Chad Neighbor Philately

WONDERFUL US POSTAL MUSEUM IN WASHINGTON DC DOGGEDLY PURSUES EXCELLENT DISPLAYS

2012-01-16T14:03:00.003Z

Whenever the winds blow me into Washington DC I make sure I visit the excellent U.S. National Postal Museum, conveniently located across the street from the cavernous Union Station and its handy Metro stop.
I was particularly glad I made it in November (2011) as a new display had just opened on military mail, and the recent release of the US Postal Service stamp honouring Owney the wandering postal dog has prompted the museum to expand its displays about this remarkable creature.
Owney was a mutt who lived the life of Riley, travelling about in rail post office carriages and picking up tags from postal clerks to document his comings and goings in the late 1800s. His presence delighted these hard-working clerks for, as well as breaking up the daily grind, he was seen as a good luck charm as no train he was on ever crashed, even though this was a common occurrence at the time.
Like many people I took a new look at the continuing displays, plus a new one about the creation of the recent Owney stamp, and marvelled at the map show the diverse places the nomad canine reached. I hadn’t realized, for instance, that he crossed the border into Canada quite a few times, from Quebec to British Columbia.
Perhaps best of all, if a bit macabre, is the fact that Owney still lives on in the flesh, so to speak. He was so popular that his remains were preserved by taxidermists – and so he sits in a glass case in the museum, as if waiting for his next train.
Anyone interested in Owney’s story or the new stamp should take a look at the preparatory work on the stamp that is displayed in the foyer, around the corner from the main display. The process was a quite involved one, with the main problem how to do justice to both Owney and the medals attached to his vest. I don’t think the stamp, by artist Bill Bonds, quite does justice to Owney’s striking appearance and I preferred some earlier versions of the issue that showed him full figure.
The museum has also created an "augmented-reality experience that brings to life ‘Owney the Dog,’ mascot of the Railway Mail Service. The experience, offered via iPhone and Web applications, is the first multidimensional, augmented-reality experience triggered by a U.S. postage stamp," according to the museum web site.
"A multidimensional virtual Owney appears above the stamp. Owney barks, trots, sits and listens to postal train whistles in full 3-D. When the stamp is moved closer to the camera, details of Owney’s collar and some of the tags he received from his many travels can be seen. When viewed from a slight distance, the stamp can be moved around to see Owney from any side or angle."
While I failed to spot this opportunity during my brief, end-of-the-day visit to the museum, I did purchase a small booklet, at just $US4, about the postal pooch.
I also had a good look at the new "Mail Call" exhibit, which documents the delivery of mail to service personnel over the ages and has a moving film in which letters are read out. The exhibit was of particular interest to me as my father is a D-Day veteran.
One of the most fascinating postal items on display is a WWII-era coconut shell from Hawaii to which a label bearing 37 cents worth of presidential series stamps has been attached. The unusual piece of post was checked by the US Department of Agriculture as well as censored.
Another key WWII item is a Dec. 6, 1941 postal handstamp from the USS Oklahoma recovered after the battleship was sunk by the Japanese air force at Pearl Harbor.
Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in Canadian Stamp News as one of my Commonwealth Communique articles for this excellent publication.

North-East fairs announces six stamp and postcard events for 2012 in Aberdeen, Dundee and Montrose

2011-12-07T11:42:00.003Z

North-East Fairs will hold six stamp, postcard and collectables fairs in Dundee, Montrose and Aberdeen in 2012. As it has turned out, they are neatly spread a month apart in two sessions in winter/spring and autumn. The last four or five fairs have been especially busy, even packed out at times, and I am hoping to keep up the momentum in the year to come.
The 2012 season opens in Montrose on Saturday, 25 February, 10am-3pm at the excellent Hillside Village Hall, Dubton Road, DD10 9HB, just north of Montrose on the A937. Again we will have hot drinks and home baking available for a charity donation, plus a bargain table or two. I also hope to have a coin specialist on hand for the first time. I might again put on a small display if room is available. The hall is easily reached by the 47 bus from Montrose High Street and rail station and is not quite a further mile up the A937 from Taylor's Auctions new premises. The second Montrose fair will be on Saturday, 27 October.
We will return to the new and very successful venue of the Age Concern Hall at 343 Brook Streeet, Broughty Ferry, Dundee DD5 2DS, on Saturday, 24 March, 10am-4pm. The hall was a big hit with dealers and collectors alike and North-East Fairs set a record for paid attendance at this light and bright venue just beyond Broughty Ferry's main shopping district. Age Concern had jam, tablet, cards and books for sale, which neatly complemented the full house of dealer wares. The autumn event in the Ferry will be a bit of a departure, as it will be held on a Sunday, 18 November. This is a slight change to allow me to attend the autumn Tayroots family history event, where I will be offering postcards to people interested in illustrating family histories.
The first Grampian Stamp and Postcard Fair of the year takes place on Saturday, 28 April, 10.30am-3pm at Queen's Cross Parish Church Halls, Albyn Place, Aberdeen AB10 1YN. This reworking of a successful Aberdeen fair has gone from strength to strength and one collector paid the ultimate compliment by saying: "This is the way a stamp fair should be" as he surveyed the bustling room. I hope to attract at least one more stamp dealer and could also have someone offering Aberdeenshire ephemera. I have arranged for anyone with a disabled parking sticker to park all day in the small carpark next to the church. The autumn Grampian Stamp and Postcard Fair is on Saturday, 29 September, again at a time of year when weather is unlikely to be a problem and dealers and visitors will have plenty of daylight for safer driving.
I hope to see you there!

Aberdeen Philatelic Society asks me to put on D-Day display, and Perth society invites me back for another dealer evening

2011-10-07T14:04:00.005+01:00

I am very pleased to have been invited to give a display on D-Day and the Abilene Connection to the Aberdeen Philatelic Society on 1 December, a Thursday. I will start with my 35-page D-Day display, which is inspired by the participation of my father, Charles H Neighbor, as an infantryman in that historic event.
This display is small because I only include items of a personal connection to him and myself, as I went with him to the 60th anniversary commemoration events in Normandy 2004. The highlights include the V-Mail message he sent to his mother after he was injured more than two weeks after the invasion and postcards and envelopes he prepared for me, as well as postcards and first day covers signed by him, US generals and French village mayors. I've even written Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks into the script, for we had such good seats at the speeches by Presidents Bush and Chirac in 2004 that they sat behind us.
Then I will show sheets on Abilene, Kansas, my home town. This display has a strong link to the D-Day one because Dwight D Eisenhower, the man who masterminded the invasion, grew up in Abilene. His museum and library are there and they include many items and records pertaining to Operation Overlord as well.
I will probably round out the evening with a few pages on penny black and tuppenny blue covers and my Compound Interest collection of Victorian doubled embossed and other postal stationery items printed with two or more values. It might sound a bit dry but they are very interesting visually.
I am a "country member" of the Aberdeen society and join in a fair number of its activities despite living 35 miles away. The society is one of the biggest and most active in Scotland, not to mention Britain. The meetings in the Rubislaw Church Centre on Fountainhall Road, Queen's Cross -- near the Queen's Cross Church, where I put on the Grampian Stamp and Postcard Fair twice a year -- are always busy and full of interest.
I will be putting on the programme at another Scottish club, the Perth Philatelic Society, as I have again been asked to stage a dealer evening. The evening is later in the year that normal, on Thursday, 26 January, as I had a conflict with the usual November slot. I have done several of these evenings and the members enjoy plenty of banter and browsing.
The club meets in very cosy quarters in the basement of the Masonic Hall, Atholl Crescent, Perth.

