I often times like to say that stamp collecting is not rocket science. And true,  all it takes is some persistence and devotion to learn the basics. That said, there is a more complex (and maybe a bit darker) side to it all when you get a bit further. I like to call these things as the unwritten laws of stamp collecting, as a lot of collectors moan and groan over these topics, but you will have hard time discovering any printed advice or knowledge regarding these topics.

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Here’s a question I want you think for a while: how accurate/creditable do you consider stamp catalogue given perforation data? Just pick any percentage you consider fair, and then proceed reading the result of below small study. Since I am now building the Stamp Gems database, I am not tracking down just catalog values of selected items, but also other metrics like actual perforation data – and how well it matches the (Michel and Scott) catalogue details.

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Below is a stamp some of you might seen on March Stamp gems page – British occupation of Faroe Islands. Say you had hundreds or thousand of stamps (or stamp scans) for which you wanted to quickly check perforations on all of them, would you gauge the stamps manually, or would you give some automatic perforation software a try?  As a geek I am always interested of the the lazy approach, and as such I thought it was time to revisit the topic whether or not stamp perforation measurement software could handle the challenge.

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It’s time to get the second month of project Stamp Gems rolling. During the initial month of March the gems database grew up to 87 items, and I hope to keep up the pace this month as well. I must say the progress I made in just few weeks was much faster (and more fun) than I anticipated.

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After second World War the Balkan area was in somewhat mixed state. Croatia, which had been an independent (puppet) state from 1941 to 1945 was forced to unite with Tito’s Yugoslavia. The former Croatian fascist government (aka. NDH; Independent State of Croatia) went to exile with leadership of Dr. Ante Pavelic: first to Argentina, then in Spain. This exile era sparked a range of interesting stamp like items.

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Folks, with this post I’m launching a new project titled 💎stamp gems💎 for SCB. Basically it is (and will be) a public record of the higher catalog value stamps in my world collection. How gems works is pretty simple:  each month I will make a new post titled “Stamp gems for month/year”, which will then grow to feature and display various ‘supposedly better’ stamps I have worked throughout that particular month.

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Just a quick announcement to all subscribers that there will be no article (nor newsletter) this week, and possibly the same applies for the week following.  The seasonal influenza wave has hit this part of world, and unfortunately I and other members of my family are down due to it.

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Now here’s a modern Australian stamp I’m sure most of us worldwide stamp collectors have seen in tens, possibly hundreds or thousands of copies.   Since catalogs say this stamp has no varieties besides the so called ‘Koala and Kangaroo reprints’ (a marginal emblem on to the stamp sheets edge to identify originating reprinting of a current stamp.  The first print has no marking, the second has one koala emblem, the third two koalas and so on. The sixth printing is marked by a kangaroo, the seventh by a kangaroo and a koala, the eight a Kangaroo and two koalas etc.), I’m pretty sure most collectors have done the same as me: by-passed the stamps without further study. For reason or another this scrubby specimen of 5 cent ‘Red Lacewing’ below caught my interest, and lo & behold, it turns out to be a previously unknown perforation variety for this particular stamp.

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One of the most famous classic stamp designs are so called Chalon Head (aka just ‘Chalon’) issued in various British colonies from 1850s to early 1880s. The name of these stamps comes from the use portrait of young Queen Victoria, which is based upon a painting by Alfred Chalon.   I admit that for me the Chalon stamps are largely unknown territory. I discovered my first Chalon Head only after twenty years of collecting, and even today my world collection has no no more more than maybe dozen different items.  So I really don’t have much first hand experience on these stamps.  But even that little bit was enough to alert my senses that the below newcomer from Van Diemens Land (better known as Tasmania) was a guaranteed fake. 

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Sometimes life does not go as planned, and one might end up in situations that require pretty extreme actions in order to survive. A nasty reminder of such event is receipt of somewhat insane legal fee sitting on my desk. Long story short, I got involved in legal dispute (in non-stamp related matter) and I lost; that is pretty bad news in a country where the loosing party is expected to pay all expenses for everyone involved. A longer and hopefully more interesting story to share is that in order to survive those fees on timely manner I had to review and rethink my personal finances in somewhat brutal and serious manner, including also the options of selling or pawning my beloved stamp (and comic book) collections.

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