The Error World (21 page)

Sefi wonders whether this is why young people are less interested in stamp collecting today—in an age of email and cheap air travel, their origins hold no mystery. But there are other reasons. 'Undoubtedly there is a lost generation in collecting. I initially went to a day school, and there were after-school clubs often led by teachers, and many boys joined the stamp club. But then there was a period where the teaching profession effectively withdrew from that sort of thing. So there is a whole generation where young people were never exposed to stamps, and we are now into a second or third generation where the teachers themselves have not been exposed.'

His interest waned from the age of thirteen—examinations and then girls. And then: I knew almost exactly what he was going to say, because it was the template I once thought I had sketched uniquely for myself. You come back. Like a spark in a garage that sets the house alight, something ignites to send you spiralling back to a love you thought you had quelled. You think: there must be something more to life than this (whatever it is: kids, job, materialism). As an alternative to religion and spirituality there are stamps, the quiet ordering of a life, the old-fashioned way of shutting out the world while bestowing it with meaning.

'Simple story really,' Sefi says. 'One of my children's godparents gave the child a Stanley Gibbons starter album. The child was nine, I suppose. I saw this and said, "Oh yes, stamps, I've got some in the loft." Instant turn-off as far as the child was concerned, but I pulled down the suitcase, which I had hardly looked at since I was thirteen, and noticed that some of the special valuable items that I had put to one side had disappeared. Penny Blacks. Twopenny Blues. Some Danish stamps. Don't know what happened to them. I had kept them in a special little stockbook, and that had vanished. Vanished. I get quite upset when I look at prices they reach today—the Danish five-kroner stamp of 191 z unused is today catalogued at £200. So I started re-looking at some of it, particularly the Great Britain George V period, and it took off from there.'

This was at the end of the seventies, with Sefi in his late thirties. He was a partner in a firm of chartered accountants which merged with the company that is now Deloitte. He was a taxation specialist and faced a demanding schedule, often working on weekends. He found stamps to be a relaxing diversion, but also one where he used his brain. 'I think my wife felt it was a good way of keeping me out of mischief, and it meant I wasn't spending money on wine, women and song. But little do wives know how much men spend on their hobbies.'

He soon found an interesting and manageable specialisation—the GB 'Downey Head' stamps issued in June 1911 to coincide with George V's coronation. The stamps were not well received, particularly the three-quarter profile of the monarch from the Court photographers W. & D. Downey replacing the standard side-on view. The stamps—a green halfpenny and a red penny—were replaced after less than two years, but in that time a large amount of plate, watermark and shade variations arose to make a study of the stamp rewarding. The period of sale also marked the climax of the universal penny post, with envelopes still going all over the world for the same cost as in 1840. Collecting these stamps and covers was also not too expensive. 'If you want a bottom row of a common Downey Head printing you'd pay £60 or £70,' Sefi says. 'In contrast to what you'd have to pay for a complete King Edward VII bottom row, no contest. But of course coming here to some extent takes the shine off my collection. I do have one or two things the King didn't have, for instance I've got some bigger pieces of the 1912 paper trials, but yes, coming here was a bit of a ... and no, I haven't done swaps, and nor would I.'

The King he refers to is George V, the Collector King, a man who would spend three afternoons a week on his collection when he was in London, and whose interest in stamps began long before he began appearing on them.

He was not the first to contribute to the Royal Collection—the first important item in the albums dates from 1856, when the Prince of Wales and his younger brother Albert visited the De La Rue printing firm and came home with panes of the newest 6d stamps. Albert later became serious about stamp collecting, serving as Honorary President of the leading London Philatelic Society, but George V was the first to become consumed by it. His dedication has provided succour to all besieged or self-doubting collectors who followed him: stamp collecting was the Hobby of Kings; if it was good enough for the monarch, who would dare say it was a trivial or wasteful pastime?

