Wet Sky

 We have not seen the Sun for two days now so that means it's stamp weather. Actually any day can be a stamp day but even more so in the wet. I have been dismantling an old album from Germany, printed in 1928. One of my collecting guidelines is just about anything from the 1800's, especially from a place where I have no previous knowledge. Just like the separate states here before Federation, German states ran their mail service with their own stamps, like Baden, Hamburg and Bergedorf. They also repeated the same stamp designs for world domination, as did the British, as did the French. Those Europeans!

The difference an E makes

Good stamp day yesterday with showers driving thru then Sun then showers etc. I have mentioned previously about the large difference a stamp can have in value, depending on other factors like mint vs used or condition issues like fading, tearing etc.  I found two stamps yesterday, vastly different in value becuase of the original designs.  The early German currency was a mixed bag between North and South German areas up to 1875.  A united one currency fits all, came in 1875 (100 Pfennige = 1 Mark) but it seems the spelling of Pfennige was an issue. The E was dropped but could still be seen on stamps for the first few years.  These stamps are worth $1000 more than those without an E and I found one of each.

with E

with No E

Stanley's Books

 I opened a box that was delivered yesterday from the auction house.  The hammer man describes the lot in a few sentences but you never really know what you are going to get from an auction until you have looked inside. There was the usual old albums but also two books. One of them an ancient looking catalog from 1954. Now this has happened previously as well, as I was sent another edition from 1984. So with the catalog I bought in 2019, I have an historic record to compare stamp valuations over time.  There is a theory that stamps only ever go up in value and I can prove it. Let's take the first ever stamp, which I can see was worth £3 in 1954. In 1984 for it has gone up to £125 and in 2019 it was valued at £375. So maybe it is around £400 by now.  Who said diamonds never lose their value. In my lifetime that stamp has increased in value by 13,200 %

1954

1984

Plate 77

 I have not wanted to get into the microscopic detail of stamps. The Penny Red which replaced the Penny Black is an example.  Millions of these stamps were printed requiring lots of printing plates.  Now plate 77 turned out to be a dud. They printed just one sheet of 240 stamps as the tester and found that most were skewed with badly aligned perforations, however 10 or so stamps were ok and survived after the plate was destroyed. The plate numbers are visible in each stamp in the scrollwork on the leftside.  

These days there is a website database that can help identify these plate numbers. OK I gave it a try. It knows the position of each stamp on the plate and has a zooming feature.  I have one penny red only and turns out, it is from Plate 71.  Close but no cigar, as the latest one from plate 77, was auctioned for a half million pounds some years back.

this is my stamp and the image sent back from the database. You can see the 71 on the left.

Stamp News

 Nothing like a fogged in day for a stamp session or two. There will be a delivery of boxes today so I am clearing out some space. There is also the depository where unrequired stamps build up for a year or two before being stashed somewhere else out of sight.  The latest version of this weighs just under 11kg and is full to the brim. There must be at least 50,000 stamps in there. As for stamps that are required, I did find a couple of envelopes which I have kept. There is one addressed to Miss Rosemary Valintina Pereira care of the Kenya Extract Co., Colony of North Borneo.  Now that conjurs up a vision of empire and prim ladies in bamboo hats.  The other one was a letter thrown off the cruise ship ORIANA in 1975. There is an island there that collected biscuit tins, out of the water, from passing ships and delivered them to the next mail ship. The service ended in 1983 when an airstrip was built.  To quote that famous postman Newman, "The mail never stops".

Grandies Stamp of Approval

It was a very rainy day, it was also school holidays so what better time to try a stamp session with grandies.  I got two albums out that I had previously cleared and were in very good condition. I also got a tub of stamps together maybe 500 or so which got dumped on the table and spreadout. My first suggestion was look for animals and you look for birds.  This worked very well as we have now had two sessions and as well as animals and birds, there is a page for plants and flowers and also fish.  I think interest was waining for the five yar old but the seven yar old is still keen.  I will be keeping the albums here with the other books in the nook.

1000 Perfins

 The rain has come but I might get in a short walk, as it seems to be easing. My neighbour Di, the physical trainer, was running passed in more rain after a quick swim so she was already wet.  She says not to let the appendix thingy stop my ideas of trying a shot put competition one day. Keep up the light regime for now, the way I am doing it, she says.  PT people are always good for a gee up.  My activities are limited to inside so far today, so it is a good stamp day.  I uncovered my 1,000th stamp with perforated initials.  This one is from the USA in a strip of three with very clean punch holes for visibility.  These stamps were used by the Realty Development Company based in Philadelphia in 1938. The company has gone now. 

