Local man Paddy Gastrell has a passion for philately but he worries his life-long love for stamp collecting won’t be followed in future generations.
In the 1950s the umbrella of empire still cast its shadow. So, many children accumulated stamp collections as their parents and grandparents had done before them. However this hobby, from the amateur perspective, appears to have, today, fallen into terminal decline with the advent of the digital age as emails have done away with the necessity for letters and other postal communications, apart from parcels.
There was a bit of a hiatus in the 1960s and 1970s as traditional “bucket and spade” holidays on the British coast were replaced by cheap travel to exotic destinations on the Mediterranean and beyond, followed by colourful postcards and stamps to friends and family.
Do you remember those exotic outposts in Africa such as Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika, Rhodesia and Nyasaland; in Asia such as Borneo, Sarawak, Malaya, India and Pakistan; in Europe Monaco, Greece and Turkey? We all had albums populated by incomplete sets of stamps eagerly torn off letters and postcards, and then steamed off the paper. These were often both sources of wonder and pride from which the rudiments of world geography were gleaned. My father, a keen collector from a young age, always said that he had learnt his perspective on the world from his large collection.
The bible for stamp collecting was, and still is, the Stanley Gibbons catalogue, now available on a country by country basis, but, in my youth, by the world. We all took as gospel the individual pricing which enabled us to value our collections. I recall my father doing his calculations, late in life and coming up with a value of £10,000 after which the collection was relocated from under his bed and transferred to the safety of the bank, thereby incurring him bank charge for many years. Upon his death the probate valuation for the collection was £2,000! The bank’s accumulated annual charges over the years, I guesstimated, must have easily exceeded this amount. Lesson learned.
My brother and I became keen collectors but I lost interest in my teenage years. My brother, who emigrated to New Zealand in the 1970s continued avidly collecting until his premature death in 2018. He concentrated his collection on three specific countries, and his rest of the world collection was abandoned and sold off. After all it was an impossible task to complete a world collection.
Like many collectors my father also collected GB First Day Issues, and had a standing order from the Post Office for six sets per issue. Over the years, due to the sheer number of sets sold by the Post Office, particularly during the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, these have proved, generally, to be a poor investment, often worth less than the purchase cost of the actual stamps on the envelope. This I have witnessed numerous times at public auctions much to the disappointment of owners, and, of course, the beneficiaries of deceased estates hoping for a windfall.
It was only later in life that I was to learn that a stamp, usually an early issue is, more often than not, worth more on the envelope than off it; this particularly applies to such favourites as the Penny Red, Penny Black etc. Collecting the rarer stamps is almost a science with value dependent upon condition, good margins (early issues were cut off printed sheets by the postal clerk, not always too accurately), the number of the printing plate, the printer, the cancellation mark, the type and colour of the paper, faults (if any), genuine or fake, untampered etc from which would result the market price. Traditionally stamps steamed off envelopes were then stuck in stamp albums with adhesive hinges. Everyone did it from time immemorial with no idea that the hinges actually devalued the stamps, particularly the mint / unused items. If only they had known!
A few years ago, a collector friend of mine had two fine identical Penny Blacks on envelopes in his collection, so he decided to sell the duplicate by private treaty to another collector. It was certificated by a philatelic bureau as genuine. He agreed a sale at £14,000 and sold it to buy a new Volvo car. The retained stamp he sent off for certification – it was returned uncertificated, with the comment that it had been “tampered” with. Thus he found himself with a net loss to his collection having sold the only genuine stamp of the two much to his extreme annoyance!
Another area of collecting is postal history. This is a vast subject as I discovered some years ago after attending a stamp auction in Derby where I had consigned some stock. People collected post marks, the routes that envelopes had travelled to reach their destinations, ship mail, airmail crash recoveries, etc. Some items made very considerable sums. You always hope that a rare stamp might be in your collection or come your way, but this is rarely the case. I have had a few items in my time extracted from my father’s collection which turned out to be fakes.
However fortune did shine on me at a furniture auction one day. Lotted up in a glass case were a bundle of Victorian postal advertising envelopes which I thought were interesting especially as one was from the Great Exhibition of 1862 (I was not aware that there had been two the first in 1851). Being in a furniture auction I thought that there would be no stamp collectors in the room and that I might, perhaps, pick the lot up for £20 or so. The bidding commenced and rose rapidly to £50 and then stuck at £60 at which point I kept my head down. The auctioneer continued calling £60, I looked up, and found he was looking at me to see whether I was prepared to go to £60 – which I reluctantly did, cringing and hoping bidding wouldn’t go any higher, at which point the hammer was brought down. So with a bill of £60 plus buyers premium and VAT I went home with my purchases.
Hoping to ‘turn’ the purchase, no longer being a collector, I sought the opinion of a specialist stamp auctioneer only to be informed that the specialist was away in the USA on a lecture tour. It was left that he would call me upon his return which he did many weeks later. “An interesting,” he reported and yes we would be prepared to enter it in our next suitable auction in 6 months time… which I duly did. He had been canny when speaking to me by not enthusing too much (as he obviously wanted the envelopes in the sale). When the catalogue arrived a week before the sale, I was flabbergasted as many of the descriptions were highlighted in boxes as being of special interest. Indeed some descriptions extolled ‘THE VERY RARE’, ‘ SUPERB,’ ‘SPECTACULARLY COLOURED’ and the auction for the lot totalled £4,455. The principal item being the 1862 Great Exhibition cover at £2,000 which was the only one known printed in that colour. Clearly I was delighted. The windfall helped to pay off the mortgage.
What is the future for stamp collecting in this digital age? Surely there can’t be many young children having much interest in pursuing the hobby – certainly, my grandchildren have no interest, preferring Pokemon and football cards … and yet, there appears to remain a very healthy collectors’ market as evidenced by the thousands of stamps for sale on ebay and the numerous philately auctions, many high value and specialist, that abound worldwide. For a collector to achieve a meaningful collection he requires very deep pockets as the scarcer items are often very expensive and way beyond the budget of the amateur. I am sure the majority of collectors are of a certain age, and certainly of mature years. I suspect that the vendors of many of the stamps on ebay are collectors / dealers who offer stamps for sale with a reserve of which many fail to sell. Equally there will be many amateurs who have inherited, been given or purchased cheaply stamp lots at local auction with a view to turning their purchases on ebay or other auctions.
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Image Credits: Paddy Gastrell .