Good Finds from Greece

I bought a few bankers boxes full of inventory at the estate sale for a well known stamp dealer.   Lots probably got a bit mixed together as they were organizing the garage full of materially for private sale.

One of the boxes I bought was a mixture of Greece, off paper.  It was about a half pound,  and i sorted through it mainly to split out older issues into a separate mix and remove any stamps from other countries.   About halfway through,  I found this one which caught my eye.   It's very old and it's a 10 drachma high value.  So I put that aside.


I have been in the stamp biz for 40 years and I have seen most stamps hundreds of thousands of times.  Somehow my brain relent whether I have seen each stamp or not.  Here, it was like there was a glow around it.   I tend to visualize things with heat maps.   So a box of common junk would need cold,  but better stuff is mentally marked with a glow.  

This one turned out to be #128, the high value of the 1894 set, with a catalog value of $550.  So yes,  mentally flagging old stamps that have high face values is a good habit.


I also found this block that did not look like regular stamps at all.  It is dated 1982, but Greece was printing full color stamps at the time.   I'm pretty sure it's a charity stamp or promotional stamp for the dam shown on the stamp.   This stood out and may be worth a few bucks,  but it did not trigger the treasure hunt sense as much.


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