Mailed to Who Now?

Here's a Yugoslavia cover dated 29-JAN-1960 with a LJUBLJANA pictorial postmark on postal stationery.  An unremarkable piece, really.  I almost put it back without thinking about it.  

Then I saw who it was mailed to: Elizabeth Taylor, Culver City, California.  It's not the greatest piece of film star history, but its interest suddenly went from zero to "grab it and see if someone will pay a few bucks for it."  The point is not to have a huge clutter of "stuff" for myself.  If someone buys it, I will feel good that I helped someone find a piece for their own collection.

On the funny side, I have had a few covers mailed to popes over the years, and I wonder which one has the bigger star power when it comes to valuing covers: Vatican leaders or celebrities ...


 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Germany Definitives: Historic Sites 1987-2004

Image
The Historic Sites Series is a long-running set of definitives from Germany, starting in 1987 and running through 2004.  Although the designs are mostly buildings, some statues are included.  The first series (Scott catalog #1515A-1540A) has 27 stamps from 5pf to 400pf values, all regular sheet stamps.  These are mostly of minimal values, but only the 280pf lists for over $2.  Keep an eye on the issues which include "Berlin" in the name.  Next there are 7 self-adhesives in the 1990s which are all $2 or more, and 23 more sheet stamps (#1838-1860) where the ones from 300pf to 720pf (the highest value in the whole series) are in the $2 to $6 range.  Nine of these are denominated in both pfennigs and euros.  This is followed by the last set of 18 from 2002-04 (#2199-2216) denominated in euros only, with die-cut self-adhesive coil and booklet stamps.  Here, the values over 1-euro are worth about $1.50 per euro. It's not a colorful series, using a lot o...
Read more

Quick Intro - a Stamp Life

Image
My Dad got me interested in stamps when I was 6, so this year marks officially 50 years in the hobby for me.  My very first job was helping a stamp dealer in Port Jefferson Station (NY) price stamps for his shop -- I got paid about $15 in catalog value per hour, my pick.  Perfect.     I would get to see things like this India States issue... I started a mail order mixture company when I was a senior in high school (1984) and it moved with me over the years from CT to NY to California.  I got on eBay in 1996 and their computer algorithm booted me off as I was gearing up for a 20th anniversary promotion (long story).  I'm sure I have gone through 1000 pounds of mixtures over the years, made 20,000 lots for sale, got my eBay ranking up to almost 10,000 so I had at least that many sales ... as well as cataloging hundreds of collections for Lee Clark Stamps over 20 years.  So, I have seen a few million stamps. I still have a significant stash tucked away fo...
Read more

Approaching Mixtures

Image
I always enjoyed buying worldwide mixtures on or off paper and sorting them out.  My first sort of a big mixture is usually by first letter of the country name, but sometimes I simply sort by continent first.  Since I am fascinated with postmarks, I often keep a pile of those on the side.  When sorting A to Z, having 26 piles would take up too much space, but there are some first letters that are hardly used at all, so piles like D-E, J-K, N-O, P-Q, U-Z just happen naturally.  This will still fit in two lids of bankers boxes, four rows of three piles in each lid.  I have always had cats, so it's easy to stack the lids and put them in the closet if I don't finish the sort in the first sitting. There is a general economics of getting a general world mix at maybe $180 per 10 pounds and ending up with some smaller amounts of much less common mixes.  Country-specific mixes always cost more on the source price lists, so maybe an ounce of Japan might sell for $6, ...
Read more