He began collecting before he ascended the throne, first as Prince George of Wales and then as Duke of York. He probably couldn't believe the stars when he succeeded his father as king on 6 May 1910, precisely the seventieth anniversary of the Penny Black. His letters and journals describe an advanced desire: on an official trip to Australia and New Zealand as the Duke of York in 1901, it is clear that much pleasure from the journey derived from acquiring new stamps from dealers and local societies. Several afternoons on board HMS
Ophir
are spent laying out and protecting new additions. His reputation as a collector was already well established wherever he travelled. In Sydney, the local philatelic club presented him with a leather-bound volume with many current and classic stamps; the genuine tone of the thank-you letter written by his equerry, himself a philatelist, suggested that he was more delighted with the gift than a hundred engraved bowls he had gathered elsewhere. In February 1908, two years before becoming king, George wrote to a friend regarding the purchase of some stamps from Barbados. The letter outlined his ultimate purpose. 'But remember, I wish to have the
best
collection & not
one
of the best collections in England, therefore if you think that there are a few more stamps required to make it so don't hesitate to take them...' There was one stamp in particular he considered a key addition to the best collection in Britain: the Two Pence Post Office Blue Mauritius. His chance came in 1904, when an unused example came up for auction at the London auction house of Puttick and Simpson. What stood in the way of a future king and the stamp he coveted? Surely not money. Before the auction, George suggested to his philatelic adviser John Tilleard that he make an offer to the stamp's owner to withdraw it from auction for £1,200. The vendor declined, believing it would fetch more with multiple bidders. George wrote to Tilleard: 'I am still very anxious to have the stamp and now authorise you or an agent to bid for it at the auction up to £1,550 inclusive [of fees].' And then, a hint of self-doubt: 'I am particularly keen to buy the stamp although it does seem to be a great deal of money to give for it. I suppose of course you have seen the stamp & can guarantee that it is genuine.'

And so it was that a stamp issued in 1847 in time for Lady Gomm's ball, and regarded initially as an amusing and purely functionary aid to communication, was now the subject of fierce desire. A few days before the auction, barely able to contain his agitation, George wrote to his adviser once more. 'You can send me a telegram here [York Cottage] on Wednesday if you have secured the "Post Office". Better say merely "Stamp is yours" & write later full particulars.' He got it. Bidding anonymously against strong competition from German dealers, Tilleard's appointed agent was successful at £1,450, at the time the highest price ever paid for a single stamp. A short while later, reading of the price in a newspaper, one of George's staff asked whether he had seen that some 'damned fool' had paid that much for a single stamp. In fact, George was proud of his acquisition and the price he paid for it, and he often repeated this story at dinner parties. He later wrote to Tilleard: 'I am also very glad that I have kept it in England & prevented it going to Germany.' He asked Tilleard to keep it in his safe until he could call for it in London. 'I quite agree that you ought at once to increase the fire insurance on the collection.'

Michael Sefi is only the sixth keeper of the Royal Philatelic Collection in over ninety years. His path to the job began not long after he started collecting as an adult. He swiftly established himself as part of London's philatelic community, becoming treasurer and then president of the Great Britain Philatelic Society and spending fifteen years on the council of the Royal Philatelic Society. In 1996 he was asked by Charles Goodwyn, his predecessor at St James's Palace, to become his deputy, and he joined at a critical time. The monarchy had not been going through a good patch, and it was felt that the collection should be given greater exposure as part of an attempt to make the royal family more accessible. 'One has to be absolutely clear,' Sefi told me. 'The Royal Philatelic Collection is a private collection, the property of the Queen, although it is said she regards it as an heirloom. Periodically one is going to be challenged on the whole
raison d'etre
of the collection and maintaining it.

'It would be quite simple for it to be said, "This is absurd. What on earth are we doing, for a relatively minority interest, spending the Queen's personal money on buying things? What we ought to be doing is closing the door. When anything new comes in we should just put it into the filing. Let's not worry about exhibitions, and why should we be bothered about a succession of researchers wanting to come to look at something particular?"