2001: AN EBAY ODYSSEY

2011-09-14T14:55:00.001+01:00

Now that I have 2001 eBay feedbacks (it has taken me more than ten years to reach this figure, a mere busy afternoon for some vendors) it is time for one of my regular eBay commentaries. I do these not because I live and breathe eBay, but because I hope they might benefit someone else down the line.
I usually have a disaster to report, but this time the main feature of the last year or so has been a marked success. I opened an eBay shop in December 2010, and have been pleased with the results. The setting-up process was surprisingly easy, and eBay has done its groundwork well. Setting up the shop probably took less time than registering as a seller in the first place.
It is all neatly and logically laid out and easy to do. New shop operators have several decisions to make, but they can see a preview of the result. Any wrong decisions can always be corrected down the line.
I got it all set up surprisingly quickly and put in some lots – not without a few unwelcome surprises. For instance, putting a second photo on the listing costs about triple the fee for an auction item photo, which I suppose eBay feels is justified because a shop listing lasts up to 30 days. In addition, it is much more expensive to list on eBay US. The GB fee was 20p when I started, now thankfully reduced to 10p. A US listing is 50 cents, and this same amount is levied if you want "North American exposure" for your shop item.
As a result I do most of my shop listings, even for American material, on the GB site. Judging by where the GB items go, a lot of eBay shoppers know to do the widest possible search. Even when I put an unsold US item in my shop I generally put it on the GB site because of the considerable cost savings. The one exception is when the lot needs extra pictures, as these are only 15 cents for US listings.
Anyway, I waited for something to happen … and waited … and waited. I wasn’t exactly panicking, as the extra figures eBay provides to shop managers showed lots of people were looking.
Perhaps it was the holiday rush, as suddenly after ten days, a few days before Christmas, the first sale came. To my surprise, I had about one a day for the rest of the month, and the cost of £14.99 was quickly covered. In the nine months of operation the shop has more or less paid for itself each month, with the only exception being in May for some reason. Even in the notoriously slow month of August shop sales amounted to more than three times the shop fee. They also topped the auction sales, for the first and only time.
To be sure, an eBay shop is not cheap. As well as the 10p per listing and £14.99 a month – and this is only for the basic shop – sellers have to pay a 10 percent commission on all sales. And of course the PayPal fee also has to be factored in. This mounts up quickly.
One thing I find particularly annoying is the eBay money-grubbing move to charge 10 percent on postage fees as well. This was disingenuously described as a move to motivate vendors to charge low postage fees, but of course all those charging a break-even amount have to raise their charges as a result. So in effect it penalises the people who do charge a low rate.
At any rate, I find the shop is useful for listing unsold auction lots. I do auction listings twice, the second time at a reduced starting price, and then as time (always in short supply) allows I convert the listing to a shop one. Experience has taught me that some items are likely to sell but will never get bid up much, and these go straight to the shop.
A third category for good shop items is duplicated but highly saleable material. Vendors can list several identical items for the same 10p and the listing remains in effect until all are sold. This saves a lot of money and time. I find it worthwhile to list item as low as 99p if I have enough of them, and often people will order more than one.
Something that does happen, but less than expected, is that people will buy one item and keep shopping. I don’t charge extra postage for additional items so people can save quite a bit this way. In addition, sometimes people buy an auction lot and then go to the shop to see if they can get more money for their postage pound. Only occasionally do I have to retire shop items, ideally if they will fit into my stamp and postcard fair stock.
When I started my shop I was advised by an experienced seller that it would pay to upgrade the shop quickly, even at £50, but with the reduction of the 20p fee to 10p, I would need to have some 400 listings to save money, and do not envisage spending this much time chained to my computer.
The one non-price complaint I have about the shop is that most of the sales figure percentages are wildly wrong. To give a random example, for one recent week the report said I had 36 listings end and eight sales. This is clearly a sales rate of 22.2 percent, but it was listed on my report as 40 percent. All the other five weeks in that particularly report were all wrong – and I don’t suppose anyone will be surprised to hear that the error always inflated the sales percentage. The same is generally true for monthly reports. I’ve complained about this but had no response from eBay.
But of course eBay would not be eBay without disasters, and I have had one annoying experience. A repeat customer in the States was unhappy with the condition of a postcard, which cost the princely sum of $7. The US card was sent to the Scottish island of Orkney some 100 years ago and the layers were starting to come apart because the card had got quite wet at some point, which I failed to notice when scanning the card as the separation was not instantly obviously to anyone not looking for it.
He immediately gave me negative feedback, without contacting me. I of course immediately offered a refund, plus postage, and even paid to have the card sent back, but he would not budge on the negative feedback.. I learned that he was a serial filer of negative feedback, in fact doing this in about 5% of his purchases, but I soon forgot about it. I have since learned that eBay might well have reversed the negative feedback as it was counter to my otherwise excellent record – I am always at 5.0 or 4.9 on the four categories for customer satisfaction – but it was too late by the time I contacted eBay about this.
In another case I had some revenge low ratings. I gave someone a rating of 4 on one or two categories for a postcard I bought, which obviously enraged the seller. He then bought something from me that was a snip at £1.04 and claimed he had not received the item. After 10 days he said it had arrived, then gave me a 1 rating for speed of posting, even though I had a certificate of posting for the item dated the day after he paid for it. I got a totally unjustified low rating in another area as well, which meant my 5 score dropped to 4.9. All this effort and need to exact revenge all strikes me as incredibly pathetic.
But of course, if you always expect smooth sailing on eBay you will be doomed to disappointment.
Finally, I am sure I am not the only person on eBay who is annoyed about the adverts on the pages, especially at the top. They take up room, move around and so distract you (which I am sure they are designed to do) and slow downloading. I make a point of never clicking on the advert for more information, as this only encourages them.
The annoying effect can be minimalised, I discovered, if I set up the My eBay page with the advert moved up out of sight -- on my setup this is exactly four clicks of the mouse on the down arrow -- and then when I refresh the page the advert stays satisfyingly out of view.

