Wednesday, May 20, 2015

the dark side ...












There's a whole new world out there of strange alternatives to our usual philatelic universe! Revenues, cinderellas, poster stamps etc etc. 

Some are catalogued in depth, others need some real research. Barefoot do an excellent range of catalogues, but there are still large areas not properly catalogued. The standard comprehensive work is Fournier, but the most recent catalogue is 1908!! Early collectors collected all sorts of stamps, including revenues, but over time most collectors have concentrated on the postal issues. Gibbons have just recently started rolling out listings of telegraph stamps, and there are specialised catalogues (often of just one part of the world) of railway stamps and other postal services.

All in all it's a fascinating field and one that constantly surprises. I'm listing revenues and cinderellas on  one day each week so gradually my stocks should build up, though they do tend to sell pretty quickly!

The pictures are of some of the stamps that have gone on this week.


Saturday, May 16, 2015

modern GB





New GB stamps seem to be getting harder and harder to find! I still get a small amount in but the days of having 100s if not 1000s of the lower value commemoratives to hand are long gone! These days I'm lucky to have more than one, and they generally sell as soon as they are listed on the website!

Not so many years ago you could buy bundleware (ie 100 stamps) of recent commemoratives for around 20p. These days even the commoner Christmas stamp low values sell quickly at 60p or more each.

I do get lots of small kiloware lots from about 80 charities so can still source a few modern used GB, together with what comes on my mail. So hopefully I can continue to offer modern used GB at reasonable prices!