Payette enterprise. (Payette, Canyon Co., Idaho) 1909-1935, 1922-08-17
ANY OLDSTAMPS?
Might Not Be Bad Idea to RUM
mage Through the Attic.
Fortunes Have Been Made by Lucky
Possessors of Envelopes Long
Regarded as Worthless

! A journalist hobnobblng with the
cognosceni gathers that even in
stolid America there are many thrills
in stamp collecting. I got into confab
with some of the big league profess
SIGNALS 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 Gushing writes in Les
| lies.
In high vaulted room, walled and
rooted with glazed white tiles, ike
| cellar grill room or a high-ceilinged
! subway station-though it opened on
to the sidewalk of 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
Low ttilelli Los14ts he Scltlt DEtdurt AllFl
were printed in a day when American
clergymen invaded the Sandwich
Islands to convert the natives to
Christianity. Every relative or known
correspondent of those evangeiists,
any one to whom a letter that bore
one of those rare stamps might have
been sent, has been traced by profess
sional 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, relsseS 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 a
"semipro," worked on a Los Angeles
newspaper and had stamp collecting
on commission basis as Il side line.
He received word one day to investi-
gate a rumor that a retired farmer
and his wife possessed letters from a
relative who had been a missionary
to Hawaii in the sos. q
On the day that he received the let Is
ter the agent was too busy to go out
to the place. Il little bungalow in the
distant suburbs But the following
afternoon he was able to get away and (
motored out in his fiivver. Just as heE
drew up to the place the front doors
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 it, ONT
the face of a rival collector.
"Too late, Bill sang out the rival, I
"We've just closed the deal. Gimme a !
lift back to town and I'll tell you all
about it on the way"
1t seems pa hadn't been sure they'd }
saved the letters from Uncle Ezra
but ma remembered where they'dE
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 lie saw
what it read and he dropped down
limp on to the porch swing and nearl'
tainted. He and his wife were far
from well to do and that check for
$4,000 meant comfort for them to the
end of their days. 4