ScottV Stamps

As a collector of postmarks, it has been sad seeing them get consolidated and trivialized in the modern era.  It used to be, every office had its own postmark and we could recognize exactly where the mail came from.  Sure, some of the early postmarks were just numbers, but for over a century there were clear town/date cancels with enough variety of design to make them collectible on their own. With computers came inkjet cancels, metered mail, vended postage labels and more.  And the postal services of many countries setup efficient networks of processing centers.  In Germany, they set up 99 of these "briefzentrums" (literally "brief" is mail and "zentrum" is center), and the postmarks went from thousands of towns and cities to just Briefzentrum 01 to Briefzentrum 99. I figured I would have to go to the Deutsche Post website to find some official document about exactly where the centers are, but this Wikipedia article beat me to it.  Not only does it have

It's always discouraging when you order some stamps from a seller and they take the time to use nice stamps as postage, only to have those stamps wrecked by the postal service.  If you buy stamp mixtures by the pound, the percent of stamps that are in fine, collectible condition is much lower than I recall from even 10 years ago. Here are some from Germany and Malta that got wrecked... The two biggest culprits are heavy, smudgy machine cancels and hand-scribbled pen markings.  The worst of the latter are when the postal worker uses a thick marker and ruins a whole line of stamps in under a second. I realize that the postal services need to protect their revenue stream, but if they also want to sell millions of $ of stamps to collectors each year, maybe they should at least act like what they're selling has value. Here's a case of a seller putting a lot of care into making a nice package, but someone at the post office just decided to turn it into crap.  Thanks a

I haven't soaked stamps in 10 or 12 years. I just got a really nice batch from Barbados and Anne was interested so I figured I'd show her how it's done. I think I first started soaking stamps when I was eight which would be 1974. it was fun back then, but what really wrecked it was all the new self-adhesives that started coming out in the 1990s. Most of those would not soak. Some countries like Finland would soak perfectly well, but it got annoying trying to remember which ones were going to soak and n which ones would not. The process is pretty simple, just soak them in warm water and have a towel ready.  Give them about 15 minutes then swirl them around. The easy ones will fall off on their own.  Others will slide off the paper easily.  Sometimes you do have to peel them a little bit ... i f you do have to peel them remember to pull the paper not the stamp because the one that you pull is the one that's likely to rip.   You take the wet stamps and put them on the t

Stamp collecting has a serious appeal to those of use who like to get into pack-rat mode and dig through boxes filled with thousands of little bits.  Or books filled with goodies.  You can always expect some non-stamp items to end up in those boxes as well.  Some of the things I can normally expect to find include: - coins - paper money - postcards without stamps - old letters (they were probably in envelopes once but are now loose) - news clippings (usually about stamps) These make sense.  In fact, I have several binders full of coins and paper money myself, and boxes of covers in bins under the bed.  These all go together as a historical grouping. Some of the less common things I have found: - coupon & savings book stamps - hunting licenses, etc (ephemera) - stickers - rubber stamps - rocks & pebbles - dead bugs - mouse droppings (sorry but it happens) - old pharmacy labels - cigar bands & labels - liquor & drink labels (one time it was a collection of about 80 differ

Once people find out you are a "stamp person", it's just a matter of time before some friend of a friend gives said friend a box of stamps to give to you, so you can evaluate their little treasures for free.  Or if you're running a table at a show or have any kind of storefront, people will bring in their box or album directly, whether you're obviously busy or not. I think we all know what these collectors are thinking or expecting.  Maybe you can do all the hours of work for them?  Sure, they usually say I can do all the work and keep "like 20 or 30 percent."  I won't even get into the huge disparity between what the owners think their stuff is worth (must be big $$$ in there) and what it looks like to us (more work).  I don't have the extra hours to do that work.  And half the time we're expected to offer cash on the spot.  But ... I already have a hundred times as many stamps in stock (not joking) and suppliers I trust.  I don't need a