KING EDWARD'S - LAST OF THE REAL STAMPS?

Musing the other day on Edwardiana -

Is this a thing that you do very often?

No.

I'm relieved to hear it. You are aware that you are living in the twentyfirst century?

All too bitterly at times.

Good. Carry on then.

Thank you. Musing, as I say, on Edwardiana, I remembered my childhood stamp collection. The desirable thing, of course, was to start with a Penny Black of Victoria - usually a very smudged and battered specimen in order to bring it within a reasonable price range.

But my real favourites were the Edwards. And this might seem odd, since they all bore the same somewhat grim head of the late monarch, and apparently derived their gloomy colours from old William Morris wallpapers - ochre, bistre, sepia, sage, mauve, and faded pinks and blues. Yet I felt instinctively that these were real stamps, produced to frank letters or discharge stamp duties. In this they seemed to have an authority denied to the later kinds of stamp that were even then flooding the market, gaudy in colour and designed to be bought up by undiscriminating collectors rather than used in any legitimate postal field. Foremost among these, I recall, were the stamps of Tannu Tuva, a non-existent sort of place with apparently no exports save stamps in odd shapes; triangular, and diamond, but never a simple portrait rectangle.

British stamps have never gone all the way down this path, though there seem to be quite enough commemoratives to display footballers, Father Christmas, and other celebrities. Who is really interested in collecting these things? They have about as much significance as a supermarket voucher. I suppose that is why many serious (?) collectors grub about among mis-prints, sub-standard colours, tete-beche pairs, and so on. And yet there are rumours that some printers are not above introducing deliberate errors in limited runs, hoping that that they can be slipped on to the market, and will achieve scarcity prices. Even the strange hermetic world of collecting, it seems, is not immune to dumbing down.