DATES FOR STAMP, POSTCARD AND COLLECTABLES FAIRS

2011-08-19T10:32:00.008+01:00

I intend to attend these events:

18 February, 2012 (Saturday), 10.30am-4pm, Kinross stamp and postcard fair, Church Centre, High Street KY13 1EP (M90, J6). Try the excellent and inexpensive catering.
25 February, 2012, (Saturday) 10am-3pm, Montrose, Hillside Village Hall, Dubton Road, Hillside DD10 9HB. For the first time I will have a coin specialist at one of my fairs. I am often asked about coins, and at this event we'll have someone who should be able to help with most inquiries about buying or selling. We will again have a charity tea and coffee area and the Hillside Post Office will have sandwiches, rolls and bridies hand made by Hillside Snacks. The hall is easily reached by the 47 bus from the rail station.
24 March, 2012, (Saturday) 10am-4pm, Broughty Ferry (Dundee), Age Concern Hall, 343 Brook Street, Dundee, DD5 2DS. This bright and cheerful new venue next to the main shopping area was a hit with collectors (a North-East Fairs attendance record was set) and dealers alike. As well as the dealers' stamps, postcards and other collectables, Age Concern has books, greetings cards, tablet and jam for sale.
28 April, 2012, (Saturday) 10.30am-3pm, Aberdeen, Queen’s Cross Parish Church Halls, Albyn Place AB10 1YN. This fair is going very well, and about the only complaint is that it is too short. (The high fee limits me to six hours, including set-up time.)
11-12 May, 2012, Scottish Philatelic Congress (11am-5.30pm on Friday and 10am-4pm on Saturday), Perth, Dewars Centre, Glover Street. This popular event, one of the highlights of the stamp and postcard calendar, is slightly later in the year than usual but will have all the ususal attractions, including a room full of dealers.

Other venues being added from time to time. Please check with me before travelling long distances to confirm my participation and that the event is going ahead.
As well as a wide variety of stamps, covers, postal history, cigarette cards and other collectables, I stock a wide variety of accessories such as stamp hinges, drying books and even postal rate templates for the eBay seller.

PERTH 2012 SCALED BACK IN PERIOD OF TRANSITION FOR MAJOR SCOTTISH FAIRS SUCH AS SCOTEX

2011-07-06T15:16:00.004+01:00

Perth 2012, the latest in the biennial national events around the country, has been scaled back in the face of economic uncertainties and logistical problems. It is the UK National Exhibition for next year, incorporating the Association of British Philatelic Societies’ Biennial Exhibition and the Inter-Federation Cup, and will be followed immediately by the 94th Philatelic Congress of Great Britain.
Plans for a three-day event in the two main halls of Perth’s Dewars Centre had been seen by dealers and many society representatives as overly ambitious, and now the event will take place over two days. Furthermore, logistical problems in adapting the centre’s ice rink for a multi-day event mean dealer tables will go only in the slightly smaller hall now used for the Scottish Philatelic Congress and Scotex. Displays and competitive exhibits will be mounted in rooms and open spaces in the centre. The Philatelic Congress of Great Britain in the nearby Queen’s Hotel will not be affected.
As a result, dealer fees will be much reduced from the projected price of £275 for the first table, £250 for the second and £100 for subsequent ones. Dealers had seen these as unfeasibly high, especially given the extra travel costs for English dealers travelling north of the border.
Meanwhile, the Scotex fair run by the Scottish Philatelic Trade Association will be held in the Dewars Centre for this last time this year, as its October spot has been taken in 2012 by Perth 2012 and the membership has voted to take the event back to the Glasgow area. That is to happen in 2013, although a venue has yet to be settled on. Collectors in the Perth area are not keen on the move, not surprisingly, but it is simply an attempt to make the event more accessible to the large number of West Coast collectors, many of whom have not followed the event to Perth.
Gareth Burgess, an experienced organiser of fairs in Scotland and northern England, has taken over as Scotex organiser and will be assisted by Richard Stenlake, who organises the Glasgow Postcard Fair. They have determined that serious trimming of expenses will allow a modest reduction in table fees for this year -- £105 for the first table and £80 for subsequent ones. That is seen as the best way to reverse the gradual decline in the number of dealers attending and reverse the event’s loses over recent years.
The SPTA is looking into a scaled-down Scotex on the west coast in 2012 but is not sure dealers would be able to support a third national event that year.
Because of the Scotex changes the Scottish Philatelic Congress, which takes place every April in the Dewars Centre, will remain as a two-day event. It was expanded to two days of trading in 2010, with dealers evenly split over the advisability of this. Many feared they would do one day’s business in two days, with the extra costs involved in a longer stay, and some found this to be the case. Others found they had two profitable days of business and welcomed the more relaxed atmosphere and ability to spend more time with customers.
This year’s event, while busy, featured ten fewer dealers. Retirement, deaths, the economic climate and the high cost of petrol all contributed, and the latter was seen as one reason attendance was also down slightly.
A potential scheduling conflict between the 2012 Congress and the York International Postcard Expo has been avoided even though that event was moved to the same two days when Congress is traditionally staged in mid-April. The York organisers wanted to avoid Easter, which is the second Sunday of April next year and opted for 13-14 April over the last two days of March.
However, Congress was then moved from those days to mid-May because of what was described by the Congress organiser as a mix-up at the Dewars Centre in Perth, the Congress venue. Congress 2012 will now take place on 11/12 May (Friday/Saturday) and then revert to its normal mid-April spot in 2013.
Editor's note: A slighter shorter version of this article, which is by me (CN), appeared in The Philatelic Exporter, the British stamp dealers' magazine.

Busy Grampian Stamp and Postcard Fair a fitting end to season

2011-05-06T20:18:00.005+01:00

The first Grampian Stamp and Postcard was a success by all measures and the Aberdeen Press and Journal even ran a short article reporting this. The walls were lined with dealers and the room was buzzing with collectors until 2pm. Things were a bit quieter after that but browsing was steady, and we had to shoo the last collectors out at closing time.
I had lots of good comment about the fair from dealers, and another has already booked for the 10 September event. Collectors also were full of praise for the inaugural fair, with one telling me: "This is what I always thought a stamp fair should be like."
I am grateful to dealers and collectors alike for turning out, and I'd especially like to thank members of the Aberdeen Philatelic Society and Grampian Postcard Club who did so much to publicise the day and even help set up the tables and chairs so the fair could start earlier than in the past. I feel the day was a good end to the September to April collecting year, especially as my fairs at Broughty Ferry and Hillside outside Montrose also went quite well.
I am happy to report big increases in attendance at both and that the dealers were highly pleased with their sales. For whatever reason, the North-East Fairs outings have been going better and better, and I'm hopeful the same standards can be maintained when I start a new round of events in September.
I hope to see you then.