'So every so often we must stop to think about what is the reason for this collection. Of course it has manifold purposes, quite apart from the publicity thing. Here is something that the monarchy is providing which is completely unrelated to government and the representational role of the monarchy, and which is doing good for the country. And then there is the researcher element. There is no question at all that there is a body of people out there who are studying particular areas, and we have material here which they can't access anywhere else.'

Sefi's time with the collection is spent writing up album pages, organising exhibitions and giving speeches about his work to societies. He does occasionally study the auction catalogues to see if there's anything that will improve what is already there, 'but you have to realise that certainly as far as pre-1936 is concerned, there are very few gaps indeed, and the kind of things that are missing never come on the market anyway'. The last time he purchased something significant was in 2005, a Cape of Good Hope item which cost £80,000. 'The problem is,' he says, 'with more modern material it is effectively open-ended. One could spend all day going through catalogues looking at GB error material and paying enormous prices for it.'

'And some of us do,' I told him. He regarded me with empathetic pity. I asked him about the Queen, and whether she shows any interest in the collection, in the many albums...

'I think it would be giving a false impression if one said she did. The Queen undoubtedly is very conscious that here is something for which she has a responsibility, and therefore does take an interest in what we do with it. She approves requests for items from the collection to go to exhibitions, and any significant purchases or sales.' And she approves every issue that bears her head or her cipher.

I asked him about the sale of royal stamps to finance the Kirkcudbright cover, and it turned into a little argument. 'We had to be quite careful,' he said. 'There were some items we were considering selling that it was felt the quality was such that reputationally they wouldn't do us any good and shouldn't be included in the sale. That arises because George V virtually never disposed of anything. I have the complete financial records here from about 1914 to his death, and virtually nothing was sold during that time. He was buying individual items and collections, he was improving things, but he wasn't disposing of what you and I would call spacefillers. So you can look at an album and see some real rubbish on the same page as some absolutely marvellous material. New Zealand springs to mind. I think actually that makes the collection poorer in some ways.'

'But it also makes it more interesting and more human,' I suggested. 'What you're seeing is the gestation of a collection.'

'Well, hmmm, yeessss. No. I don't think I agree. The Red Collection as we call it, the collection to 1936, which has between 15,000 to 18,000 pages, and they are all written up in the same hand, that of Sir Edward Bacon, I don't think having rubbish on the same page as quality, I don't think that makes the collection more human. Most serious collectors do trade on. I certainly have done that.'

'But it shows the King to be a hoarder, and a collector with faults, which is interesting in itself.'

'Personally perhaps. I doubt if this benefits the collection.'

I then asked him about where stamp collecting will be heading in the future.

'I think a more interesting question is, "What will people be doing with their leisure time?" It isn't just stamp collecting ... Many leisure activities which have any sort of organisation attached to them find it increasingly difficult to get people who are prepared to take on board the responsibility of management that collecting demands—be that matchboxes or fans or stamps. The organisation can be a burden, people are much less regimented, and wish to be so, in their lives than they were in the fifties or sixties.' There were many reasons, he says, and the discipline encountered during the two great wars had much to do with it. 'One has memories of these vast fields full of people engaged in what I call physical jerks but I know has a grander name—calisthenics? All about regimentation. But now for good or bad today's population is thoroughly different in terms of approach. That leads to a very much more individualistic attitude. So those things that require organisations—and after all, stamp collecting is if nothing else a form of regimentation—is less attractive to people.'

Does that mean that in years to come the entire hobby will shrink to the size of a walnut?

'I don't know. In this country to some extent possibly, but abroad no. It's still very strong in some countries, especially in the Far East. You only had to be in Beijing in 1999 ... All right, stamp collecting is a government-approved activity, but nevertheless there was a ten-day exhibition and the gates were closed every day because of the crowds, and there were some very angry Western exhibitors who were not able to get in. The queues for first-day covers from the Chinese Post Office were endless.