# Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 9/Timbromanie

TIMBROMANIE.
“Have you a blue Sardinian?” “I’ll give you a black Prussian for a Russian.” “I want a yellow Saxon.” Such is the incomprehensible jargon that frequently puzzles grave fathers of families at their own breakfast-tables, or startles the propriety of decorous matrons and maiden aunts in their after-dinner retirement with a circle of precocious youngsters. What, in the name of this present year of grace, does it all mean?
A magazine on our writing-table endeavours to inform us. The numbers date from the commencement of the current year; they are very neatly printed, and ornamented by a frontispiece representing animated groups of all nations reading and writing letters and despatching tales, and otherwise encouraging good-fellowship and constant inter-communication. These journals are issued monthly, and the price is four shillings per annum. Each number of the periodical presents its subscribers with “an unobliterated foreign or colonial postage-stamp.”
So—the murder is out. The key to the whole is contained in this single announcement. These magazines are merely the representatives of a widely-spread mania for stamp-collecting; which, running through all classes of the community, even as did the lottery-fever or frank-mania of old times, has succeeded in elevating itself to the rank of a remunerative and respectable business; capable of being conducted alike by tradesmen in their shops and warehouses, or by private parties, who, wishing to increase their little means, can bargain with their customers through the medium of advertisements or letters.
The traffic in used and unused postage stamps of various colours and countries, for the purpose of forming collections and stocking albums, first commenced in Belgium, among the girls and boys at the numerous schools or pensions in that country. Their elders, amused at the outset by their earnestness and enthusiasm in so apparently ​trivial a fancy, ended by imbibing the infection; which rapidly spread throughout France and Germany. Soon there was a kind of regular exchange held on the Boulevard Sebastopol, in Paris, for the buying and selling of postage-stamps. This was speedily suppressed by the local authorities; but even at the present moment, in defiance or evasion of a law which prohibits all traffic in the gardens of the Tuileries, amateurs assemble there every Sunday and Thursday, and manage to carry on this new species of traffic “under the rose.”
When the mania reached London, its victims established a temporary exchange in Birchin Lane, in the City, and in several of the alleys leading therefrom. This was in the spring of 1862, when, during the pleasant twilight of the short evenings, a most animated scene was presented for the amusement of the philosophical observer. From fifty to a hundred individuals, old men, youths, and mere boys, middle-aged persons of unimpeachable respectability, ladies of modest and decorous presence, even more than one personage of exalted rank, bargaining and contending in this singular traffic with the utmost eagerness and vivacity,—such was the tableau vivant which stayed the steps of the least interested passer-by. The value of stamps in this exchange, being wholly supposititious, was subject to considerable fluctuations; single stamps being rated on one and the same night at a penny or twopence to sixpence or a shilling in value; or a small collection would pass from hand to hand, increasing in price in the course of an hour or two from two shillings to four, eight, or even ten shillings. The Birchin Lane exchange, like its prototype in Paris, was eventually put down by the police; and any later dealings there have necessarily been surreptitious.
Dr. Gray, of the British Museum, and other writers on the subject—which has already an established literature of its own—enumerate various advantages, mental and moral, to be derived from the hearty prosecution of this whimsical species of commerce. According to these eminent amateurs of the science, the sedulous collecting and classification of postage-stamps teaches geography, history, the statistics and political position of distant countries; inculcates business habits, commercial confidence, order, honour, and punctuality; and affords room for the display of much artistic taste and skill in the arrangement of the many-tinted and often beautifully-engraved stamps in the albums specially contrived for that purpose.
Admitting the British colonies into our calculation, there are more than forty modifications of Queen Victoria’s portrait, in several different shades of colour. The postage-stamp of the lowest money value at its ordinary rate is the centime of France, worth a fraction less than two-fifths of an English farthing; the highest being the four-dollar California Pony Express, representing the sum of sixteen shillings and fourpence. For beauty of form and hue, the postage-stamps of France and Greece, and among our own dependencies, those of Nova Scotia, bear away the palm; while the English penny postage-stamp and the postage-stamps of Belgium are about on a par, as far as ugliness is concerned. Siberian stamps are of the largest size issued; and those of Mecklenburgh-Schwerin take rank as the smallest. For scarcity and daily increasing value, the old issues of the Isle of Bourbon and New Caledonia, and those of Spain, Portugal, British Guiana, and Van Diemen’s Land, may be especially particularised. So may the stamps of the Sandwich Islands, Nicaragua, and the Philippines, which are extremely rare; as are also those of the Italian Duchies. Such of our readers as may wish to turn “an honest” future “penny,” should hasten forthwith to make a large investment in Roman Pontifical stamps; which are with good reason expected, at no very distant date, to attain an almost fabulous value.