Dealer bookings strong as arrangements nearly complete for first Grampian Stamp and Postcard Fair in Aberdeen on 30 April

2011-04-22T17:16:00.006+01:00

North-East Fairs' first Grampian Stamp and Postcard Fair is shaping up nicely, with most of the arrangements in place and strong bookings from stamp and postcard dealers right across Scotland.
The fair runs from 10.30am to 3pm on Saturday, 30 April, in the main hall at Queen's Cross Parish Church, Albyn Place, Aberdeen AB10 1YN. This is a bright and cheerful room with good level access for the disabled and dealers transporting large amounts of stock. The admission charge will be 50p but anyone who signed up for a reminder about the fair has been sent details and a voucher good for free admission. These can be used at this month's fair or the 10 September one.
Anyone who would like to go on my e-mail or mailing lists can contact me and I will send a voucher if enough time remains. Members of the Aberdeen Philatelic Society on its e-mail list will receive a reminder next week.
I attended the last Aberdeen stamp club meeting of the year to hand out posters for the fair and an announcement about it was made during the meeting. Quite a few members told me they will be attending.
I have booked an advert in the Aberdeen Press and Journal YourWeekend section for the Thursday before the fair. I have been fortunate enough to have an article about my efforts to keep fairs going in Aberdeen, and even a photo, appear in the P&J. I have sent Northsound Radio a request to make an announcement about the event.
As well as walls lined with dealer tables we will have a couple in the middle with bargain boxes, album leaves and other treasures and for people who want to take a break. Plenty of seating will be available. We will not do any catering but this very pleasant area of Aberdeen has lots of cafes, bakeries and restaurants.
The dealers who have booked are:
-- Gareth Burgess, East Lothian
-- Anthony Duda, Dunbartonshire
-- Jim Howie, Dundee
-- Roger Jackson, Inverness-shire
-- Moira Rothnie, Aberdeenshire
-- Richard Stenlake, Ayrshire
-- and myself, of course, from Angus
I have room for one more dealer and a couple have expressed interesting in joining us.
A wide variety of stamps, postcards and postal history will be available, plus cigarette cards, literature, ephemera and accessories. I, for instance, still sell stamp hinges!
My helpers and I will not be gaining access to the hall until 9am or so, but we hope to have everything set up and ready for the dealers before 9.30. The 10.30 opening time is perhaps a bit ambitious, but I wanted opening times to be as long as possible for dealers and collectors.
To sum it up, it will be the biggest stamp and postcard fair Aberdeen has seen for a few years and shows promise of developing into one of Scotland's few regional events. My last two fairs, in Hillside, Montrose; and Broughty Ferry, Dundee, have been very well attended and successful and I hope this trend will continue.
I hope to see you there, and if you are not familiar with the location of Queen's Cross Parish Church just look for the high-visibility signs in the immediate vicinity.
-- Chad Neighbor

New Grampian Stamp and Postcard Fair to fill the gap for collectors' events in Aberdeen

2010-11-30T15:02:00.007Z

Aberdeen will have stamp and postcard fairs after all. North-East Fairs will run two regional events in the Granite City at the well-known Queen's Cross Parish Church Hall on 30 April and 10 September, 2011.
The Grampian Stamp and Postcard Fairs at the popular, bright and conveniently located venue on Albyn Place, Aberdeen AB10 1YN, will run from 10.30am to 3pm. This is a half-hour longer than for the successful but discontinued Cornucopia fairs at the hall but the longest time possible without triggering a much higher fee.
This event received an excellent boost in February when the Aberdeen Press and Journal ran a picture and story about my efforts to keep fairs going in Aberdeen.
Matters were not looking good for Aberdeen and North-East collectors when in September Northern Fairs of England ended many years of events across Scotland, and then Cornucopia Collectors followed suit in November, ending 20 years of successfully promoting fairs in Scotland to concentrate on other parts of the business.
However, as my North-East Fairs operation runs two successful fairs in Broughty Ferry and Hillside, Montrose, and I am just down the road from Aberdeen in Montrose, several dealers suggested I should take a good look at Aberdeen. This I was happy to do as I would hate to see events cease in Aberdeen, particularly as I have taken tables at them for several years and found them a great way to meet local collectors.
After consulting with collectors and all dealers who have attended fairs at Queen's Cross and the slightly smaller Hanover Centre off Beach Boulevard I became convinced both would continue to support Aberdeen fairs. Both the Northern and Cornucopia organisers, by the way, were helpful and encouraged my efforts to keep fairs operating.
I was particularly encouraged by the fact that members of the new Grampian Postcard Club, which meets in Inverurie, and especially their president, Eric Lawson, vowed strong support for a new venture, both verbally and via a questionnaire handed out at a recent meeting.
This is one reason I have decided to use the title of "Grampian." The other, of course, is that I am hoping to make the event more regional in nature and attract smaller, up-and-coming dealers from the Grampian area to the events.
Members of the very successful Aberdeen Philatelic Society, one of the biggest and most active in Britain, have also been vocal in their support and indicated collecting in the area would be much harder without a fair in the locale. Sheila Den, the club's tireless and much-admired secretary, even made some inquiries about facilities on my behalf.
I opted for Queen's Cross because it is slightly larger and for logistical reasons relating to booking advance times and the number of tables available.
While the Aberdeen fairs have long been backed by major dealers from Northern England and by Scottish dealers from as far south as Ayrshire and Helensburgh, only one Aberdeenshire dealer, Moira Rothnie, currently attends them.
To try to remedy this I am offering an introductory discount on table fees, which will be among the lowest in Scotland, to any dealer who participates in an Aberdeen philatelic fair for the first time. I will be sending out booking forms for the Aberdeen, Broughty Ferry and Montrose fairs shortly. Anyone who is not on my mailing list can contact me via the e-mail option on this website or at c.neighbor@virgin.net. (Note that my name does not have a "u" in it.)
In addition, I am hoping to attract a few new dealers from central Scotland to Aberdeen as the Grampian Stamp and Postcard Fair dates avoid winter weather and long drives home in the dark.
Collectors, likewise, can get in touch if they would like details of the fairs sent by mail or e-mail. Normally I charge 50p for entry to North-East Fairs events, but anyone who contacts me will receive a voucher for free admission as well as details.
See you in April!

North-East Fairs announces dates for 2011 events in Broughty Ferry and Montrose -- can Aberdeen's be far behind?

