as your experience grows.
Using E-bay
Other sources include E-bay. This
is an excellent source of stamps but remember to set yourself severe limits.
With E-bay be patient and have a look at the lots for at least a month
before you buy anything. Similar
offerings come along on E-bay all the time, so if the first lot isn’t within
your price range there will certainly be others.
You can also use the internet to look around the auction houses for
your chosen country. Don’t be
surprised at the prices for some of the lots, they are often for varieties,
the best available, but many of these houses also provide beautiful
photographs which you can use to identify your own material.
(And I have a chum who set up a virtual stamp collection – cost
nothing!)
But don’t do this at home
As for those high values, the special varieties, the early pieces, they
are all beyond my budget. It
doesn’t matter at all, I so much enjoy what I have ... but ‘er ...
yesterday I saw a lovely example of that De La Rue key-line for Bermuda,
glowing with rich purple and blue colours like some large exotic butterfly –
perhaps now is the time for a little assassination?
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Guildford
& District Philatelic Society