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Polar Posts: Signy Island

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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 ...
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Postmark Types of New Zealand

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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...
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Postmark Picks: A blur with a story?

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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.  
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Penny Reds - Corner Letters

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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....
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Penny Reds - Plate Numbers

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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...
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The Postmark and Just the Postmark

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Here is an odd collecting style I have seen a few times now: someone builds a collection of postmarks but trims them right through the stamps to fit into some fixed boxes on the page. I don't get it.  Yes, you are focusing on the postal marking, but the stamp is part of the usage.  I have seen other postmark collectors trim the envelopes all to some specific index-card size, to fit in a card file.  I always trim mine to about one or two millimeters from the edges of the stamp and markings -- they come out as a wide range of different sizes of paper, but it feels the most natural to me.  I recall distantly that the Postmark Collectors Club used to print the "official" rules for how to collect these.  Well, the PCC is still around and has a good introduction, saying you can collect them any way you like.
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Digital Stamp Catalogs

I went ahead and subscribed to the digital Scott's Stamp Catalog this year.  I have a set of 2021s that's getting pretty old, and we had been using the library's set of 2023s but we're returning those this weekend. The digital set is pricey at $549 for the year but it doesn't weigh 80 pounds and take up a whole shelf in the other room.   The physical copies are over $650 now and the next year starts coming out in March.   The digital catalog should update as the new volumes are published. I like the digital version a lot.  It's convenient having every volume on my tablet or laptop or the desktop in the office where we print orders from, wherever I need a price.   You can keep the main page open and click a volume to see all the countries.  Click any country and it loads the catalog pages for that country in a new tab.   Each country has a list of sections with an entry for the start,  #500, #1000 and so on.  So...
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