Free The Error World by Simon Garfield Page A

writing-desks, and in boxes in the attic, and sometimes make quite useful hauls. The brothers are touched and gratified. Schoolgirls are not interested in stamps, agreed, but—this is the important point—they are undeniably interested in their brothers' preoccupation with stamps. What is it all about? What is the sense of it?
    These are good questions. But the key thing about this passage is the observation that collecting is an instinct. It is not whether one collects, it is what.
    Almost everything from my bedside table has gone. Indeed, apart from my first stamp album, almost everything from my bedroom has gone. But how do we agree to these departures? What confident error of forward thinking allows us or our mothers to dispose of childhood property, or secure it in a loft never to be retrieved? How can we tell, at the age of twelve or thirteen, that we will not one day miss these things?

My Dealer

    When I returned to stamps in my early forties I found that the market had changed. The Strand was no longer the Mecca of philately, and was unrecognisable from when I had last examined it with a collector's eye. Gibbons and the Strand Stamp Centre were still there, but the weekly Saturday market had gone, along with many traders. A few had retired and sold up, a few had gone bankrupt, and others had just decided to work from home and send catalogues in the post. Then the Internet came along, and they didn't even have to spend postage any more.
    One shop that had disappeared was owned by a man named David Brandon. Brandon had opened for business in 1975, and during my first collecting phase I had marvelled at the treasures on display. Brandon sold almost everything—GB across all reigns, British Commonwealth, most of the world, albums and many accessories such as watermark and phosphor detectors. The shop was there for eleven years, until Brandon realised that he could do without paying the high property rates and would probably sell just as many stamps to his regular clients via mail order.
    To attract new clients, and remind people that he still had a knockout selection of stamps, Brandon now placed advertisements in the monthly magazines. Along with his son, he had developed a new speciality. 'Honesty, Integrity and Confidentiality,' proclaimed one advert in
Gibbons Stamp Monthly
not long after I had taken up collecting again. 'We believe that these are the three most important words when choosing a dealer to help you build the Great Britain Collection of your desire. Being the world's leading and most active dealers in Important Investment Quality Errors we would be pleased to hear from you, should you care to obtain major pieces such as the items illustrated.' The items illustrated included the Jaguar with the missing Minis, and the Red Cross stamp without the red cross. Another advert appeared in July 2004 announcing another twenty major pieces, ranging from a George VI
tete-beche
mis-cut booklet pane to the 1967 Wild Flowers with missing agate. Just four sets of this existed, and Brandon had the only complete block of four. According to the advert, the block was last offered for sale by a man called Derek Worboys, and had remained in a private collection ever since. The price was £8,500.
    I found the pictures of the stamps irresistible, and so I called up and bought three modest things. I selected the items with great care, and all of them were classic but common stamps I remembered from childhood: 1965 Joseph Lister Discovery Centenary 4d missing brown-red, 1966 British Birds 4d blackbird missing legs, 1966 World Cup is 3d missing blue. This was the beginning: you start small, you like the experience and the product, you get hooked. I had a good conversation with Brandon about prices and great errors, and we hit if off straight away. He knew the area where I lived quite well from his pre-stamp days, and it emerged that we also had a shared interest in the history of the London Underground. Then he did