As some of my single country collections have lately reached over 50% completion level, I’m beginning to approach the situation where I have to start making some major decisions about the final storage and output of these collections. Should I continue to keep them on stock book, or transfer them to pre-printed stamp  Read More →

Carol suggested in a recent blog comment that I should write a piece about the stamps you see on the blog’s header image. Tough each of the stamps has been covered thoroughly on the blog during year 2009, newer readers of the blog might not be familiar with them. A common nominator for all these  Read More →

As some know I’ve been having my winter holidays this week. Although things didn’t go quite as planned (I got some heat/fever for few days), I still did have a quite enjoyable week with my family and some stamps. Here’s my youngest kid playing with her own stock book and some stamps. Though the stock  Read More →

Somewhat related to last post about golden era stamp collectors and philatelists is this Finnish booklet commemorating collector Agathon Faberge. Yes, he was a member of the same Faberge family that created the fabulous Winter Eggs for the Russian czar. But above all, he was one of the first “grand collectors” of Finnish stamps. Notice  Read More →

One of my favorite stamp related books is “Filatelian taito” (roughly translated “The art of philately”) written and printed in the 1950’s. Why such old book? Besides the very obvious reason that very few stamp related books exist in Finnish language, I’m very much in love with the “feel good stories” of  Read More →

In early January I wrote a short introduction about Seebeck reprints on some Nicaraguan stamps. Well, it’s time for a short revisit on the topic as I’ve received few more Nicaraguan stamps from various stamp exchanges. The following examples are from the 1891 “Goddess of plenty” / “Allegorical figure with cornucopia” series (with very  Read More →

Just to show a case of good luck in contrast to last post. This is something I found while sorting stamps I had soaked from kiloware… An Argentinian 10 peso definitive postage stamp issued in 1995. It looks like any modern day topical stamp, but if catalogs are to believe, this one is worth 30€  Read More →

Last week I received a stamp catalogue I had ordered from Canada before christmas (yes, the delivery took 50 days as it was mailed by surface to cut costs). Anyway, everything seems to have gone pretty smooth until the parcel landed on Finnish postage system. Regular readers of the blog might guess what happened, as  Read More →

Yesterday (and as well as today) I got involved into a somewhat “interesting” discussion on MyPhilately that gathered tens of comments in matter of hours. Unfortunately, it turned also into a catfight between stamp collectors and philatelists in few responses. I can hear you saying “again…sigh”. My thoughts precisely. Why on earth  Read More →

Happy Valentine’s Day to all readers of the blog:  Read More →

Sewing machine roulette (also known as “Perce en points” or pin roulette) is one of the oldest and widely spread methods to separate stamps. As the name suggests, roulette is created with sewing (or similar) machine. In this roulette, small holes are pricked trough the paper one at a time,and no paper is  Read More →

There are plenty of interesting Vietnamese stamps, but one of my personal favorites is this striking doubled frame print error on CTO-used stamp commemorating the birth of Raphael. First, here’s an image of the normal stamp: And here’s the error stamp with doubled print on gold colored (inner and outer) frames: I don’t know if  Read More →

It’s been a long time since I showed some of the EFO’s, but I think they will match perfectly with my current writings about stamp quality. Here’s something I picked up last night from kiloware I had soaked few days earlier. The first below stamp is the normal copy, and beneath it is the “whacked”  Read More →

Most stamp catalogs do a somewhat decent job in displaying the various quality levels of cancelled stamps. However, IMO there are surprisingly large international variations to what is desirable / non-desirable. The beauty of SOTN Being from Scandinavia, I’ve been raised to keep postmark as the most important quality factor used stamp can possess. If possible,  Read More →

Not all stamps are born equal. There can be lots of minor quality flux that fits into printers guidelines of acceptable variation and printing conditions. In addition there are all sorts of errors, freaks and oddities (like printers waste) that ends up one way or to another to stamp collectors albums. Print quality A common phenomena  Read More →