![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluegargantuaHey,
So I just stamped through to the end of Blue Mauritius -- The Hunt for the World's Most Valuable Stamps by Helen Morgan. The title pretty much says it all.
On the island of Mauritius, former home of the dodo, the local British governor was throwing a gala affair. They'd also just introduced postage stamps. To help encourage the use of the pre-paid stamps, invitations to the ball were sent out on envelopes paid for via the stamps. After the affair, the short run of 1000 stamps was used for local and international postage (Mauritius having a lot of commerce with its current British rulers, it's former French rulers, and various ports in India and Africa).
Flash forward a decade or two when mysterious stamps from a far-off island colony are discovered in Bordeaux. In an age where it was possible for collectors to have all the stamps in the world, these rare 1 and 2 penny stamps quickly become sought after commodities. The book traces the history of the 23 known examples of the first Mauritian stamps and discusses the collectors great and small who have been lucky enough to be owners.
Sadly, although the material is interesting, it's also fairly brief. The last third of the book is a chronology of each stamp, a list of references and citations and various other scholarly addendum. You would think that the story of how a stamp eventually commands a price of $4 million would be a little more drama-filled, but except for some samples which went missing from the German Postal Museum at the end of WWII and speculation on the identities of current private owners, there just isn't much to write home about. The collectors seem to have mostly been quiet, wealthy, obsessives.
The one interesting thing I got out of the book is that the word philately is a compound of the Greek words philo (meaning love) and atelia (meaning without tax or exempt from payment). Thus philately means a love of not being taxed. And thus a philatelist is a libertarian.
Overall, kind of a "meh" book
Tom
So I just stamped through to the end of Blue Mauritius -- The Hunt for the World's Most Valuable Stamps by Helen Morgan. The title pretty much says it all.
On the island of Mauritius, former home of the dodo, the local British governor was throwing a gala affair. They'd also just introduced postage stamps. To help encourage the use of the pre-paid stamps, invitations to the ball were sent out on envelopes paid for via the stamps. After the affair, the short run of 1000 stamps was used for local and international postage (Mauritius having a lot of commerce with its current British rulers, it's former French rulers, and various ports in India and Africa).
Flash forward a decade or two when mysterious stamps from a far-off island colony are discovered in Bordeaux. In an age where it was possible for collectors to have all the stamps in the world, these rare 1 and 2 penny stamps quickly become sought after commodities. The book traces the history of the 23 known examples of the first Mauritian stamps and discusses the collectors great and small who have been lucky enough to be owners.
Sadly, although the material is interesting, it's also fairly brief. The last third of the book is a chronology of each stamp, a list of references and citations and various other scholarly addendum. You would think that the story of how a stamp eventually commands a price of $4 million would be a little more drama-filled, but except for some samples which went missing from the German Postal Museum at the end of WWII and speculation on the identities of current private owners, there just isn't much to write home about. The collectors seem to have mostly been quiet, wealthy, obsessives.
The one interesting thing I got out of the book is that the word philately is a compound of the Greek words philo (meaning love) and atelia (meaning without tax or exempt from payment). Thus philately means a love of not being taxed. And thus a philatelist is a libertarian.
Overall, kind of a "meh" book
Tom
