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Hi, Terry,
Just surmising here, based on a lack of definite knowledge, and suffering a boring Monday waiting for the washing machine repair man.
The Heligoland Post Office was run by the Hamburg postal authorities. The inhabitants looked eastwards to Germany rather than westward to Britain for most things, the main tourist business was from Germany, and the new currency in circulation from 1st January 1875 was the Imperial Reichsmark. So I think it safe to assume the new currency stamps, issued in February 1875, were intended to be paid for in German currency, and that values issued therefore reflected the postal rates in German currency.
In deference to the British sovereignty over the island, they then attempted to convert these rates into Sterling, which didn’t work, as there was no British coin of sufficient low value to match the 1 pfennig coin. What to do? I think someone came up with the idea of matching the 1 pfennig to the lowest value British coin available, which was the farthing, and so on. This works fine until you get to 3 pfennigs, which should be three farthings, but it is only 2½ farthings. This implies to me that the Hamburg postal authorities at the time were that the exchange rate of 1pf = ¼d was outrageous, and couldn’t justify it even to themselves for the 3 pf stamp.
Also, whilst half farthings had been made by the Royal Mint until 1856, this was only in small quantities, and all were shipped to Ceylon. It appears that there was little or no possibility of anyone ever proffering 2½ farthings in Heligoland for a 3 pf stamp.
Meanwhile, everyone in Heligoland bought their stamps and everything else in German currency, and if an unfortunate British tourist turned up to buy a stamp with British currency, he paid the rate on the stamp in Sterling for the service required, even if the exchange rate was exorbitant.
I did try to find an actual exchange rate for pounds sterling to Reichsmarks for 1875, but failed. It appears it was down to the relative value on the day of a sovereign (7.98 grams of .917 gold) against a Mark (5.55 grams of .900 silver).
During my random enquiries in to this subject, I did discover that the Gibbons list Heligoland stamps in German currency order, whereas Michel lists them in Sterling currency order. A guilty conscience, perhaps?
Meanwhile, the washer man has been and gone. I’m £150.00 lighter, but at least I’ll have a clean shirt tomorrow.
Regards,
Charles Grainger
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