Papel or Papeles Sellado

Old Tagalog as written by an "escribano" or scribe

Years before I caught on the "serious" collecting bug, I was collecting paper ephemera like papel sellado.  By serious, I meant collecting objects that moneyed collectors covet like santos figures and ceramics. Back then, I was eking out the life of the proletariat living from one paycheck to the next whereby my disposable income for such indulgences is limited by the price ceiling. I was a cheapskate scraping the crumbs of Ebay.ph. The only difference now is that I have a slightly bigger paycheck.

I was interested in anything Spanish colonial and papery. Papel sellado stood out as perfect collecting material.  And my goodness, the amount and quality being offered was spectacular- a lot were affordable and quite interesting.

I snapped up everything that I could lay my hands on (budget permitting), and soon I was able to amass two albums full of documents.  During that time, the supply was plenty and the demand weak. So I was happy.

A 1-page document for 1855.

My insights so far:

1.  During the Spanish rule, papel sellado was introduced as a means of increasing government revenue through taxation of official documents. It's like having a notary public, but in this case, if you want to make something official, you have to pay the government in order to document your claim.

2.  Papel sellado had a range of values- from the cheapest (pobres) to most expensive (ilustres)- meaning even the poor illiterate farmer can have his official document too.  And this face value is depicted in different allegorical illustrations and colors so as to differentiate the years they were published.  So a papel sellado done in 1887 would be different from 1888.

Pobres. The lowest value.

3.  In collecting them, the higher the face value means the higher is its catalog value. Perhaps it is because not a lot of ordinary people used them, so there were only a few pieces left. And only the rich like the friars could afford the high value ones. 

4.  Since the high value sellados were used by the educated and the rich, the language used was typically Castillan in flavor and the handwriting more refined.  The lower class values meanwhile were usually written in the vernacular. Remember that Tagalog was still a language limited to the environs of Manila (and not a national language), so sellados coming from Ilocos would have been written in Ilocano.

5.  Although collectors value the seal and the stamp more, the contents of the sellado, for me, has the greater appeal. If you love languages, you'll enjoy reading Old Tagalog with its use of c's instead of k's, the lyricism of the words. You shall discover also from these fine existing examples the evolution of the Filipino language and how much has changed in terms of orthography and grammar.

6.  They will make you appreciate our Spanish heritage more because through this you will discover the lives, the trade-goods, the geography of a people long gone.  And reading the 1st hand narrative is the best.

The dry seal

For the past couple of years, the prices climbed steadily the rate of which is pretty alarming. Good luck to you if you can find one that costs less than P500. Most sellers already are quoting prices from the Lehmann Catalog thereby jacking up the cost.  I find this quite horrendous.  Why?

1. Even though I find the reference extremely important in cataloging extant Philippine papel sellados, I find it disturbing that local and foreign dealers quickly quote the catalog prices as bible truths as if the prices were dictated by the "National Committee on the Collection of Papel Sellado."  Before, a 2-page 1-stamp papel sellado from 1880s would have a selling range between P300-500. Now, dealers would quote a similar item at a slightly lesser price than the catalog value regardless of the state of its preservation (wormholed, torn, etc.)

Ex. "(L-619) Rare item catalog value of $75 but I'm selling it for $40 (P1700)"

2.  The catalog was written as a guide for collectors and not as a means for jacking up the prices.  Dealers pounced on this fact because there was no previous guide to speak of, and they thought, "Aha! I've been selling papel sellados so low, now that someone has published catalog values of my items, I'll just follow them and jack up my prices."   It's frustrating for the collector because the increase in the prices are not based on market forces but rather solely on the "expert" opinion of one who has published the pioneering monograph. It's frustrating really.

Ex. One Ebay.ph seller has a penchant for quoting the Lehmann catalog per page, meaning if your document has four pages, expect the price to increase exponentially.

Until that time when demand will snowball to a point when collectors will buy even at catalog prices, only then they shall have that moral ascendancy to do so because right now, they all look like money-grubbing ignoramuses.  Imagine selling a worm-holed and stained document at catalog price.  It's ridiculous. Anyhow,  with the current demand limited to a handful of knowledgeable collectors, having such prices soaring through my budgetary roof is really a huge turn off.

It has nearly been a decade since the first catalog was published online.  We'll just have to wait and pounce on those with better prices and reject those sellers who think that having an obscure Spanish document is as valuable as having the map to the Yamashita treasure.

my mini-collection

Just in case you missed the link for the Lehmann Catalog: www.theipps.info/bibliography/Papeles_Catalog.pdf