The Press., 1922-09-21
ANY OLD STAMPS?
Might Not Be Bad Idea to Rum-
 mage Through the Attic.
Possessors of Envelopes Long Regarded as Worthless.

A journalist hobnobbing with the cognoscenti gathers that even in stolid America there are many thrills In stamp collecting. I got into confab with some of the big league prOfes- sionals of stamp collecting, the New York brokers of big houses that buy and sell stamps of every value, from the sort they purchase literally by the ton and handle with scoop shovels, to the rarities that are handled gingerly with little tongs, like precious jewels, Charles Phelps Cushing writes in Les lies.
 In a high vaulted room, walled and roOfed with glazed white tiles, like a cellar grill room or a high-ceiltnged subway statiOn-thOugh 1t opened On- to the sidewalk of a sunlit side street in uptown New YOrk-One of these professionals told me stories of the adventures of Hawaiian blues," old anecdotes made timely by the record price that Ferrary stamps recently fetched in Paris.
 Missionaries" the trade calls this Hawaiian issue. he said, because they were printed in day when American clergymen invaded the Sandwich" islands to convert the natives to Christianity. Every relative or known correspondent of those evangelfsts, any one to whom letter that bore one of those rare stamps might have been sent, has been traced by prOfes- si0nal collectors seeking new finds"
 "A few years ago. the professional collector related, i've knew of only ten copies of that first issue. Then in an old schOOlhOuse in the islands two more turned up by accident. A visitor to that schOOlhOuse noticed under some peeling whitewash in the corner an old yellow envelope. He pulled it out of the plaster and found on it two blue scraps of paper, each worth a small fortune"
 Another story of Hawaiians, this time concerned with genuine copies but not so rare an issue, relates of bar gain made from New York by mail through California agents. A repre- sentative of one of the big eastern stamp agencies, a man of the type that baseball would describe as 8 "semipro," worked on a Los Angeles newspaper and had stamp collecting on commission basis as a side line. He received word one day to invest1- gate a rumOr that a retired farmer and his wife possessed letters from a relative who had been a missionary to Hawaii in the '5Os.
 On the day that he received the let ter the agent was too busy to go out to the place. little bungalow in the distant suburbs. But the following afternoon he was able to get away and motored out in his Mvver. Just as he drew up to the place the front door opened and three broad smiles greeted him; the first two on the features of the old couple, the third, with some thing of malicious triumph in 1t, on the face of a rival collector.
 'Too late, Bill," sang out the rival, We've just closed the deal. Gimme a lift back to town and I'll tell you all about it on the way"
 It seems pa hadn't been sure they'd saved the letters from Uncle Ezra. but ma remembered where they'd stored them in the attic.
 A week or two later the representa- tive returned to the bungalow and handed pa a check. The old gentle mans face blanched when he saw what 1t read and he dropped down limp on to the porch swing and nearly fainted. He and his wife were far from we'll to do and that check for $3,OOO meant comfort for them to the end of their days.