2010-11-10T14:07:00.005Z

North-East Fairs, the operation I set up to run the Broughty Ferry stamp and postcard fairs and bring back the Montrose events, has worked out its dates for 2011. The events will be in the same venues and much the same time of the year as in 2010.
The Broughty Ferry, Dundee, fairs will once again take place at, St Aidans Church Halls, Brook Street DD5 2EH. The dates will be 15 January, 26 March and 24 September. The January date is a week earlier than it was this year, to free me up to attend the York Racecourse Stamp Fair on 21-22 January. The hours are also being extended slightly, from 10am to 4pm, to account for the fact that quite a few people are coming late in the day. Two recent fairs have had to be extended by nearly an hour as so many people were showing up as late as 3pm, the time we were scheduled to close.
The Hillside, Montrose, fairs will again take place at the excellent Hillside Village Hall, Dubton Road, Hillside, Montrose DD10 9HB. The 2011 dates are 26 February and 29 October and the hours will be 10am-3pm. This venue a mile north of Montrose has proved highly popular with dealers and collectors alike, as it offers good access (including by the No 47 bus) and excellent lighting and heating. Once again a charity tea and coffee stall with home baking will be on the go to allow people to stay longer and create a more relaxed atmosphere. In addition, Hillside Snacks, the excellent catering service in the nearby Hillside Shops and Post Office, will again stock extra rolls, sandwiches, bridies and other delicacies. These are excellent and very good value, as I can attest personally.
We will continue to stress the fact that people will unwanted collections or accumulations gathering dust in the attic can bring them along to be evaluated or even sell them. Indeed I bought several small groups of postcards and cigarette cards at the last Hillside fair.
Meanwhile, collectors and dealers disappointed at the loss of both Aberdeen stamp and postcard fairs within a couple of months are encouraging me to see if I can rescue these events. While one of the fairs simply ran out of steam, the other at Queens Cross Church was going well (the last one is 27 November) but the organisers want to devote more time to the rest of their business. They have been among those to encourage me to keep stamp and postcard events going in Scotland’s third-largest city. I have been looking at venues and policies regarding insurance, booking and so forth and hope to come up with a venue and at least two dates before long. Watch this space!

HOW TO KEEP EBAY IDENTITY THEFT FROM DRIVING YOU CRAZY AND SMASHING YOUR BUDGET

2010-06-02T14:19:00.002+01:00

Having your financial or on-line identity stolen or compromised is one of the greatest fears of modern life, so for my eBay 1500 feedback article I’ll give an account of how my eBay ID was compromised and what I did to keep the damage to a minimum.
I was part of the way through breakfast on a Monday when the phone went. A woman wanted to know more about the car I was selling on eBay. My memory isn’t what it used to be, but I was quite sure I was not selling a vehicle, let alone on eBay. The woman sensed my hesitation and suggested that if I was not selling a car I’d better sign in to my account as it was highly likely someone had hacked into it.
Being a breakfast sort of person, I finished it and then logged on. There, as clear as day despite efforts of the cyber criminal to hide it, was a listing for a BMW X5 3.0D Sport Auto, a spiffing people carrier worth in the region of £30,000-40,000. The 24-hour listing had a starting price of £1 but after an hour and a half had attracted several bids and was up to £3,100.
I knew full well that the car did not exist and that the perpetrator had simply scanned in some photos, but clearly several people were taken in, their judgment clouded perhaps by greedy thoughts of acquiring this posh vehicle for a snip. Our cyber thief had attempted to fuel these hopes of a wild bargain by saying he (or she) only needed £5,000 for the car. Wow, what a nice person. Anyone who was paying any attention at all could have seen that this note, small as it was, was not my work as it was very sloppily written, and I try to avoid this sort of thing as I am a journalist by profession.
Despite the fact that my blood was nearing boiling point, I quickly e-mailed the top bidder to say that the bid should be cancelled and that the car didn’t exist. (That person quickly wrote a note to thank me.) I then cancelled the listing and notified eBay.
Then I had a good look at the listing, which by the way had cost me £8.50. All my details were as normal except for the e-mail address, which had been changed to a Hotmail one. This offered a clue as to how the person hoped to get away with the crime. I guessed that the winning bidder would have been messed around in terms of collecting the car and would have eventually been encouraged to pay by PayPal or another electronic alternative, quite possibly with a nice discount as a sweetener. Or perhaps they would have been asked to make an advance payment. The money, of course, would quickly have vanished and I would have been left with an irate buyer with nothing but a couple of scans to show for their cash.
Fortunately the brigand had not made any attempts, at least successful, to hack into my PayPal account, but I quickly changed my password into something much more difficult to type.
EBay takes this sort of thing very seriously, of course, and when I logged on the next morning my account had been frozen. I had received several e-mails about the matter and was invited to contact eBay via a real-time electronic linkup to tackle the mess. First, as eBay’s behest, however, I thought up a new, much more complicated, password and changed my e-mail password as well.
The person at the other end was obviously highly experienced, not a cut-and-paste artist, and very helpful. She made me jump through various hoops to prove my identity and took me through various steps, including verifying that I had changed the three key passwords, and arranged for a refund of the £8.50. The various necessary actions took several hours, and it took several more hours over the rest of the week to undo the damage the miscreant had done by moving parts of my My eBay page to try to disguise the scam and putting information about the car and the bogus e-mail address in one of my templates.
For weeks afterward it seemed I had to sign in using my new password several times a day, including on Turbo Lister, but now things are pretty much back to normal.
I wondered why the cyber thief had picked on me, as I am a registered business user and so presumably check my eBay listings frequently (which I do.) However my feedback is, I say modestly, about as good as it gets – 5.0 for promptness of dispatch, communications and accuracy of listings and 4.9 for postage – and I imagine this was why I was selected.
I still have no idea how the sneak seller managed to get into my eBay account, especially given the confirmation questions that are supposed to be asked when a computer other than my home one is used to do eBay work.
I am grateful that I happened to be home on the day of the attack. Otherwise things could have been much, much worse.
As for avoiding such incidents, I can only suggest considering a complicated eBay password and checking the site at least daily. Otherwise you could get a phone call one day from an angry person wanting to know what has happened to their expensive BMW.

