The Birmingham age-herald., 1905-04-23
SMELLER OF STAMPS /. MAKES GOOD LIVING
Peculiar Occupation of the Late
 George Kennedy
FIND OF RARE SPECIMENS
He Located a Cellar Full of Old Let ters Which a Dealer Bought
 for $50 and Later Sold
 for $15,oo0
From the Washington Post.

From the Washington Post.
 Did you ever hear of stamp smeller?" asked a stamp dealer the other day. Well stamp smeller is a man who un- covers big finds of rare stamps
 "There are quite a number of these men who make business of unearthing old letters and documents. but the most famous of them all was George Kennedy, who died a short time ago. Kennedy had developed to the highest degree the faculty of locating stamps and enjoyed wide reputation among stamp dealers for his peculiar gift
 But, to tell the truth, 1t was more a matter of method than anything else. He made a practice of constantly visiting the janitors of various buildings and in quirng If they had any old letters or documents which they desired to dispose of. Whenever he ran across such a case, he at once reported it to the stamp deal- CTS, and then sold the information to the highest bidder
 "rhe biggest find ever made by Ken nedy, and the one which established his reputation, was that whic.l he uncovered in William street, New York, several l years ago. lie told dealer that for Sl00 he would show him where he could get great bargain in stamps. The dealer l agreed to pay the money.
 ] Kennedy few days before had made arrangements with the janitor of an old house in N,l.lam street to buy a huge | hpan of olt. letters that mi was taking up valuable room in the eel lar There was fully a freight car load l of the stuff. and many of the letters hadn't been touched for years some of ] them dating back to the early 40s, when stamps were first introduced. i When the dealer first saw the big pile of letters the only stamps that met his 1 eye on top were the common 2-cent brown and 3-cent green postage stamps of 1870, and he formed the conclusion that he had come across a pile of ordinary rub Dish. But, delving into the mass, he un- covered some of the 3. 6, 10 12, 15 and 30- cent stamps of the 1869 issue, which were good deal more valuable.
 Grew in Richness.
 This encouraged him to keep on, and l the further down into the pile he got the more valuable did his finds become. When i he reached the bottom of the hole that he l had made In one part of the heap he i found some of the New York local stamps, such as the 5-cent black and scent green, 1 for carrier and delivery purposes, these being used before the government had started to issue postage stamps. Some of the locals, as they are called were worth from $1O to s25 each.
 I But these stamps were scattered and l he didn't find many of them at first. Yet 1 he found enough to be quite sure that he needed that pile of letters. and when he l came forth his eyes were so filled with dust that he could hardly see. He offered | the jantor $50 for the lot as old paper.
 "The janitor accepted quickly, appar- ently fearful that the dealer would change his mind Then the work of asserting the stamps began.
 Many of the older stamps were found l to be on the original covers-that is the l old style folded letter used before the invention of the envelope. But there was a particularly large number of state de- partment stamps. which ranged in val ue from s1 to S15. There were actually thousands of these State Department 1 stamps They were of the cent green is- I sue.
 ] After working on the pile for several weeks the stamps were finally assorted
 In one box placed all the rare l stamps. A dealer who got word of the find offered s5000 for this box without even examining them. The owner refused the l offer.
 Narrowly Escaped a Loss. "The cheapest of the stamps, the two l cent browns, the three cent greens and the ten cent browns. were all placed in | box by themselves. Now comes curious l part of the find. The dealer offered $50 for 1 the box containing the cheap stamps which offer was accepted He made no deposit, but said he would send for it the next day. This he failed to do, how ever, and the box lay there for three | weeks
 Then the owner. having put the rest of the find Into shape, and being at leisure one afternoon, thought he would have another look at the contents of the cheap box. Upon overhauli it he was aston ished to find over thousand dollars worth of the three-cent State Departmen. stamps which in the excitement and hurry had been mistaken for the common post age stamps.
 He didn't jog the other dealer's mem ory. Everything summed up, his find was estimated to have been worth alto gether over s1500O.
 "Kennery could name his own terms after this. And it's peculiar fact that he didn't buy stamps on his own hook, preferring to turn that part of the trans action over to the dealers. Any time he said he had good thing in sight dealers willingly paid him we'll for the information, and sometimes grub staked him and sent him on a prospecting tour
 One Find That Failed. But his finds were not always profita- ble. He informed a big dealer once that he was pretty sure that if he could get to small town up in Massachusetts he could buy for next to nothing d number of the rare Battleboro and New Havea postmasters' and Nova Scotia stamps. One specimen of these stamps Is worth sev- eral hundred dollars.
 ''The dealer gave him couple of hun dred dollars and sent him forth to see what he could do The best Kennedy could do was to come back with a big load aboard. But he mace good for this stampless trip shortly after by letting the same dealer in on a real bonanza in Philadelphia.
 Tn some way Kennedy had induced the proprietor of an old business house on Walnut street to sell lot of letters which had been stored sway fin the top loft for many years. He at once wired the New York dealer of the find and the latter left on the very next tanin.
 'The mass of old stuff was bought for S100. In 1t were many specimens of the early Philadelphia locals, some of them worth as much as slOO apiece There were also many of the fve-cent and ten