Dr Lowry

 Has Winter come early?  We do need the rain so I should not complain. Our tank is back up to 50% so that must be good.  I have not had as much stamp time but given the non stop 24 hours of rain then that will drive you indoors. I put in a bid and won, some charity sourced boxes of stamps. You never know what you might get particularly from a charity but I have given them a go.  The contents are disjointed which is to be expected. They get donations from everywhere and pack them into boxes and hope they will sell.  I am half way thru this lot and the first surprise is a full on 200 page coffee table book from Stanley Gibbons. It is a glossy history of stamps. Also I found a small note from Alex to Dr Lowry, asking if he can have the stamps from his envelope. Now Doc Lowry must have worked in Europe last century, as the stamps are postmarked Monaco 1994.  It seems Alex never got the stamps, so maybe Dr Lowry is a tight, miserable bugger who is the world's most under taxed Monaco Medico or maybe he just forgot to pass them on.

Dr Lowry

40,000

Another grey day so I have spent some time tidying up loose ends, by that I mean stamp loose ends or just loose stamps. When you have thousands of these lying around you have to keep on top of it. Some people take every stamp that ever comes their way and place it neatly into an album and to make sure they all fit, the stamps are placed ontop of each other. There are so many crammed in they cannot even be seen and the albums are weakened by the volume.  I have just cleared some old books where multiple stamp copies are poring out onto the floor, as the book is bursting. This approach never makes sense to me. I have been using tubs to hold the overflow and I have just filled one with the Australian variety. It weighs over 6kg and I am now coming to the top of another much bigger tub holding stamps of the world. Good thing I don't collect cars.

how many aussie stamps

Seven Seas 33rd edition

Every eight years or so the Seven Seas people publish their stamp catalog.  So for the last eight years I have been stockpiling Australian stamps. I have a paid service where the post office sends me the new issues. There are many variations but I get at least one of each, however they are now in unopened envelopes, in boxes, also stuffed in folders etc. The latest SSS edition arrived yesterday, twice the size and in shiny hardback. So maybe it will take some months to clear this backlog. It is a lot of work to publish one of these catalogs, however in future I am going to try a more timely system , as I don't think I can wait another eight years for the next one and also I may draw the line at collecting Australian stamps beyond the end of this year anyway.  I still have some gaps up to 2025 but largely the collection is in the 90 percentile for completion however the hunt to fill the gaps will continue and gets more precise as you get closer to 100%. 

1942 Correspondence

 I was working my way thru a very old stamp album. It is much delapidated with the spine coming apart. It was printed in London and is the 13th edition from the 1930's.  On one page I found an envelope from the Czechoslovak Brigade field post to the Council House Birmingham.  I poked around a bit to see if I could find some more info.  The council house is the Birmingham Town Hall. They had numerous committiees dealing with "refugees and aliens" and another one for "Prisoners of War". Maybe LW Faulkner was on one of these.

In Print

 I received the 2nd instalment of my article about maps on stamps. This is the printed magazine version. They do have a website at  www.mapsonstamps.org but there does not seem to be a digital copy anywhere there, although I do have the digital version as well.  These mags are quarterly and I originally sent it in last year so I have half forgotten the jist of it.  I tried to mix it up with some facts and with some fun, like find the hidden map on the stamp. It must be the first time they had a game page in their magazine. The whole printing effort is very slick with high quality imaging and paper.  I got in just in time as the editor is retiring, so might the mag if there is no one else.

Sherlock Stamp Collector

 I have been reading my stamp short story book and I found that Sherlock Holmes was a philatelist.  He was always a guy with attention to detail and used it to solve a crime. It seems someone tried to defraud the Tatts guys with a perfect football pool entry. However from the envelope and stamp he could see that a first day of issue stamp was used three days before it went on sale, so the cancellation was wound back the three days. This meant a postal worker was the culprit. Sure enough he tracked down a cleaner who had access to the post office after hours. His mistake was to grab a stamp that wasn't yet for sale. Elementary.