ZAMBIA OFFERS FASCINATING LESSER-TROD PATH FOR COMMONWEALTH COLLECTORS

2010-03-02T15:52:00.003Z

I go to my local stamp club meetings whenever possible, no matter what is on offer, and so it was I found myself at the Arbroath public library on an uncharacteristically warm Scottish evening recently. However I and the other members were quickly transported to the exotic locale of Zambia, the former Northern Rhodesia, by a fascinating display of the country’s stamps and postal history.
Our guide was the Rev. Alan Roy, who lived and worked in Zambia for many years. He presented many aspects of a Zambian collection and I soon realized it would be a good idea to take website visitors on a brief tour as well, even if it never could be as vivid.
The Rev. Roy explained that Zambia, while a poor country suffering from the ravages of HIV/AIDS, has had much better leadership in recent years than neighbouring Zimbabwe and has stable prices after a period of serious inflation. Likewise its stamp policy has generally been sound, notwithstanding a tie-up with a United States philatelic agency at one point.
Sets of stamps are generally issued in modest numbers and typically portray the country’s culture, history and wildlife, although subjects of international importance also crop up. A good example is relatively recent stamps picturing Mahatma Gandhi, the great Indian leader and proponent of non-violent resistance. These are popular with the many Gandhi collectors worldwide
The stamps are generally attractive and well produced, largely thanks to a veteran Zambian artist and stamp designer, Gabriel Ellison, who designs many of its issues. She quickly made her mark on the issues of Zambia as she designed its excellent first definitive set, which pictured current and past facets of life in the country.
The Rev. Roy noted that Zambia is a large nation, some 1,200 miles from end to end, and for those of its 13 million people living in outlying areas the postal services are sketchy. The district where he lived, for instance, was the size of a British county but had just two post offices.
As I know next to nothing about Zambian stamps virtually everything that the Rev. Roy presented was new to me, but I did take particular interest in a few particular points he illustrated with material from his collection:
¨ The 1953 Northern Rhodesia Queen’s head stamps while very familiar looking, are hard to find used on cover because they came out not long before the federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland was created and were not in use for a long time.
¨ The final Northern Rhodesian definitive set picturing the country’s arms and a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II can be found with a variety of errors, chiefly the lack of a value.
¨ Postage due stamps are also hard to find properly used on cover, and because of sketchy supplies in post offices some real rarities can be found. The Rev. Roy showed a fascinating cover to himself from an acquaintance of limited means that was underpaid and had Northern Rhodesian due stamps overprinted Southern Rhodesia.
¨ Zambia suffered such horrific inflation in the mid-1990s that ordinary people could not afford to send letters and so covers from the period are scarce. Much of the display was on Zambian air mail rates and even before this period it took a large group of stamps to pay for postage to overseas destinations.
As is the case with many poor African countries, covers are often found with markings noting that an item has been forwarded by surface mail because of insufficient postage for airmail. Quite a few Zambian stamps have been overprinted with new values, creating interesting issues and envelopes for the many collectors of such stamps.
More details on Zambian stamps are available from: Philatelic Bureau, Zambia Posts and Telecommunications Ltd, PO Box 71857, Ndola, Zambia. However, if you go to Zambia Post’s web site at http://www.zampost.co.zm/ you will find nothing other than an optimistic message: "Website to be restored soon!"

NEW ZEALAND POST GETS SERIOUS NEW COMPETITOR

New Zealand is leading the world in privatization of postal operations, and what seems to be another serious competitor to New Zealand Post has entered the field. That competitor is Croxley, a well-known stationer manufacturer and subsidiary of the US-based international stationery giant Max. It says it aims to win 10% of the market within three years.
What makes the Croxley initiative so interesting is that it will provide prepaid postal stationery items, a logical step for a firm that makes envelopes. It will also offer a variety of boxes, mailing bags and other products. The new Croxley Mail service started with six stamps with a face value of 50 cents to $1.50 as well as the prepaid envelopes. The firm already supplies New Zealand Post stamps and envelopes through many firms, some of them owned by Max, and it expects many outlets to switch to the new product. These envelopes and covers with the Croxley Mail stamps can be posted in New Zealand Post mailboxes or postal centres.
The first stamps are attractive, featuring photos of idyllic New Zealand scenes. These were shot at night under full moonlight at Muriwai Beach at Auckland, giving them an ethereal quality. As with other New Zealand private post stamps, they are never likely to be common, especially on cover.
Editor's note: These articles are adapted from my long-running Commonwealth collecting column in Canadian Stamp News. For more details on this excellent publication, including how to subscribe, go to http://www.canadianstampnews.ca

IRELAND'S AN POST CELEBRATES 25 EVENTFUL YEARS

2010-01-05T14:21:00.002Z

The British Isles are well known for their penny posts, a part of the postal revolution that made sending a letter affordable for everyone in the middle of the 19th century, but another groundbreaking one took place much later, in January 1984.
On Jan 3, 1984, Irish postal users could send a basic rate letter or postcard within the country for just one Irish penny, a true money-saving opportunity. This massive discount was designed to catch people’s attention, and the reason was the inauguration that day of a commercial state postal company called An Post, an Irish Gaelic name that translates roughly as … The Post. Items posted on the day received a special slogan postmark proclaiming "Penny Post Day 1984, an example of which can be found illustrated elsewhere on this page.
The Irish Post Office was very busy that day, even if it ran at a loss, and its publicity aims were achieved as four million 1p Irish architecture definitive stamps were sold that day and millions of people were prompted to reflect on why they could send a postcard to Auntie Colleen.
As The Collector, the An Post philatelic bulletin, notes: "From its first day of business, when it reintroduced penny postage for one day, An Post signalled its intention to be innovative in its approach to marketing … the company strove, though new products, to stimulate demand."
An Post set out on a potentially perilous course that day, although it was a course many if not most nations had to embark on to bring their postal operations into the modern era. And now, in 2009, the Irish experiment has proved successful, if not without problems, and An Post is a robust, flexible and carefully run enterprise of the sort that a modern small nation needs to survive in the European and global markets.
So it is not surprising that An Post has released a set of ten stamps commemorating its 25th birthday, although it does make a statement in that all of the images are up-to-date ones of postal employees doing their jobs with modern equipment and facilities, of postal patrons enjoying world-class facilities and even of the Sean Kelly Cycling Team, which it sponsors.
Given this focus on new products, the two strips of ten self-adhesive stamps – all 55c issues that everyone uses for domestic mailings -- are accompanied by a first day cover, a booklet containing all the stamps, a box containing 100 of the stamps and a set of five An Post vans from throughout its history attractively packaged in a box. Now some of these items are not exactly everyone’s cup of tea, but no-one is forced to buy them, and a collector wanting just a basic set of stamps can acquire them for a modest outlay.
A very cheap but tricky challenge also presents itself: trying to collect all of the stamps postally used. Even tougher, as I put my postal history thinking cap on briefly, would be collecting each of the stamps properly used on cover or postcard.
I’m fortunate in that I don’t live all that far from Ireland and can occasionally take the ferry over the Irish Sea to visit friends, have a chat with Irish collectors and perhaps do some buying and selling. I’ve found An Post issues to be attractive and varied, if a bit too cutesy at times, and I’ve always been impressed by the stamps and the service when I call in at the philatelic counter in the famous and imposing General Post Office building on O’Connell Street in Dublin.
As The Collector also reports, An Post has seen many milestones in its busy first 25 years:
-- It has produced 12 joint issues with other nations, including Canada of course.
-- Its single European currency issue showed the stamp value for euro and Irish punt (or pound) for the first time.
-- The Christmas 2001 issues were the last to have a punt value.
-- Ireland’s first lenticular (moving image) stamps were issued in 2006 to mark the hosting of the Ryder Cup US vs Europe golf match.
-- An Post has issued two stamps featuring Braille: its 2006 30th anniversary of Irish guide dogs stamp and 2009 Louis Braille issue.
-- The www.irishstamps.ie web site was launched in March of 2002.
No doubt we can look forward to a few more.
IRELAND FINALLY ADDRESSES POSTCODE ISSUE
One thing An Post has not brought in is a postcode system, making Ireland the only country in Europe not to have one, although two-digit basic alphanumeric codes have been used in Dublin and Cork. I’ve long wondered why some Irish envelopes have orange postal mechanisation code bars on the back of them, and perhaps they relate to this partial code.
At any rate, that is all changing. The country’s communications minister, Eamon Ryan, announced in September that tenders for the design and implementation of the coding system would be issued shortly and that a system is expected to be in place in 2011 for the country’s 1.75 million addresses. The current economic woes, with Ireland having been hit particularly hard, are likely to be a factor as the once-booming "Celtic Tiger" seeks ways to improve competitiveness and stop multinationals moving work to lower cost countries.
"We're the only country in Europe which doesn't have a postal code ... and we like that in a nostalgic way," Ryan told public radio RTE. "But the reality is it's not efficient and it doesn't work well. We need to move to a new digital economy, postcodes are part of that."
Postcodes would not only make mail delivery more efficient but would also help other businesses that rely on the exact tracing of goods in the export-reliant Irish economy. "There are a lot of corporations internationally who would be very anxious to piggyback on the back of the new system once it's in," John Whelan, chief executive of the Irish Exporters Association, told the Reuters news agency.
No doubt the satellite navigation industry will be pleased too. Anyone running an event in Britain has become accustomed to giving the postcode of the venue so people can tap the code into their system and put away the map.
Editor's note: This is one of my Commonwealth Communique columns for Canadian Stamp News. For more details on this excellent publication, including how to subscribe, go to http://www.canadianstampnews.ca

