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Stamps of Wild Approval

By SIMON GARFIELD

source: WSJ Digital Network

右圖: 這兩枚1847年模里西斯的郵票於1993年以四百萬美金創紀錄的高價售出。信上這橘紅色的一便士和籃色的兩便士郵票並列在一起。pence 是penny 的複數。
This pair of 1847 Mauritius stamps sold for a record $4 million in 1993.

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How tough can it be to be king? If we take the example of Britain's George V, the answer may be: not very. During his reign (1910-36), George was known to spend about four hours a day with his stamp collection. On royal tours, his lackeys let receiving heads of state know that if they wanted to present the monarch with a gift, George would gladly forgo the usual engraved salver in favor of a rare philatelic specimen from Antigua or the Cape of Good Hope. In February 1908, when he was still the Duke of York, George wrote to a friend regarding the purchase of some stamps from Barbados: "Remember, I wish to have the best collection, and not one of the best collections in Britain."

"lackeys" - 僕人; 阿諛者。 "forgo" - 放棄,拋棄。 "salver" - 托盤。"Barbados" 巴貝多(拉丁美洲國家)。


By then he was already well on his way, having acquired in 1904 -- for the unheard-of sum of £1,450 -- an essential component of any great stamp collection: the two-pence "Post Office" Blue Mauritius. As Helen Morgan writes in her enticing history of the little square of paper and the people who have pursued it, the Blue Mauritius was issued in 1847 by the then British-ruled island nation in the southwest Indian Ocean. Ms. Morgan notes that the stamp, of which 13 are known to exist, is a thousand times rarer than the famed Penny Black, the world's first adhesive stamp, issued in Britain in 1840.


Stamp collecting began in earnest soon after the issuing of the Penny Black. By the end of the 19th century the pastime had spread around the world -- and the Blue Mauritius was already much coveted. George V's stamp, which remains in the British royal collection, is "considered the finest known example," according to a note in the "Blue Mauritius" appendix, which gives a brief description of who bought and sold each stamp and for how much money. But by the appendix stage the reader knows that Ms. Morgan's book is actually dealing with not one type of Mauritius stamp but two -- and with one of the most romantic stories in the whole of philately.


The tale begins with the glamorous ball held in Port Louis, Mauritius, in 1847 by Lady Gomm, the wife of the island's British governor, Sir William Gomm. Not content with the prospect of a big party, she wanted special stamps to put on the admission cards sent to her invited guests. Thus was born the one-penny orange-red and the two-pence blue, establishing Mauritius as only the fifth country in the world to issue postage stamps. The two-pence blue, which was modeled on a British stamp but was of far cruder design, bore six words along the border: "Postage" on top, "Two Pence" on the bottom, "Mauritius" on the right and "Post Office" -- the phrase often used by collectors as shorthand for the Mauritius stamps -- on the left.


These days a British colony would probably carry a picture of an indigenous species, or an extinct one, which in the case of Mauritius would have been the dodo. In 1847, it was a badly drawn portrait of Queen Victoria with something approaching a double chin. It is believed that 500 stamps of each value and color were printed. (Ms. Morgan says that 26 examples -- 13 of each -- are known to exist, with a 27th, a one-penny, listed in the appendix as "Limbo I," because it seems to have been badly damaged when someone tried to remove the cancellation chemically.) The Mauritius stamps were not much sought-after until 1865, when a market for them was established by French collectors.


Though the orange-red and blue stamps were equally rare, the Blue Mauritius soon acquired a more highly valued mystique. "Perhaps it was merely a preference for the colour blue, long associated with royalty and considered a costly pigment," Ms. Morgan writes. George V's expenditure on it "set the two-pence's star firmly in the ascendancy," she notes.


Since then, the value of the Blue Mauritius has gone nuts. What, beyond rarity, accounts for this lust for something so simple and small, of no inherent worth? As a stamp collector myself, and one who has spent many hours dreaming of rare stamps made valuable because they were printed in error, I can honestly say that I have no idea. The fever grips you at a tender age and never lets go. The desire to accrue has led at least one famous collector to the asylum.


Ms. Morgan, an Australian, does not class herself as a stamp collector, but she can proudly claim to be a philatelist -- that is, someone who cares a great deal about postal history. Her book, which is as much travel memoir as detective story, was sparked by her marriage to a Mauritian man and a trip to the island at the time of the opening of a museum dedicated to the stamps.


She became enthralled by one story in particular, involving a French schoolboy who discovered, in 1902, one of the orange-red and two of the blue Mauritius stamps in the correspondence of a Bordeaux wine merchant. In 1993, one of the letters, bearing the orange-red and one of the blues side by side, was sold for $4 million, a philatelic record. Who among us, upon reading of this adventure, can resist another quick once-over through those musty family letters in the attic?

"philatelic" - 集郵的。