SOLD £12,000 STAMP FOR SIX SHILLINGS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue LXXI, 14 September 1940, Page 2 (Supplement)

SOLD £12,000 STAMP FOR SIX SHILLINGS

A BRITISH Guiana stamp bought by an Australian in New York for £12,400 recently was originally found' by a schoolboy in British Guiana, and sold by him for six shillings. No one knows why this halfpenny stamp should be worth £12,400, but part of its value must be due to the wonderful publicity it has had. An American, Arthur Hind, who paid £10,000 for it, used to eay that no one paid any attention to him until lie bought the Guiana. After that lis was a marked man everywhere. , The stamp was printed by the postmaster of Georgetown, British Guiana, in 1850, to fill an emergency. He had run short, and a fresh supply from England was not expected for at least a month. The stamp was printed in the office of tho "Official -Gazette," from ordinary printer's type, with an ornament of a ship, removed from the head of a column devoted to shipping new 6, as tho "piece de resistance." From His Grandmother In 1872 a little boy named Vernon Vaugtian Wont to his grandmother and asked her if she had any stamps. Rummaging through the secretaire, the old lady found a bundle of letters, one bearing the stamp that had been issued during the emergency of 1856. It was magenta-coloured, and not very attractive looking, but the boy put it in his album. A few days later he decided he w.ould like to have some of the bright new stamps that the dealers in England were sending out on approval sheets. Not having any money he removed, the- halfpenny magenta from his album and took it to a Mr. McKinnon to see if he would buy it. McKinnon wasn't terribly impressed with the stamp, but, noticing the boy's eagerness, gave him 6/ for it. McKinnon sent his find to Glasgow, where it was sold at a handsome profit to a dealer, .who then 6ent it to London. Here it was sold to the famous philatelic firm of Stanley Gibbon for £300. The "British Guiana . halfpenny" now entered the really big money. Stanley Gibbon sold it to one of Europe's most

i fanatical collectors, Count von Ferrari, i a .member of the highly placed diplor matic family, for £1200. The Count died during the 1914-1918 [ war, having willed his stamp collection, then in Paris, to tho German nation, r which had agreed to provide a suitable b building to house it. But after the war the French Government stepped in. The Ferrari Collection was sequestrated and scld to Lelp pay o~ Germany's war dabt. 1 \Fhile all early Australian stamps are , not necessarily valuable, the few good , collections of issues before federation I aro worth considerable sums..The J White Collection, left to the Mitchell ' Library, Sydney, was valued tat tho t time it was taken over at £16,000. It - would now be worth much more. I ' Relics of Australia's occupation of ' New Guinea, in 1914, are a few fivemark German stamps now valued at about £100 each. ".Then the first Aus- { tralian military administration took [ over at ,Rabaul, the existing German . stamps- had to be used.. [ An overprint, G.R.1., and the value . was put on them, and they served until [_ new stamps could bo printed. Katurally only a very few five-mark stamps . were overprinted. Those who were , lucky" enough to buy them for 5/ and hold them can now cash in on a very pretty dividend. Convict Stamps Since the first postage stamp was not printed until 1840, there are few philatelic reminders of Australia's convict past. ' Some collectors, however, have in ■ their drawers West Australian stamps i of about the middle of last century with a hole punched in the middle.' The hole signifies that the sender of the letter was a convict. Free men could lick their stamps and" 1 stick them down entire. The convict had to be set apart even so far as his correspondence was concerned —hencc the hole punched into the stamp before , it was issued to him.