Small Details

 I found a stamp that the designer and engraver had altered slightly to add his own personal touch, a six point star of David symbol hidden in the detail of the stamp. It reminded me of the time when I was working to produce maps way back last century. On this occasion I added an extra town name to the general layout of the map. It was in small print and had to get passed several checks without being spotted as a fake town. This map was part of a booklet and on final production there it was, Brownlowville a new place you could not visit in Gippsland. I thought I had a copy of the sheet at least but could not find it. I have attached some of my other earlier work as a student and also from the MMBW days. These show some of the printing steps where you may be able to slip in something extra but highly unauthorised. There was another guy on the team who was forever putting "pubic space" on the water plans rather than "public space".

a colour proof to check alignment of plates

Moonee Ponds catchment

star circled

Phillip Parker King

 There was one stamp that had been waiting to find me for years. I had a charity box that I bought which could be a hit or miss.  I opened one of the albums and there it was on the first page, a complete set of navigators.  Many times I would find this set and always the last one was missing. These were the predecimal variety and there it was, a £2 King, worth around $90 at the moment. There are about 180 different designs in the 415 Australian predecimal stamps ever released and now I have at least one of every design. It was the last predecimal stamp that I could realistically expect to find just floating around.  The other 20 or so variations I do not have are worth $1,000s for each one.  As for King, he was an explorer, one of Australia's first beach combers. He sailed all around Australia, hugging the coast on four different explorations.

NFTs

 Look up fungible and it means tradeable or replaceable and some how from that, nonfungible means unique. So nonfungible tokens are digital files representing real world items that can be bought and sold.  Years ago NFT's were a fad taken up by certain generations of  20 somethings who seemed to have time and money to burn.  The thousands of dollars spent on NFTs have dropped away to worthless. I guess those 20 somethings are now 40 somethings and have moved on.  Some countries joined the rush with Digital versions of some of their stamps.  Australia Post has come late to the party with a DigiStamp. I have bought one just to try it for $15. You get your postage stamp but you also get a code to scan, which gives me my online unique digital picture.  I will just stick to real stamps from now on.

digital snake oil

Fishing Village

 Time to go inside after two good days. However does that apply to tradies? I mean aren't they supposed to be tough workers, outside toilers and weather foilers.  Our maintenance man said it was too wet so  will have to finish another time.  Do we get a discount?  Debbie has been drawing, sketching and shading via an online instruction course. Maybe I should watch over her shoulder. So I tried another stamp design. There must be some reason I am picking out stamps from Africa lately. This country has been changed but the fishing village is still there on view.  Now exists as Malawi.  You can play spot the difference with this one.  I should time the effort, I'd say around 30 mins.

PS stamp is worth $11.

Swinging the Prop

 We have retreated inside again. There were good intentions of walking today but it is snowing somewhere. Instead I tried drawing another stamp design. This one has an aviation theme which took my fancy. I also used a HB pencil which was fairly blunt so I need to sharpen it for next time.  They always seem to look better on paper compared to the scanned version. Its all Greek.