ScottV Stamps

With the million-or-so stamps to collect, most countries just feel impossible to ever complete.   So focus on some subsets.  Many countries put out limited ranges of postage dues or airmails.  For the US, I can't stand most of the issues.  The early ones are so complex and specialized I don't even try to price them anymore, and every year they release a hundred or more new issues which are fun to put on the outgoing mail, but I wouldn't want to try and collect them.  (First of all, they don't soak properly.) Here is a collection you can complete ... just the USA parcel posts.  There are 12 of them, all red.  Scott #Q1-12.  They often have heavy smudges for cancels, but when you get them, you're done.  I like them because they're simple, with attractive engraved designs, and have decent value.  They make good lots.  The 2023 catalog value is about $180.  These are up on HipStamp now. So you found all those.  You have c...

Here is a collection I finally got listed, from a stack of old album pages I meant to get to "some day."  I knew I had two pages of stamps from Hatay but was pleasantly surprised to see that it was the complete country -- every stamp they issued in their short history -- mint hinged. The individual sets list for $25 to $80 each. I always liked that they included a set of maps, showing where this mysterious new country could be found ... except that it's one of the least useful sets of maps in philatelic history.  I suppose the dotted line is meant to be the border, but there isn't a single named town.  It's just a bunch of lines. Wikipedia has a detailed article explaining this phase of history in the area.  The area was previously called the "Sanjak of Alexandretta", which stamp collectors will recognize right away.  That pictorial set says "2_Eylul_1938", and sure enough, 2 SEP 1938 is the date of the decree that changed Alexandretta to the ...

I was scanning a collection from Trinidad & Tobago tonight, and this set came up, one which I have wondered about for a while now. I have only seen the set a few times since it came out in 1998, but I always wondered if there was a story here. It is Scott #593-596, showing Wendy Fitzwilliam, Miss Universe from 1998. One can argue these days that beauty pageants are just exploitative.  But sometimes, careers are made and the women go on to have great success.  Judging from wikipedia , it looks like Wendy has done well.  She was "honored by the United Nations and bestowed the title of UNAIDS and UNFPA Goodwill Ambassador for her work in HIV/AIDS education and awareness," and went on to champion AIDS awareness in the Caribbean.  She was Red Cross Ambassador of Youth for the Caribbean, regularly hosts and judges other competitions to give more women visibility in the world, and has had many other honors. She has become a lawyer, entrepreneur and jazz singer....

Here's a set that always brings back memories for me: Angola #362-381.  Here is a mint set that I am listing for the Philatelic Library soon.  The first few stamps in this set were some of the most iconic and common animal topicals when I was growing up.  Almost every starter packet of animals had these included.  100 different animals?  You will probably find the 5c leopard or stately 10c antelope, or the 20c elephant ... or all three of them.  Almost every starter collection I have seen since then that had only a handful of stamps from Angola would have a few of these. The graphics were really special for their time period: crisp and colorful and reasonably accurate portrayals of each animal.  Back then, every color plate had to be minutely aligned, and I don't recall having ever seen any color ink shifted or missing. I have a special fondness for this set, and always set aside the full sets when I find them.  They list for $10 to $12 ...

From the 1920s to 1950s, there were a lot of stamps showing factories with huge plumes of pollution.  This was most pronounced from Eastern Europe and Russia after WWII, where the workers were stylized and turned into icons, and industry was rampant. Here is a stamp from Saar (Scott #98) which is depressing every time I see it. The catalog says this is the Burbach Steelworks in Dillingen, Germany.  This stamp is high on my mental list of the ugliest stamps ever printed.  It's dark, low contrast, and badly over-inked.  The design is so bad, in fact, that you can't even read the printed value of 25c at the bottom, and it was almost immediately surcharged "5 FRANKEN". I was also wondering if those were dollar signs in the lower corners. The underlying stamp (#83) is the high value of a long set of blurry, smudgy grey/brown/black images of towns.  Here are some stamps from that set.  These usually have heavy, smudgy postmarks.  As someone who enjoys fin...

