Best of British stamp design
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.
2010 GB. London 2010 Festival of Stamps, prestige booklet pane #1.
And a close up of stamps:
2010 GB. A close up of stamps from pane #1.
2010 GB. London 2010 Festival of Stamps, prestige booklet pane #2.
And a close up of stamps:
2010 GB. A close up of stamps from pane#2.
2010 GB. London 2010 Festival of Stamps, prestige booklet pane #3.
And a close up of stamps:
2010 GB. A close up of stamps from pane#3.
Possibly the best 10£ I’ve paid for postage of goods (as the parcel had other nice stamps for postage too)… My compliments for prompt delivery and excellent use of stamps goes to Ian at Norvic Philatelics. Thumbs up for this one!
PS. And yes, I’ve been having lots of fun reading/browsing the Karamitsos catalog… For some reason I have a feeling that I’ll be doing a lot re-checking for my Greece stamp collection (and duplicates) during the upcoming autumn and winter. LOL.
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… but I find many more more beautiful than these..
A matter of taste I think.
Ja…Ja…Ja..! envy I think it is…(me too…lol!)
Keijo, don’t you play lotto?…you should!…jesus!!!
I couldn’t imagine a poor guy breaking a prestige book, to use the stamps on parcels!!! let alone an auctioneer…
I bought a few copies of panes, the miniature sheets and presentation packs on the stamp fair,really nice those items…congratulations to you!…once in the lifetime things like this happen…really!
regards.
Every time I see handsome stamps like these I think that collecting “stamps on stamps” topicals would be the perfect compliment to a 1840-1940 or similarly time-delimited collection. Just what I need, another excuse to acquire more stamps. Thanks Keijo for posting these.
@Fred… Actually I do try my luck with Lotto almost every Saturday (have done so for nearly last 20 years). Like most working people, I dream of hitting the jackpot – and paying the home mortgage in one go.LOL…
But I do agree that I seem to have much better luck with stamps. I think it just one way the universe keeps itself in balance, LOL.
@Bob… To quote Ayn Rand “In collecting, there is no such thing as too many stamps: the more one gets, the more wants.”
Seriously speaking, I do agree that stamps on stamps (and possibly even on wider perspective, like famous collectors etc) could make a nice and attractive spin-off collection.
Thanks for sharing the wonderful panes. But I wonder at how much of a premium the prestige booklet is sold. In Hong Kong, prestige booklets are sold at more than twice the face value of the stamps at least, and the discrepancy seems to be widening. So probably very few people in their sane mind will try to use those panes for real postage.
Wonderful materials you got there. Frankly, I feel that its getting much harder to get Postal covers using commemorative stamps these days. Most of the commemorative stamps are usually kept mint and if they are used on covers, its normally a philatelic cover rather than a postal cover.
I’m more focus on mnh stamps like most philatelist but I also collect covers. I need some advice if its better to keep the cover as a whole or to wash out the stamps and keep them as used stamps. I would like some opinions here. As for me, I would prefer it on cover as its a prove that the stamps actually traveled. Besides that, I gives me the opportunity to study on the postal history area of the cover. Alot of other factors can be very interesting such as:
1. over paid covers
2. under paid covers
3. path traveled
4. misc franking
5. postmarks
6. etc…
Please let me know what you think.
@Erich… A bit of Googling revealed that the face value for prestige booklet was £11.15. And it matches precisely the face value of stamps – so there was no extra cost.
Pane #1 has three each of the £1 and 1st Class KGV Double Head (worth £0.41). So this makes £4.23.
Pane #2 has two £1.00 values reproducing the 10/- and £1 Seahorses stamps. So this adds £2 to total.
Pane #3 has four 1st Class (£0.41) stamps reproducing the two Wembley 1924 Empire Stamps. So £1.64 more to total
And pane #4 (which I don’t have) has self-adhesive Machin pane containing 2 x 2nd (worth £0.32), 4 x 1st(£0.41) and 2 x 50p Machins with Security Features and Hidden Code “ROYAL PAIL” in the iridescent overprint. Total of £3.28 for this pane.
@Ronny… I agree that real used commemoratives are much harder to obtain these days. Very few non-collectors send out any mail these days except random (or required) greeting cards. And business has even less use for any kind of stamps all-together…
As for collecting covers, I’m definitely not the right person to give any advice as I pretty much “butcher” any cover coming trough my mailbox. LOL.
I admit, that possibly some high face stamps on cover/parcel would have been best kept on piece if thinking about possible future value of items. But it would have definitely caused some very hard to reply questions about storage etc. And mixing collecting of stamps and question of investment/future value does not go well together IMHO.
For me it’s the cancel that tells whether or not the stamp has undergone postal process; and a SOTN is preferred as it tells where and when this happened… All in all I can say it takes a very abnormal item (like T/underpaid cover, EFO etc) to keep the cover untouched when I see it, LOL.
“And mixing collecting of stamps and question of investment/future value does not go well together IMHO.”
I agree with you 100%… no doubts from my side… LOL
I agree, these are superb stamps – as a sheet or as singles/multiples and i have bought some to use on my auction sendings and other postal correspondence. I think UK Royal Mail would do well to promote these more widely and make them more available through post offices, as they evoke memories of what the post once was!
Yours also have very light cancels, the PO in UK usually destroys sendings like this with heavy and smudgy cancels, that makes yours even finer. 10/10 to Norvic for doing this and i would like to think having the respect of the workers in their local sorting office.
keep up an excellent Blog.
@David… I’ll definitely do my best to keep the blog up and running… But very likely the next upcoming weeks will be more silent than usual as “everyday life” (=work, kids & family, gardening, preparing for winter etc) tries to heavily interfere with my stamp filled world… But I guess that’s how it must go – real life first, bits of paper second.