Stamp Collecting 2024

[gonefishin]

A big thanks to Steve for his insight on the France stamps. Here is the Germany portion of the album.

There may be an expert out there on Germany!

[steve B]

That's a nice assortment, nothing too expensive, but fun stuff and in some ways almost "complete" (By the US catalog, by the specialized german one no. And even they don't list everything. )

The last group, the upper left three are from private posts run within cities.
The big one is a meter imprint.
The bottom few are revenue stamps, but I'm not sure for what exactly.
For some, the stamp went on the document, other schemes had half the stamp going on the document, the other half retained as a reciept, which cleverly parts the stamp preventing it's reuse.

[gonefishin]

Again, thanks Steve - much appreciated. If there are any other countries you might like to check out, let me know - I probably have them.

The U.S. portion of the collection is quite extensive and contains some pretty nice stamps. 150 stamps from the 1800s including #1, Columbian Expo, Trans-Mississippi expo, etc. In addition, probably about every stamp from the 1900s included in the first book. The second book contains mainly back of the book, Revenue, cut squares, Confederate States, etc. with the vast majority being 1800s and early 1900s.

I've been learning a lot this week researching the stamps! Some countries I've never heard of and some countries no longer exist.

It's been entertaining.

[steve B]

The 1800s US official stamps are my main thing.

I collect them in some depth, plate varieties, cancels, pretty much anything I can afford.

Which is odd, because I avoided them for years. Many are in bad shape, and are still expensive. But I started trying to get the ones with the specimen overprint, figured the 1 and 2 cent were possible and not expensive. ALong the way to that, I got a few really good plate varieties, and just kept going.
Eventually found and example of a 3c post office printed on an experimental press that hadn't even been described for 80 years. So long missing the experts had figured that none actually existed.

Long fun and slightly strange journey. It did get me out of the mindset of having to have things complete. Some are so expensive They were never going to be ones I had. There are some varieties that were described in the 1930's, but haven't been seen since, and may have been someone misinterpreting what they had. The writers then weren't fussy about facts.

I have a solid maybe for one of them, and a couple shaky maybes for another. But todays standard is finding two with an identical flaw. so more searching.

[gonefishin]

Steve, post a picture of what you have and what you're looking for and I'll check what I have.

[steve B]

So, it's "only" a bit under 100 face different stamps, 120 different counting the two main different papers.

But what I have almost fills two 2" binders.

Card and india paper proofs and Specimens pretty much make it 4x that, and varieties....

And I generally don't have the expensive ones.

And people say stamps don't take up much room......

[steve B]

I'll see what I can put together.

If it's not paywalled, here's one of the articles about one department.

https://chronicle.uspcs.org/PDF/Chronicle_227/19433.pdf

I have a couple maybes for the 10cent double transfer which is essentially unknown since its listing in 1935.