Selvage (US English) or Selvedge (British English) is the paper at the edge of sheets of stamps.  You will often see single stamps or blocks with this extra paper attached, and it is usually blank, but there are a lot of markings that can be found in these tiny scraps of extra paper.  Here is a pair of Sudan #35 with brown and blue registration marks and interesting brown bars.  Registration marks are used to make sure the different colored plates are aligned as precisely as possible.  I have worked in high-volume print shops, and remember grabbing a sheet every minute or so and checking the registration.  You would have to run the paper through the press once to print the brown ink, then dismount the brown plate and mount the blue plate, then feed the whole stack of paper back through and apply the blue ink, doing your best to keep everything lined up exactly.  There are many moving parts in an industrial printing press, and the plates do gradually shi...

Here's the perfect follow-up to yesterday's post ... the very next stamp in the catalog.  Bremen #15. Germany Bremen #15 used – the classic 5-silbergroschen key design. 2021 catalog value $3750.00. A user posted some feedback about it: "This item looks to be yellow green. Also, the right edge has been trimmed and reperfed. I would suggest to have this item certified." Eagle eyes.  I would have to agree on the color, but I don't have specialist catalogs for this.  Well, I do have an old Michel specialized catalog, but the choice remains: post a generic Scott value that's up to date, or a more specific identification with a prices that's 25 years old.  As for the reperfed right else, it does look like the perfs are a bit too clean and shaped a bit differently. I'm not sure the reason we would pay $20 or $30 (or whatever it costs these days) to get a certificate that points out damage I didn't see when I looked at it.  I agree that these high-priced s...

Here is a stamp I've only seen a few times before.  Germany Bremen #14 used – the classic 10gr key design. This one has straight edges at bottom and right, but that's probably how the sheets were cut, notice the black guidelines.  A fine impression, and with a (2021) catalog value $1125.00, it was a nice find. Like usual, I have no way of expertising it, proving that it is genuine, without paying the usual one or two companies, expecting a negative outcome.  For now, I can just enjoy the 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...

I came across about a half pound of Malaysia off paper recently, and sorted them by definitive series like always, with a pile for states issues and a pile for commemoratives.  I had fun filling up stock pages with rows of these issues, and did a quick check of catalog values to see if it was worth doing.  That's when I found that the fruit series splits into two major sets: the first set has the denominations in C and $, where the second set has values in sen and RM.  The first set catalogs from minimum up to about $1, but the second set of sen/RM list for $6 each with a few unpriced, even in the 2024 catalog. I have no idea why these are unpriced.  They are essentially the same as the other values, showing up in mixes in the same quantities.  There is nothing that makes them more uncommon or harder to appraise.  I was actually expecting the prices to go down between the 2021 and 2024 catalogs, as always happens for issues from 5-10 years ago. On the inter...

After a lifetime of collecting and wheeling and dealing in stamps, it's still fun looking at new lots.  You never know what you might see when you crack open the cover.  I was asked to break down a classic Germany collection, and since the States were in another volume, the book started with the 1872 eagles.  There are two main varieties here: small shield (coat of arms) and large shield.  Surprisingly, the collector had identified them all properly, so here is the complete first issue of Germany: It's #1 to #11, small shield, and the collector did a good job of picking fine+ examples of all his stamps; these have all perfs intact, no markings on back, minimal hinge marks and no thins.  The Scott catalog (2021) decided not to add up the price of the set -- maybe it rarely comes up as a complete set?  Anyway, the total is $961.25 and I listed it starting at $359. About those different shield types ... I always think of it as the small shield has the eagle's ...

Here is an unusual example of India - Patiala #4a.  Normally the black and red overprints are offset by a millimeter or two, but here they are almost perfectly overlapping.  I had to do a double take and look at it under magnification to make sure my eyes were not playing tricks on me.  But yes, there are two overprints here.  

Some of my posts are just going to show unusual and interesting items I have handled over the years.  I finally sold a set of these in 2015. Those famous Bhutan stamps which are also vinyl records with chants on them. The collection I got this from had the original invoice included, these were only about $6 per set when they came out, now about $400.