More About Equipment

Your World of Stamps—III

A Column for New Stamp Collectors, Conducted by K.N.

YOU will, of course, need an album in which to display your collection. There are dozens of varieties, of all shapes and sizes and types, but at the beginning, even an exercise book (with hard cover) will do until you get going properly.

You can duly graduate to the fixed or loose-leaf variety of album.

Loose-leaf albums are easy to manipulate, and they enable pages to be handled individually—an advantage for displays or when being shown to your friends.

Never paste your stamps onto the pages of your album! It has been done by some thoughtless folk.

Always use stamp hinges, which are quite cheap to buy in packets.

Keep them in an airtight tin or drawer so that they won’t be affected by weather conditions.

They should be bent over before being fastened to the back of the stamp, near the centre.

You should always keep your albums, stamps and accessories in a convenient and safe place. This makes for easy access and neatness.

Albums should be placed in dust proof cupboards or drawers, where they won’t experience damp, hot or sticky weather.

One of your first needs will be a small magnifying glass. This will enable you to examine your stamps at close quarters. You never know, you may find some unusual error or flaw through the magnifying glass, and as a result, you may come into possession of a valuable stamp. Who knows!

Some Interesting Recent

Issues

• There has been a lot of comment in Britain in connection with the proposal to print pictorial stamps for the UK. Low-value British stamps since 1840 have always portrayed Royal person ages, but it is felt that the many historic, architectural and scenic landmarks would not now be out of place.

Australia and New Zealand have already displayed English features on past stamps. The Cenotaph, in Whitehall, appeared on an Aus tralian issue, while the Dominion has given us pictures of Bucking ham Palace, Westminister Abbey, the Peter Pan and Eros Statues, in addition to several of the huge lions on the Nelson Monument, in London, and the notable St. Paul’s Cathedral. o Collectors have welcomed the new portrait of Her Majesty as

used on recent stamps from Fiji.

It is a change from the ordinary styling, being an actual reproduc tion of a £2,000 painting executed by the Italian painter, Signor Pietro Annigoni. It was originally painted for the Fishmongers Company in Britain. • You may have read about a 1955 stamp printed by Hungary on aluminium-surfaced paper as a means of publicising a Light Metal Industries’ Congress at Budapest, but did you know that shortly after the Ist World War, Latvia, now part of Russia, printed stamps on the back of old Germany Army maps?

The Latvian authorities had also to use cigarette paper and then old exercise book paper on which to print much-needed stamps. Even Bolshevik banknotes were converted into suitable size for stamp printing.