Show The First Issuo of Transvaal Stamps It is a curious fact said an enthusiastic enthu-siastic philatelist of this city that a good many Issues of postage stamps In different parts of the world have been mapped up entire by collectors and never went Into actual postal service at all It Is well known that that was the case with the first penny stamp ever pi luted for the Transvaal The incident occurred fully twentyfive years ago and as the story goes a London dealer who learned by mere accident that an order for the stamps had been placed with a European engraving en-graving house sent an agent to the South African Republic to gobble up the issue j as soon as it was placed on sale The agent had a representative posted at each of the few postofllces In the republic and before the slowthinking Dutch postmasters realized what was afoot they were out of stamps For that reason none of the original first issue bear a cancellation murk If you see one that appears to have gone through the malls you may set it down as a counterfeit Entire Issues have frequently been secured In petty foreign for-eign States through the connivance of crooked officials and In that connection 1 can tell you a peculiar story which E believe has I never been printed Some years ago one of the Central American republics ordered a set of very beautiful I beauti-ful stamps from a northern bank note company The agent who came after them went to a collector and Hold him 1000 at a fancy figure telling him confidentially con-fidentially that the rest of the Issue bud been destroyed In111 accident with some chemicals The scheme worked so vell that the enterprising Central I American tried it on another enterprising enterpris-ing philatelist and another and another an-other until he finally disposed of the entire lot and ordered u new set at the engravers When the story leaked out he was on his way home and has taken ta-ken good care never to come back Stumps of the original Issue promptly became a drug on the market and can be purchased dirt cheap to this very I daNew Orleans TimesDemocrat |