A glance at the catalogue prices of the first Cyprus set of Edwardian stamps, which were printed on paper known to philatelists as "Single Crown CA"--_i.e._, one entire watermark to each stamp--is a mild example of the abnormal rise which took place in nearly all colonial stamps, bearing the head of King Edward and printed on this "single" paper, when the unexpected change was made in 1904 to a "multiple" paper--that is, one in which the watermarks were arranged very closely together, so that each stamp must show parts of three or four of the devices. Stamps sold in 1902 or 1903 at a little over their original cost jumped up and up in price until they fetched, even at auction, 700 or 800 or even 1,000 per cent. over "face": small fortunes were made; but, as has happened, the rise was permanent and still continues. The quaint "_Fiji Times_ Express" stamps, produced by private enterprise, and which were the forerunners of a most interesting series of stamps, many rare, were issued within the memory of many collectors--One Penny, Three Pence, Six Pence, and One Shilling--and yet that set of four stamps, dating from only 1870, is worth five hundred times "face," a fair return even for a wait of forty years. Certain stamps of a subsequent (1874) issue are now also very scarce; but they are varieties as distinguished from the normal printings, and scarcely come within the category of stamps obtainable by the casual purchaser. The pretty embossed Gambias, particularly those printed on the old "Crown CC" paper, afford another instance of unearned increment: the set of seven values was, say in 1885, to be bought for 3s. or 4s.--now it is valued at about £6. The reward of any far-seeing investor who had happened to purchase the Four Annas, red and blue, issued in India in 1854, would have been a rich one had he noticed an inversion of the Queen's head as regards its frame--copies of this rarity are known on the entire original envelope, so evidently they were, even if noticed, regarded merely as the results of carelessness. It would have been a (perhaps fatal) shock to any specialist in Indian stamps who had happened to purchase one of these rare errors still on the original, to find that he, by the irony of fate, had addressed and presumably stamped that very envelope thirty or forty years previously. The stamp bought originally for a few pence would have represented to-day, say, £130 unused, £70 used. The purchase of a few copies of the Two Cents and Twelve Cents of the first issue of Labuan, in 1879, some years before the advent of the handsome "labels," all happily now obsolete, would not have proved a matter for regret, seeing that the prices have for some years been well over £10 for the two.