PUBLISHERS ELECT TO PRODUCE WIDE VARIETY OF ATTRACTIVE BARACK OBAMA POSTCARDS

2009-09-30T12:11:00.003+01:00

As postcards were a prime medium a hundred years ago for publicising local and national events, it is reassuring to see one of the major events of 2009 being reasonably well represented in cards. That event was a truly global happening, capturing the public imagination across the world as the first black US president was sworn in.
Asians stayed up late, Eastern Europeans watched at dinner time, Brits had tea in front of the telly, east coast Americans paused in late morning and west coasters turned on the TV during breakfast – all to watch the son of a Kenyan exchange student assume the most powerful position on the globe, so publishers were hardly taking a big gamble when they marked the event.
Strong images of Barack Hussein Obama juxtaposed before the White House, and the First Family, who it must be said are more than highly photogenic, went on sale before the event in Washington DC as postcard producers rushed to take advantage of the unprecedented worldwide interest and the massive crowds descending on the capital.
While a long-planned family trip saw me arriving in Washington the day after the inauguration, I was quickly caught up in the electric and highly positive, if cautious, atmosphere across the country -- but most definitely centred in Washington. I knew I wanted to acquire as many different cards as possible, but I did not know if it would be an easy task.
Perhaps I became overconfident as I attended a major Washington-area stamp event, the Washington Metro Fair, conveniently located in the outer suburb where one of my brothers lives, and found a huge array of election and inaugural day commemorative envelopes (but no postcards) at the table of an enterprising and experienced cover producer. I bought one set of inaugural envelopes but no election day ones, and by the time I got back to Scotland was wishing I’d purchased more. One of the partners of the enterprise happened to mention that they had sold more than £1,000 worth on the first day of the three-day fair, which should have told me something.
And so it was, a bit later, that I ventured to the city centre to scoop up what I imagined would be scores of different cards. Arriving at Union Station not long after dawn, having taken advantage of a lift to the wonderful Metro system from my civil servant brother. I knew that Union Station has many shops selling cards, but was hardly surprised to find them closed at 7.45am. I consoled myself, somehow, with a fine breakfast of "baked French toast," which was a bit like bread pudding, and muesli yoghurt and tea.
By 8.30 the shopkeepers were arriving and I began my quest at a newsagents called Hudson News. This is a large regional outfit that stocks a modest but well-chosen selection of topographical and other postcards. Three fine Obama cards were on the slightly hidden racks, although I dithered over one because it was so large. In the end I bought one of each (60 cents plus sales tax, or a bit more than 40p) and some Washington Metro map, National Zoo panda and John Kennedy cards for my map, bear and presidential friends in Scotland.
My purchases were modest, for I imagined I would do much better at the many political and current affairs shops that lined the retail concourses of the magnificently restored station (which still sees many trains, by the way). Little did I know that I had already seen the best selection and lowest prices.
The only problem with the Hudson News cards was a certain sameness. Each pictures a beaming and confident-looking Obama and the White House. The largest one, with Obama on the left, was printed by a firm called Capital Noveltees (sic) – perhaps they do a line of tee-shirts as well. The smaller one was by the same firm and featured the same photographs but with Obama on the right – a less satisfactory arrangement even if the president is looking almost straight ahead. Both have the text: "Barack Obama/ 44th President of the United States / Washington D.C.", and the larger one also sports the presidential seal.
The third card, by the Postcard Factory, has different views of Obama and his residence, plus the US flag. It states simply: "President Barack Obama / Washington, D.C." and, ironically, states on the back that it was printed in Canada.
Only one of the other promising-looking shops was open my this time and I was disappointed to find that the array of fine and not-so-fine political artifacts did not include postcards. However, the helpful clerk explained that a shop on the lower floor did sell Obama cards.
I found this shop eventually, just inside an entrance from the Metro station, but was disappointed to find its "postcards" were really mini-posters. (This shop was so new, by the way, that the name of the previous occupant was simply covered over and the emporium remained nameless. Probably eventually they will call it Obamarama.) To a soundtrack of an Obama speech, and realising my quest was not going to be quite as easy as I had imagined, I purchased two of the smaller cards and a larger one, each for $1 plus tax. I took care, by the way, to explain to the helpful and friendly sales assistant that postcard collectors like a postcard back. By the way, the most reserved clerks were soon beaming when I said I had come from Scotland to look for Obama cards (among other things).
These cards, to be sure, are nicely produced and attractive. The smaller one, of the First Family, and the presidential seal, is exactly the same front and back. On one side of the larger one, titled "Family Roots", Obama is surrounded by family photos, while on the flip side Obama and the seal are pictured with the words "The President of the United States of America / Barack H. Obama". This image is not quite as successful as it has no border on the top and the president has been given a bit of a haircut. No details of a publisher are given.
By this time it was clear most of the shops (as well as the National Postal Museum across the street) were not opening until 10, so nothing remained but to walk the short distance to the Mall, the scene of so many historic events and the 44th president’s inaugural speech. There in front of the Capitol building the scaffolding was still being taken down. I paused to look over the vast expanse, which so recently had been a gathering place for nearly two million people. Somehow I found it easier to visualise the vast civil rights and antiwar protests that had filled the Mall rather than the recent inauguration. The bitter cold, which the celebrants also had experienced, did nothing to dampen the almost overwhelming feeling of history and past and present changes.
Back at Union Station, after an impromptu but fascinating demonstration by a canine operator and his charge on how to check a lorry for explosives, I stepped into a shop called America! that had another large selection of memorabilia. One of the postcards was one I already had, but wisely I purchased a second copy, and one was a new find with Obama in front of Old Glory and the words: "Barack Obama / 44th President of the United States." The reverse includes the text of his oath of office, but no details of the publisher. I assuaged my disappointment at not being named Obama’s postmaster general by buying a White House Presidential Staff mug and a bookmark picturing all the U.S. presidents for the friend with a collection on that theme.
A highly-promising, long-established kiosk featuring Washington memorabilia was the next stop. While this establishment had just one "new" if quite fine card featuring the First Family, the assistant did shed light on why I was having trouble finding a variety of cards. "Oh we had lots of different ones, but they’re all sold out now. We’ll be getting some more." This anonymous card (Made in U.S.A.) shows a waving Obama and "Sasha, Malia, and First Lady Michelle." Now realising the problem I faced, I asked for three.
I got much the same story over at the wonderful National Postal Museum, whose shelves had been stripped bare of a large stock of Obama cards. I did buy three of the last few Inauguration Day envelopes out of the hundreds that I was told had been in stock at this outpost of the Smithsonian Institution. Postcard collectors will find plenty of interest here, but will have to be patient as the emphasis is on stamps and carriage of the mail.
My search for postcards was not entirely in vain, however, as I purchased two at 75 cents each featuring the Wright Brothers’ 1903 aircraft and Owney, a postal mascot dog who travelled the US in railway post office cars. Even a better bargain were two cards advertising current displays at the museum, on "Alphabetilately" (an A-Z of stamp collecting terms) and World War II Victory Mail, the weight-saving microfilm letters.
These latter cards are the latest in a long series dispensed from machines and that visitors are invited to post straightaway with an illustrated Pitney Bowes meter mark cancellation. It takes a bit of effort and a wee while to get your card as you have to type in the address of the intended recipient. One the machine spits out the card, you can simply pocket it or take it to another machine where you can pay for the meter postage and have it printed on the spot.
At this point I had to head off to the heart of the business section to meet old journalistic colleagues, and as I was flying home the next day did not get another chance to hunt for postcards.
Well, that is not exactly true. For I was delighted to see near my departure gate at Dulles Airport a Smithsonian shop. Did I dare hope it might have the cards the postal museum had sold out of?
Yes and no. It did have one by now familiar card, of Obama in front of Old Glory. I bought another copy. I wish I’d taken half a dozen.
Editor's note: This article, by yours truly, originally appeared in Picture Postcard Monthly, a magazine I can heartily recommend for anyone with even a passing interest in postcards.

