Lately I’ve been re-organizing my collection of German stamps, and decided to share something not so common with You once again. This is 110 pfennig commemorative stamp from 1998 series displaying German State Parliaments. I’ts a pretty unimpressive looking stamp on the first view with some short perfs and machine cancellation. But if you take a more closer look, you’ll notice plenty of bizarre stuff going on. AFAIK, this appears to be unlisted print variety in Michel.
This is very likely one of the most bizarre back-of-book items in my Swiss stamp collection – some sort of local revenue stamp from Rebublic of Canton Ticino. If you haven’t heard of Ticino, don’t worry, I’m sure You are not alone, LOL. Ticino is the southernmost canton of Switzerland. Interestingly it is also the only swiss canton in which Italian is the sole official language…And once again I’d like the blog readers to assist me in digging up bits and pieces (like who,why,when etc) about this.
To continue display of some recent additions to my collection, here are three different booklet panes from London 2010 Accession of KGV prestige stamp booklet. I got these from a parcel that brought me a second hand set of specialized stamp catalogs of Greece (Karamitsos/Hellas 2008 to be more precise) from UK. I know several websites have shown images of these stamps/booklet panes, but I suspect very few have seen these real used like this. These are absolutely stunning IMHO.
Just to display a stamp set I finally managed to complete: Switzerland, 1939 National exposition of Zurich, 1st series. Personally I find these stamps attractive in all senses, as they feature nice design and plenty of small variations to keep hawk-eyed stamp collector alert. The stamps are available in 3 different inscriptions (French, German, Italian), and each value has been printed on different kind of paper (10c smooth, 20c grooved,30c fibers paper).
I’m a general worldwide collector, but I do love to dig in deeper too. My current approach in building “slightly specialized” country collections, as I pick up any easy-to-spot differences I happen to come across. And then I randomly do dig in a lot deeper (like with the Hungarian Castle-definitives or GRD 5-year plan definitives).
I think nearly all passioned collectors give plenty of time and devotion to their beloved hobby. I confess that I spend about 2-3 hours daily for stamps. A large part of it goes doing stamp exchanges or browsing online stamp discussion/articles; the weekends I usually spend mostly offline (and sort my stamps) …I know, 2-3 hours a day sounds lot, but as I don’t do much TV (besides random movies) or reading (besides random active periods) in late nights, I can afford the luxury.
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