Temporary issues are always rare and valuable. Some time ago, the supply of postage-stamps failed in the British colony at the Cape of Good Hope. There was a delay in procuring “the needful” from the mother-country; and pending its arrival native artists produced some poor imitations of the requisite stamps. These spurious stamps are now almost impossible to be procured, especially the threepenny and fourpenny ones. Local stamps employed within narrow limits invariably fetch high prices. Those of the Confederate States are much in demand.
Among the various modes of disposing of postage-stamps, they are sometimes made the object of a raffle. A number of individuals will subscribe, say a shilling each, for the chance of obtaining possession of a collection of stamps of two or more hundreds in extent. Stamp merchants keep their depots all over the country; many of them entirely subsisting by this novel traffic. In London alone there exist at least a dozen regular dealers in stamps; while our seaports, and especially the important town of Liverpool, abound with them. Some dealers confine themselves to “maculate” or “immaculate” stamps,—the fashionable terms for “obliterated” and “unused;” others deal exclusively in scarce or obsolete varieties. Some are willing to sell or exchange; others again, combining with this abnormal commerce more ordinary trades, present their customers with stamps according to their amount of patronage. Stamps are purchased “on commission;” agents are advertised for; lists of prices are distributed to parties concerned. Collections of stamps are frequently advertised for sale by private individuals, varying in extent from two or three hundred to a thousand or more, and offered at prices averaging from ten to forty pounds. Albums to contain these are got up in every style; from plain cloth, at one shilling, to “best morocco relief, with clasps,” at one pound five. Stamps are likewise received by benevolent individuals to sell for charitable purposes; and given away as prizes to the solvers of riddles in struggling periodicals. Lastly, there are numbers of private persons, many of them being youths of fourteen or even younger, who contrive to make a remunerative speculation of their dealings in stamps.
But let amateurs beware of forgeries. These are so frequent, and the differences that exist between a real and a forged stamp are so exceedingly minute and difficult of detection, that the ​constant employment of a magnifying-glass is strenuously recommended by the initiated. The Swiss are noted forgers, and have circulated with impunity several kinds of spurious early Zurichs. There are likewise in circulation good imitations of the Danish stamps. Some issues are wholly fictitious. Of this class are the “Verein Hamburgers,” designed and issued by no higher authority than an unscrupulous and enterprising engraver.
The stamp mania, or timbromanie, is not always viewed in a purely business or scientific aspect; it has its absurd and amusing relations with life. Of such was the ridiculous display lately made at a Parisian bal masque, by a gentleman who might have found a better employment for his money. This reckless individual attracted universal attention by presenting himself in a costume entirely covered with postage-stamps, about a third of which were “immaculate.” The original texture of his hat was concealed by a quantity of French ten and fifteen centimes à percevoir: a stamp answering to our double postage, levied on unpaid or underpaid letters.
A new galop may be seen in the window’s of any music-shop in London, the title-page of which is ornamented with fac-similes of foreign postage-stamps, in all their various colours. The galop itself is entitled “Arthur O’Leary’s Stamp-Galop.” Down in the City an enterprising tradesman displays behind his glittering plate-glass panes an assortment of curious breast-pins, consisting of imitations of foreign stamps, enamelled in their several delicate hues, and set in gold.
Some postage-stamp collectors, especially in private life, devote their energies to storing up vast numbers of stamps of a particular issue, trusting to the good offices of time to render them exceedingly scarce, and consequently valuable. We cannot accord our entire approbation to a few individuals among these far-seeing speculators, who are engaged in collecting and hoarding common English penny stamps: acting with a greedy eye to future profit in what every truly loyal subject of our beloved Queen trusts is still a remote period,—that when the present feminine portraiture on our current stamps will necessitate a new issue, bearing the likeness of our then Gracious Sovereign and Defender of the Faith, King Edward the Seventh.