ScottV Stamps

One of the many ways that philatelists acquire new items is through "circuits" from local clubs or big organizations.  In these, you would receive an envelope with some circuit books in them.  You can take what you want, write your member number in the box where the stamp was, then mark the total value taken, and mail the books to the next address listed on the circuit.  After a while, the circuit books would be retired and sent back to the member who created them with payment for the items sold. I vaguely recall trying some of these from the American Philatelic Society back in the 90s.  The ones I made came back about a year later almost untouched, but I did enjoyed picking through the ones I received along the way.  It doesn't feel like a good way to get rid of cheaper stamps, due to time and costs. I bought a box of these at an event recently.  Some members even had their own rubber stamps to mark the items they kept.  Those were some different tim...

I sometimes get picked on a bit for reusing glassine envelopes and 102 cards a few times.  When I ship things, it's not a big deal.  Maybe the envelope looks a bit funny, but they have the right stamps in them.  But the last few months when we've been doing shows again, we get comments about how this folder says one thing and the label says something else.  I have always reused file folders, years later folding it over and using it again with some other label, or something else written on it.  Comically, when I looked at those folders at the show, I saw their history that no-one else would appreciate.  Some of them were originally used for writing projects back in the 1980s, and some had my Mom's handwriting on them, recycled again and again since the 70's.  None of these were terribly sloppy, we just try to save money when we can and it's easy for me to ignore the old writing, because I know it's not the current info. Last weekend I bought a part of a...

From a collection of covers from the far north of Canada, here is one from 1971: Fort Providence NWT, visit by ship M.V.Norweta.  No marks on backside.  Signed by the captain at bottom left and someone else at top left.   Again, there is nothing fancy about the cover and the stamp is common.  It's not super old, but it clearly has a story.  It has a fine cachet of a ship working in a very remote part of the world.  You should check out this ship on nauticapedia : a great set of personal stories have been collected there. The ship was launched in 1971 and the cover is from that first year.  The ship's name came from a nationwide contest among school children.  There is a quote from the winning student, who apparently got to ride the ship.  There are notes from crewmembers later in the ship's life, describing alterations for different types of service in different areas of northern Canada. Check out this very detailed trip log from 2007 : "NORT...

I bought a stack of covers from the far north of Canada at the San Diego Stamp Show a few weeks ago. Here is one from 1988: Fort Smith NWT, this commemorated one of the members of the Soviet-Canadian Ski Trek, which was a big deal at the time.  Signed by the expedition member Laurie Dexter, the one being commemorated here. It is not especially pretty, though the polar bear cachet with signature does stand out.  The stamp is common, and the postmarks are not small town rarities.  But it felt like there was a story here. I'm always curious about the details of some of the events and places shown on covers.  I have an eye for picking out some point of interest among the thousands of covers I flip through.  In this case, it turned out that this Ski Trek was a major event, with position updates, satellites tracking their location, announcements to school students in many countries, and even words of encouragement along the way by Gorbahev and the Prime Minister of Ca...

We went down to the San Diego Stamp Show today.  It was a 3-day show running at the Hilton Mission Valley.  In theory, a collector could go down there on multiple days and spent hours and hours at a show like that.  The exhibits were amazing, as always, including one for 1608-1750 Italian letter sheets, one showing foreign postal services in Palestine pre-WWII, and one that was a collection of fine profiles of cachet artists.  As always, there are exhibits of things I have never heard of, even after 50 years of colleting. In this case, a series of panels of California Gold Rush era local revenue stamps, and one with some amazing examples of Nevada state revenues from the 1800s.  One sad note showed a large Romanian stamp meant for use at an internment camp in WWI, where the design was pulled after 3-4 weeks after the Russians suspected the large size of the stamp encouraged people to write secret messages on the back of the stamp before putting it on the envelop...

As we work our table at the stamp show,  I try to do a walk around to see what deals might be available.   I saw two good lots and made mental notes to check them out at the end of the show. One was an old notebook packed with Egypt mostly before 1950, for $195.  Clearly the first page with the old pyramid sets was worth $195 all by itself.  There were rows that were thick with mint 1930s-1940s sets,  2 to 5 each at $4-6 per set.   And in the back there were some early special delivery and postage dues at $5-20 each and a few salt tax and cut squares. The second lot was full of 5x8 stock cards with about 1000 typical sets, mini sheets and booklets that were marked at about $5 on average,  all for $240.  I don't usually get these kids but we have people asking for topicals all day long and many of these were from less common countries like Marshall Islands, Bangladesh and Comoros.  And they are in clear mounts so they c...