s are
at work all the day long endeavouring to keep pace with a world-wide
business which began with a few sheets in the corner of a chemist's
shop window in the town of Plymouth.

And now, looking back on the humdrum days of the beginnings of the
stamp trade, what opportunities do they not seem to have missed! Could
they but have foreseen the present-day developments, a few
unconsidered trifles, valued at a few pence in those days, put away in
a bottom drawer, would to-day net a fortune. Young Gibbons, amongst
his early purchases, bought from a couple of sailors at Plymouth for
L5 a sackful of triangular Cape of Good Hope stamps, a large
proportion being the rare so-called Woodblocks, with many of the
Errors described in the list of great rarities in another chapter.
Those Errors he disposed of at 2s. 6d. each. They are now worth from
L60 to L75 each. And the ordinary Woodblocks, which were so
plentifully represented in that sackful, are now catalogued at from
50s. to L9 apiece. Strange as it may seem, those were the common
stamps of those days, and they are the rarities of to-day.

A well-known collection, full of rare stamps of the value of from L5
to L50, has been largely formed by the fortunate possessor out of
stamps for which he paid 2s. per dozen just a little over twenty years
ago.

A leading collector once conceived the idea of scouring the
little-visited country towns of Spain for rare old Spanish stamps, and
a most successful hunt he made of it. He secured most valuable and
unsuspected hauls of unused and used blocks and pairs of rare
Portuguese; but before returning home he decided to treat himself to a
trip to Morocco, and during that ill-fated extension of his tour he
lost nearly the whole of his patient garnerings of rare Spanish
stamps, for during an inland trip some very unphilatelic Bedouins
swooped down on his escort in the desert and carried off the whole of
his baggage. He, being some distance ahead of his escort, escaped, and
brought home only a few samples of the grand things he had found and
lost.

In all forms of collecting the hunt for bargains adds zest to the
game, and probably more so in stamps than in any other hobby, not even
excepting old china; and, as in other lines of collecting, the bargain
hunter must be equipped with the expert knowledge of the specialist if
he would sweep into his net at bargain prices the unsuspected gems to
be found now and again in the philatelic mart. Ma