ScottV Stamps

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...

The Money Pit in San Marcos, CA is a great burger & hot dog & breakfast places with reasonable prices.  The interior design is amazing, with wlls full of movie and other memorabilia about money, and every table has a custom design utilizing some aspect of currency or economics.  There are tables done up with foreign paper money, stock certificates, cards and casino chips, stamps, coins, and more.  Even the floors have old silver coins embedded in the grout, and there is a full-sized bank safe embedded in the floor.  It looks great and has a unique feel to it.  And good food. This table by the window has a nice selection of worldwide stamps.  Stamps as a part of life, back when stamps really were a part of day-to-day living.  After a minute, I noticed that this was also a perfect laboratory example of how sun damage affects different stamps.  It's right up against a west-facing window, beneath a thick plastic layer, so it has been baking in...

We were invited to a "yard sale" event at the San Diego Philatelic Library, and it was nice to see so much material on sale and so many of the regular collectors we've known for decades. Boy, they had some deeply discounted lots, including this batch of four to ten ounce off paper mixtures by country for only $1 or $2 a bag.  That's a surefire way to get things sold and to clear out a file cabinet of old stock.  At $10 a bag I would have skipped these, but there's no way to fail at $1-$2 a bag. There were a lot of folder lots, including one from Cambodia that said $325 CV for $20.  A first look saw just a lot of CTO topical sets, which actually list for LESS THAN the minimum catalog price of 25c each (a set of 7 for $1.50 for example).  But wait, the last 20 pages or so were all mint and most of the sets had the matching souvenir sheets.  Mint, the price is x2 or x3 or even x4 the CTO prices.  So yes, $20 is perfect.  We have already pulled most of the...