Jasper County Democrat, Volume 2, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 April 1899 — RARE STAMPS. [ARTICLE]

RARE STAMPS.

Immense Prices Sometimes Paid by Collectors. The rarest stamp in the world is the penny Mauritus stamp of 1847. W. H. Peckit, of London, last year paid $4,840 for one. The only other one known to be in existence is in the British Museum. The entire issue was burned by accident after but a few were used on invitation to an official ball. Four thousand four hundred dollars was the next highest price paid for a stamp, that amount being exchanged for a blue one issued by the postmaster at Baltimore before the government took charge of all stamp business. There are but two more of these, printed on white paper and worth $2,000 each. It was the custom during the civil war for Southern postmasters to issue stamps on their own responsibility to pay their own salaries and expenses. These bring from SI,OOO to $1,500 each. Hawaiian stamps of 1851, the first issue ever printed, are worth $2,500 each. A mistake in printing makes United States stamps of 1869 in fifteen, twen-ty-four, thirty and ninety cent denominations worth $l5O to SSOO each. There is no end to stamp collecting, and every year some governmental practice opens a new field. Cheap little countries change their designs sometimes twice in the course of a single year. This naturally creates a scarcity of those particular issues, and the engraving company which printed the original stamps for nothing get the benefit Th# Spanish war has also set the collectors hustling to secure complete sets. As may be remembered postage stamps with the letters “I. R.” imprinted were the first war tax stamps supplied. A later use of postage stamps of interest to collectors is the introduction of the United States Postal Service into Cuba and Puerto Rico. Our one and two cent stamps had “Cuba” printed across their face to serve until plates could be prepared, and some of these stamps are already worth $2 each. Philatelism is a fad that is constantly growing, and the natural competition thus aroused has done much to raise the prices of all rare stamps within the last few years.