Flight Cover

I generally do not look for envelopes and cards however there are times when they come my way so I will include some if inclined.  With the inclusion of AI tools like Copilot into windows, it is easy to send an image to the AI and ask for an assesment or valuation.  I have received a stack of flight covers which are mail specifically placed on board, as part of a first flight.  The one below has a stamp valued at a paltry 18c however when attached to this envelope, carried by the first flight to inland Malaya in1937, it makes a difference. I sent the whole thing to Copilot and a mid range estimate came back at $50, a big jump up.  When I was in Singapore, the Orchard Rd of today is all high end shopping and this address is now a parking lot.

R&R

 Just when I thought I was getting over this lurgy business my nose started running and hasn't stopped for a day. Not the best topic for a blog but that seems to sum up todays activity, hunkering down indoors to stave off a cold.  There is always a few stamps to wade thru. I opened a decrepit looking album that was  yellowed and cracked.  Inside the cover was last centuries version of a database, more like last centuries version of a spreadsheet.  This album was about Europa, which is a UN style organisation, formed in 1956 but with just European countries as members and also like the UN, they issue their own stamps. I have kept the sheet for posterity. What I like the most is the small doodles of the stamp designs along the bottom margin.

Wet Day In

This is the second day of heavy rain here. The garden beds are getting a good soaking after five months of not much rain.  I have put the olive picking on hold for the last two days so when Anna arrives a bit later I have left a nice area on the tree for her to pick in the pouring rain. (I don't think so.)  In any case there is a good amount for her to take from the fridge right now.  As for indoor activities our jigsaw has had a few pieces added but I was mostly giving attention to tax returns and stamp collecting.  I saved them up for this rainy day.  I found a Queensland stamp worth over $800 this morning.

Note the precise date and cursive style initialed by HB over 131 years ago

Maps on Stamps

 There is a link here to my article from the other day.  Each electronic edition is loaded into dropbox. You do not need to join up in order to read a copy so ignore those requests. There was a button to download a copy but it may not be there now.  Apparently it was a big article so has been segmented into the next editions as well.  I think there might only be two members of this worldwide society in Melbourne and I had a reply from the other one. In the article I refer to a stamp from Reunion where I checked the co-ordinates on the stamp where the Easting (Longitude) was out by a couple of degrees. He pointed out that at the time the stamp was produced (1907), France was stubbornly sticking to their own prime meridian which of course ran thru Paris rather than the one everyone else was using at Greenwich.  At least that accounts for one of the anomolies I found.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/2cu222kgyg4hatqejz4xe/TNCP-89-April-2025-PDF-Final.pdf?rlkey=385q4pvkne18obrgevvjnc8e6&st=ewue3vys&dl=0

should be 55E not 53E

A conference in Washington voted on the Greenwich meridian for universal use in determining time and navigation in 1884 but France held out until 1914. Those Frenchies!

Published

 Some yar ago during COVID, remember that word, most of us were scratching around for something to do. There was a European website that took articles and papers featuring stamp themes.  So being a properly qualified cartographer I wrote a paper about Maps on Stamps.  The problem was that I could never get in contact with these guys.   The mathematics behind getting a round surface onto a flat paper has long been removed from my brain however I did not want to write anything too technical.  The paper languished for some years until I joined the CartoPhilately Society.  These guys have a journal and are always looking for articles so I dusted off the words and gave it over.  

A snapshot of the printed article

WA Swan

If you have a sore knee and need to sit around then that makes it a good stamp day. (Everyday is a good stamp day.)  I have uncovered a pre-Federation stamp from WA. They used swans in their stamp designs but varied the denominations by using subtle colour changes.  I have two colour swatches below, the first is carmine and the second is vermillion.  They couldn't just make it red.  So there are two fourpenny stamps with each of these colours and I have one of them and depending on the colour, it is a $500 difference.  I have made my selection. 

carmine

vermillion

Harness

 I have had different GoPro contraptions for some time and never did much with them.  Today I tried one on which gives a hands free view. I have always held these cameras in my hand when snorkeling, although the stamp view below is from a seated position and seems to work well. Swimming movement could be a lot different perhaps recording a sway.  These two albums were the last in a box full. You never know what will come up. The first one I am dismantling as I have been thru it and taken what I wanted. The next and last is a total mess, all loose pages from different sources but full of very old stamps.