ScottV Stamps

A lot of non-stamp items will turn up in boxes of stamps: postcards, paper money, coins, revenues, cinderellas, sometimes entire mortgage documents.  In the latest boxes, I came across something I had never seen before: a "Cedula Certificate" from the Philippines, from 1925.  Actually it was a batch of five of them from the same person, 1925 to 1937.  The ones I found all had a sort of ledger on the flip side, but those were all blank. Some research showed that these are community tax documents or residence tax forms that are actually used as a type of identification. That article has a good description of what the document could be used for: "When used as a primary form of identification, community tax certificates are used when someone acknowledges a document before a notary public, takes an oath of office or is appointed to a government position, receives a license or permit from a government authority, pays government taxes or fees, receives money from a public fund...

Here is a postmark I saw on one of my many scans, which led me on a fun search for information on a distant place.  The postmark is from a First Day Cover, cancelled at Signy Island, British Antarctic Territory.  I wondered where this was, whether anyone was actually stationed there, whether the mail ever touched the place.  I had a lot of questions. The British Antarctic Territory was formed on 3 March 1962, though of course Britain had earlier claims to much of the area, going back to 1908.  In philatelic terms, it formed from the Falkland Islands Dependencies and a huge wedge of Antarctica.  Signy Island would have been served at first by Falkland Islands stamps, then by the Dependency stamps overprinted for the South Orkney Islands.  These days, there is an "Antarctic Postman" who travels from Port Stanley in the Flakland Islands to the various bases.  In order to release new stamp issues, they must be carried one of the valid offices, after which ...

There is a fine discussion of the types of circular date stamps of New Zealand over on the Stamp Forum . The original poster DK gives the 7 types very succinctly.  With some notes of my own, these are: 'A' class or 'coin' cancel: I always called these "straight-line cancels" since the town name is in a straight line. 'B' class used mainly in the larger offices and by the military and other abnormal uses 'C' class is a basic circle often with inner part circle, DDMMYY with timsetamp 'F' class or 'squared circle' commonly used around the world 'G' class or 'concentric circle' introduced to Post Offices between 1894 to 1911 'H' class or 'English cancellation' introduced into NZ in the late 1890's.  Double outer circle, inner circle. 'J' class brought the introduction of the 'modern' Circular Date Stamp (CDS), similar to C but without the time stamp.   Now, I wonder if my big arc...

Here is an easily overlooked item: a blurry old stamp from Jammu & Kashmir.  At least, I think that's what it was.  There was so little of the actual impression of the stamp to identify. But it did have a nice clear postmark.  The local markings at the time were often just smudges themselves, so this clear mark caught my eye.  Looking more closely, whatever travels this piece of mail took, it was finally postmarked in MANCHESTER, England on 9 SEP 1876. So, while I can't identify the poorly printed stamp, at least I can say where it ended up ... in a lot of old India postmarks, filed away at my place.  

Continuing with the stockbook from last time, the next few pages said "Corner  Letters 240". So, this was another completed sequence, this time capturing all combinations of the letters in the corners, from AA to LT.  A few times in my life, when seeing a stack of these classic stamps, I briefly thought it would be fun to try and collect all those corner letters, but every time my brain said that's crazy, why would I do that to myself? Thousands of stamps had to be picked through to find all those different letter combinations.   I listed this collection also , and for 240 stamps that catalog $3 each, it was hard to figure a good starting price.  I went with $289, but I can always lower it later if there is no interest in the first few weeks.  There is no such thing as an exact price.  Maybe hundreds of collectors will click on it and grumble that I charged too much -- they clearly did not stop and think what was involved in putting this together....

At a private sale for a deceased local stamp dealer, we got another few cartons of albums.  This one was the find of the day: It was a thick stockbook full of Queen Victoria issues from Great Britain, mostly with clear numeric postmarks.  Nothing was selling at nearly the printed prices that day, those are what we might have paid if we found the dealer at a show.  There were a few hundred stamps, listing up to $50 each, but early Great Britain always feels overpriced to me and it was hard to say how the mostly heavy postmarks would affect any prices I tried.  Then there were about 8 pages of just penny reds (Scott #33), and my brain said it was worth a closer look.  There was a note at the top of one page saying "Plate 71 to 224" which is all the plate numbers except the expensive #225.  Sure enough, in tiny numbers in the side scrollwork, it had every plate number as far as I could tell.   I transferred them to 6 new stock pages.  Here is on...