The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1903-10-18
BIG PRICE FOR STAMPS.
what Dealers Will Pay for Rare
Varieties.

New York Times.
IF any person will bring me a genuine
British Guiana one-cent stamp of the issue
OF 1886 / will give him $11 900 for 1t and no
questions asked said a Broadway dealer
I'm stamps and coins. The stamp is the
rarest In existence and only one specimen
is known. 1 understand it is in the phil
atelic collection owned by the Prince of
Wales. 1t will no doubt, therefore. ever
remain beyond the reach OF all other col
lectors.
Another British Guiana rarity is the
two-cent stamp OF 1860 There are only
ten OF them known. aad they are the first
OF Guiana's postal emissions. Thirty years
ago they were valued at 800 a copy. To-
day the market value of a single copy is
$500.
Second in rarity to the British Guiana
stamp Of 1856 are the PostOffice MauritiuS
stamps OF 1S47. Only 1000 of them were
issued and but twenty-three are now in
existence. Their face value is 2 cents.
A single specimen was sold last year TO a
collector in Berlin for $4,000.
Stamps on which errors in the printing
have been made are eagerly snapped up
by collectors, and they bring surprising
prices A three-cornered Cape of Good
Hope stamp of the 1861 four-pence issue,
for instance. was printed by mistake on
a quality of paper intended for another
British colony. A pair Of the stamps were
A collector I in this city has one of the
specimens. and he has repeatedly refused
extTavagant offers for il. Being the for
tunate possessor of a fat bank account,
however. money inducements have no temp
tatSon for him.
Another stamp which is very highly
priced to-day through the printers mis-
take is the Indian four annas stamp OF 1872.
Tt Is worth $3.50. It's high value lies in the
fact that the center part OF the design, the
head OF the Queen, is inverted. 1t is print
ed in two colors, red and blue, and that is
given as the cause for the mistake in print
ing one of the portions wrong way up. The
market value of the correctly impressed
stamp is only 81
THE 1876 10-cent stamp Of Baltimore has
brought high $4.0s0. The st. Louis
3-cent stamps. issued in 1915, are more val
liable still. The last one to exchange hands
brought little over 5000. / am on the
warpath just now for one of the Baltimore
stamps for a customer of mine in Phila-
delphia. a millionaire railroad man. He is
ready to pay very handsome price TO
secure one. The stamp itself is rectangu-
+ lar IN shape, exactly one inch long, and
exceedingly plain in design. It is of a dark
blue color, with thin black border. Writ
ten across it's full length Is the signature
in black Ink of James NJ. Buchanan, and
Immediately below it, in plain black type,
is printed the stamps denomination, 10
cents.
Another extreme rarity in stampdom is
that OF the Sandwich islands-the 2-cent
specimen OF the first issue OF the Hawaiian
postoffice. Only very few are in exist
ence. and a single copy is valued at $1,000
The reason this stamp is so scarce is that
only two days after their issue fire broke
ont in the postofflce and destroyed the en-
tire stock, including the plates and dies
The few that are left OF the issue and
which are so valuable to-day, are the ones
that had been circulated before the fire..
"Of Canadian stamps l should say that
the 12d stamp OF 1851 is the most valuable
Its present market value Is $500.