Confessions of a himalayan philatelist

A true philatelist (Webster's: phi-lat-e-list, "a collector of stamps") is not your everyday citizen. He or she (it's usually a he) squirrels away a prodigious amount of little squares or oblongs of coloured paper, in the gathering, studying, rearranging, and exhibiting of which he/she expends improbable amounts of time, ingenuity and money.

The bits of paper don't have to be pretty. Here, philatelists part company with collectors of paintings or sculpture or antique automobiles, all supposedly objects of beauty. Many philatelists seek out stamps others might regard as ugly, "marred" by having been cancelled. Such stamps were probably produced, not to raise money for some cash-strapped treasury, but for the more practical purpose of sending a letter on its way.

Communist, socialist, and capitalist nations alike cater to philatelists. One European stamp society boasts a membership in the hundreds of thousands. The largest in the United States, I can attest, has almost sixty thousand members. There's a lot for them to collect.

Since Great Britain first began printing stamps in 1840, something like two hundred thousand different stamps have been issued worldwide. The cheapest sell for a penny or two; the rare ones fetch over a million U.S. dollars. Those little bits of coloured paper, cubic inch for cubic inch and ounce for ounce, are in all likelihood the most expensive treasures in existence.

Meanwhile, stamps issued by Tibet, Nepal and Bhutan have a unique appeal for collectors. One reason for this is the mystique of the faraway, the aura of lands long forbidden to access by outsiders. Lhasa traditionally was supposed to be reached only in disguise. Nepal did not allow tourists until the mid 1950s, and Bhutan continues to impose severe restrictions on travellers. Thus, despite their towering, snow-capped peaks, the Himalaya are hot.

Hot Himalaya

Like many of my friends, I enjoy membership in the lively Nepal and Tibet Philatelic Study Circle (Bhutan included), a good two hundred strong from all over the world. We have access to knowledgeable dealers specialising in our area, such as Robson Lowe of London, George Alevizos of Santa Monica,California, and Geoffrey Flack of Vancouver.

Fine scholars—the likes of Frank Vignola, Wolfgang Hellrigl, Dick van der Waterern, Frealon Bibbins, and the late Arnold Waterfall—research the books that have become our bibles. We exhibit and meet at national and international philatelic exhibitions. We have our own quarterly, Postal Himal , which began as a newsletter in November, 1976, and assumed its present, enlarged format five years later. Philately, the voice of the Kathmandu-based Nepal Philatelic Society, and specifically devoted to the issues of Nepal, also first appeared on the scene in the 1970s.

Luckily for this retired professor of foreign languages (teachers' salaries being what they are), Himalayan material does not have to be stalked among the rarefied million-dollar heights, but can be found in the more modest one-to-ten-to-fifteen-thousand-dollar foothills. (I do know, however, of one Himalayan item for which the owner is asking twenty-five thousand.)

Supplies of these stamps are relatively scarce, even for the cheaper stamps. In Bhutan and Tibet, printings of a few hundred of many of the denominations satisfied the domestic need for sending letters. Even in Nepal, issues were relatively minuscule compared with, let us say, the millions printed for European or American use. Part of the lure of hunting in the Himalayan preserves is the difficulty of finding the prey.

Tibet no longer has its own stamps, being forced to use those issued by China. Its own issues began only in 1912. Between that date and about 1956, when its stamps were superseded by those of China, Tibet turned out barely 20 different stamps, in just three sets meant for regular postage, along with a dubious group of items, supposedly for official use, which most collectors consider bogus,. All have but one basic design the Tibetan lion.

Nepal, too, between 1881 and 1907 was satisfied with one design, a sripech (the royal and noble headdress) above crossed khukuris. Between the years 1907 and 1948 only one more was added: the god Shiva sitting atop the Himalaya. Now, having joined the Universal Postal Union and gone modern, Nepal puts out scenics, depicts its rulers and famous citizens, and commemorates all manner of events and places, as do most of the world's stamp-issuing nations.

Killer Instinct

 Serious collectors—the kind who would kill to acquire a real find, pawn family jewels for starters, sell their only child into slavery—usually prefer stopping with Tibet 1956 and Nepal 1948, that is, with what we call the classic period. Bhutan's short stamp history (hardly thirty years, none of them in the classic period) has less to offer, Sikkim's even less, but more can be said about Nepal and Tibet.

Tibet offers the most variety. Omitting the pre-stamp (before 1840) period, one might start with soldiers' mail connected to various British military campaigns in and near Tibet. I have one example in my own collection dated 1861, the earliest I know of.

The Sikkim Campaign of 1888-89 occasioned a fascinating correspondence to and from a certain Lieutenant (later, Captain) Sandbach, at least one piece of which was sent from within Tibet. Better known is the relatively voluminous body of letters resulting from Young-husband's 1903-4 expeditions into Tibet and the following period of occupation by the British Raj, 1904-10. The English were in turn superseded by the Chinese, 1909-1919, whose increasing influence, culminating in a war, resulted in occupation and a postal regime that actually put out its own overprinted stamps strictly for use in Tibet.

There are as well private items, not connected with wars or invasions, such as, for instance, the extensive Sven Hedin correspondence sent by the Swedish explorer to his father back in Europe.

Nepal's philatelic history is somewhat less varied, yet still fascinating. The postal service's original single design still allowed for a great number of colour shades, several colour errors (notably a two-anna denomination printed in the colour of the one-anna blue, and a one-anna green), and some interesting plate flaws. I must describe a phenomenon that is characteristic of the first Nepali design, that of tete-beche.

Head to Foot

The issues up to 1907 (and for telegraphic use, up to around 1930) were printed in sheets of eight rows of eight individual stamps each. Each separate cliché (as they are most properly called) is fitted into a form by hand and locked into place by the printer. The stamps are modest in size and the design looks pretty much the same, right side up or upside down, especially in the later, more worn printings, which used the same old plates. Should the individual clichés fall out or be removed for cleaning, there was a good chance they could be reinserted upside down with reference to adjoining stamps, thus creating what are called fete-beche pairs (loosely translated from the French, the term means "head-foot"). Collectors salivate at the thought, not to mention the sight, of one of the very early examples. The 1881 issue has only three values (one, two, and four annas) and only the two annas shows an inverted pair (three mint and one used examples known). Rarest of the rare!

These, then, are the specimens to die for (along with one of the early two-colour postal cards—one example has surfaced in which the paper was inserted in the press upside down for the second colour; thus, the orange half-anna value panel appears, inverted, at the lower left instead of the upper right of the card). Later printings provide increasingly common examples, occurring in all three values up to 1907 and beyond. There is also a half-anna black stamp intended for official government use, in a dozen and more printings, replete with flaws, sheet borders, inverts, and a fabulously rare orange-vermillion variety. Such are the minutiae that mesmerise Nepal specialists.

The second design, 1907-29, and two similar ones of 1930 and 1935, beautifully executed and printed in London by Perkins-Bacon, pretty well end the classic period. However, some collectors continue with the typographed reprints of these engraved stamps, effected by the Nepali government itself because supplies were difficult to obtain from England during World War H. Various printings with a great number of missing perforations and numerous shades were in use up to 1948, and even later. In 1949, the modem period may be said properly to begin.

Readers of this account of Himalayan collecting may be pardoned for concluding that philately is an addiction, and that Nepal-Tibet-Bhutan collectors rank among the most seriously addicted. But before condemning us, the reader might want to consider that, while our addiction may be hard on the pocketbook, it beats drugs, tobacco and alcohol, is neither illegal, immoral nor fattening—and takes one around the world in a most colourful way.

Who could ask for anything more?