Recently I received a copy of the $10 Canadian whale definitive stamp on my incoming mail, and I decided to show it as well as other stamps (in my collection) from the high value wildlife mammals series it belongs to. This definitive series started in 1997, and it’s going on strongly with new additions coming out every few years. These make a very attractive display as they all feature a stunning design, and every stamp contain several more or less hidden security features to seek.
As long as I remember, I’ve been afraid of sorting Brazilian definitive series of 1920-1941 (also known as ‘Série vovó’). The facts for the series are quite frightening: 11 designs, 44 face different stamps (incl.overprints), 13 different papers. Depending on catalog used, there are 145-168 major numbers to collect. And that’s just the big picture. These stamps have a mountain of different perforations, color variations etc. These make a daunting identification challenge indeed! Anyway, I made myself a new years promise to get all the duplicates (as well as those already in my collection) properly organized.
During Christmas I worked my way through a small collection of Greece I had acquired earlier. At the same I put the specialized Hellas stamp catalog I have into proper use for the first time. All in all it was a very enlightening experience, as the specialized catalog had somewhat different view and lots more details than general catalogs. So let’s begin a journey into stamps of Greece with attractive ‘Hermes and Iris’ definitive postage stamps of 1911-1927.
Carrying on with the topic of Japanese postage stamps, I’m heading towards the prefecture stamps (also known as as Furusato or hometown stamps). These are best described as kind of local governement stamps. Depending on the catalog these are listed either as separate section (Scott), in appendix (Stanley Gibbons catalogs pre-2010) or on separate section (Stanley Gibbons catalogs 2010 onwards), or mixed with regular national stamp issues (Michel).
One of the greatest challenges every stamp collector faces is identifying stamps and postmarks that use foreign writing system. Like most western people, I’m most familiar with Latin alphabets and numbers. So when I last week reworked my collection of Japanese stamps, I was ahead of some serious challenge. Fortunately the years have thought me few handy tricks / cheats worth sharing.
In the past weeks I’ve been digging my way through the gigantic lot of of Czechoslovakian stamps I bought on start of the year. One of the most common designs in this mixture has been the 1945/47 definitive series displaying portraits of Czechoslovak independence movement key figures: Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, Edvard Beneš and Milan Rastislav Štefánik.
When speaking of Czechoslovakian stamps, the focus is usually on one of the early designs. Instead I’m going to tackle something that is showcased not so often – the definitive series of 1925/27 displaying portrait of President Masaryk. These contain pretty much all a stamp collector / philatelists can dream of: a reasonable number of different face values, small progressive changes in designs, multiple perforations, different paper types (unwatermarked and watermarked paper, watermark positions, thin and thick paper), multiple re-engravings etc. And the stamps are plenty and cheap. The Masaryk series has all the best bits.
As my family’s gone to a graduation party for entire afternoon and left me home to rest, I’ve got some good time to write a bit about stamps I like. So let’s dig in with stamps and history of Azerbaijan.
After World War II, Poland issued several stamps commemorating rebuilding of Warsaw. After the currency reform of 1950, the “Bricklayers by King Sigismund’s column” stamp was re-issued in new color & face value. Though Michel states this stamp exists in varying perforations and two color varieties, it never goes into more detail about these. Thus I was first quite amazed when I saw examples of both color varieties side by side. They appear somewhat different on parts of printing.
Not so long ago I purchased a small accumulation of Persian 1906 Provisoire stamps from local auction. To my surprise, the auctioneer had misidentified the items. True, the stamps I received appear to be 1906 Provisoire issue stamps. But they have some additional unlisted overprint, and this has got me lost too.