Stamp Collecting as a Pastime | Page 7

second overprinting of
South African Republic stamps "V.R.I.", to signalise once more, and
finally, the supremacy of British rule in South Africa. The Mafeking
stamps are also interesting souvenirs of a gallant stand in the same
historical struggle.

The war which Chili some years ago carried into Bolivia and Peru has
been marked in a special manner upon the postage stamps of Chili. As
in the case of our own troops in South Africa, so the Chilian troops in
Bolivia and Peru were allowed to frank their letters home with the
stamps of their own country. So also the Chilians further overprinted
the stamps of Peru with the Chilian arms during their occupation of the
conquered country in the years 1881-2. Chilian stamps used along the
route of the conquering army, and postmarked with the names of the
towns occupied, are much sought after by specialists. These postmarks
include Arica, Callao, Iquique, Lima, Paita, Pisagua, Pisco, Tacna, Yca,
etc.
And so the stamp collector may turn over the pages of his stamp album,
and point to stamp after stamp that marks, for him, some development
of art, some crisis in a country's progress, some struggle to be free, or
some great upheaval amongst rival powers. In fact, every stamp issued
by a country is, more or less, a page of its history.
[Illustration:]

[Illustration:]
VII.
Stamps with a History.
There are numbers of stamps that have an interesting history of their
own. They mark some official experiment, some curious blunder or
accident, some little conceit, some historical event, or some crude and
early efforts at stamp production.
What is known as the V.R. Penny black, English stamp, is said to have
been designed as an experiment in providing a special stamp for official
use, its official character being denoted by the initials V.R. in the upper
corners; but the proposal was dropped, and the V.R. Penny black was
never issued. For a long time it was treasured up as a rarity by
collectors, but now that its real claims to be regarded as an issued

stamp have been finally settled, it is no longer included in our stamp
catalogues. In the days of its popularity it fetched as much as £14 at
auction. It is now relegated to the rank of an interesting souvenir of the
experimental stage in the introduction of Penny Postage.
Of curious blunders, the Cape of Good Hope errors of colours are
amongst the most notable. In 1861 the 1d. and 4d. triangular stamps,
then current, were suddenly exhausted, and before a stock could be
obtained from the printers in England, a temporary supply had to be
provided locally. This was done by engraving imitations of the
originals. Stereos were then taken, and made up into plates for printing.
By an oversight a stereo of the penny value was dropped into the
fourpenny plate and a fourpenny into the penny plate. Consequently,
each sheet printed in the required red ink from the penny plate yielded a
fourpenny wrongly printed in red instead of blue, its proper colour; and
every sheet of the fourpenny likewise yielded a penny stamp printed in
blue instead of red. These errors are highly prized by collectors, and are
now extremely scarce, even poor specimens fetching from £50 to £60.
At the time, copies were sold by dealers for a few shillings each.
Similar errors are known in the stamps of other countries.
Now and again the sheets of a particular value have, by some
extraordinary oversight, been printed and issued in the wrong colour. In
1869 copies of the 1s. of Western Australia were printed in bistre
instead of in green, and a few years later the twopence was discovered
in lilac instead of yellow. In 1863 a supply of shilling stamps was sent
out to Barbados printed in blue instead of black; but this latter error
was, according to Messrs. Hardy and Bacon, so promptly discovered,
that it is doubtful if any of the wrong colour were issued for postal use.
In 1896 the fastidiously careful firm of De la Rue and Co. printed off
and despatched to Tobago a supply of 6,000 one shilling stamps in the
colour of the sixpenny, i.e. in orange-brown instead of olive-yellow.
Several are said to have been issued to the public before the error had
been noticed. Indeed, the firm at home is credited with having first
discovered the mistake, and is said to have telegraphed to the colony in
time to prevent their issue in any quantity.

Another and much more common error in the early days of stamp
production was the careless placing of one stamp on a plate upside
down. Stamps so placed are termed tête-bêche. They have to be
collected in pairs to show the error. The early stamps of France