Dumfries and Stirling stamp groups invite me to give D-Day and Abilene displays

2009-08-25T15:13:00.004+01:00

I am very pleased to have been invited to give a display on D-Day and the Abilene Connection to two Scottish stamp societies in the upcoming season.
The first, on Tuesday, 22 September, 2009, will be to the Dumfries Stamp Club. The meeting at the Locharbriggs Social Club, Auchencrieff Road, Dumfries, will start at 7.30pm. I will start with my 35-page D-Day display, which is inspired the participation of my father, Charles H Neighbor, in that historic event.
This display is small because I only include items of a personal connection to him and myself, as I went with him to the 60th anniversary commemoration events in Normandy 2004. The highlights include the V-Mail message he sent to his mother after he was injured more than two weeks after the invasion and postcards and envelopes he prepared for me, as well as postcards and first day covers signed by him, US generals and French village mayors. I've even written Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks into the script, for we had such good seats at the speeches by Presidents Bush and Chirac in 2004 that they sat behind us.
Then I will show up to 100 sheets on Abilene, Kansas, my home town. This display has a strong link to the D-Day one because Dwight D Eisenhower, the man who masterminded the invasion, grew up in Abilene. His museum and library are there and they include many items and records pertaining to Operation Overlord as well.
As the Dumfries Stamp Club invites speakers (and I won't do much speaking by the way) to show 160 sheets of their collections, I will probably round out the evening with a few pages on penny black and tuppenny blue covers and my Compound Interest collection of Victorian doubled embossed and other postal stationery items printed with two or more values. It might sound a bit dry but they are very interesting visually.
I will present a slightly smaller D-Day and Abilene display at the Stirling Philatelic Society meeting at 7.30pm on Tuesday, 23 March, 2010, at the Smith Art Gallery and Museum, Dumbarton Road.
In addition, I was invited to show the collection to my local club, the Arbroath and District Stamp and Postcard Club, but the only date available clashed with my 25th wedding anniversary! I understand the display will be included in the syllabus for the next season.
I am looking forward to these evenings and will report on them to my father, who is quite pleased by the interest I have shown in D-Day and the work I've done to prepare the display.

I take over Broughty Ferry stamp and postcard fair as major organiser bows out; Montrose fair to be revived

2009-06-10T10:51:00.004+01:00

The Scottish stamp and postcard scene has been shaken by the news that David Hastings, organiser of the large Caledonia Fairs circuit, is giving the fairs up with immediate effect. He advised collectors and dealers at the Glasgow Postcard Fair on Saturday, 6 June 2009, that he will need to devote most of his time to looking after his wife, who is about to return home after a long spell in hospital.
David is keen to see the fairs survive, however, and is generously handing over the events to three Scottish-based dealers.
I am one of the dealers and will take over the relatively new but successful Brought Ferry fair in the attractive and bustling seaside suburb of Dundee. As it happens, this event is the next one on the calendar, on 11 July, and David is concentrating on handing over the details so I can make sure it goes ahead without any problems. The following fair, on 24 October, will also go ahead as planned. The fairs David organised for 2009 will stay under the Caledonia banner but then the organisers will go their separate ways.
In addition, I had already agreed with David that I would revive the successful but smaller Montrose fairs he set up when the Caird Hall in Dundee became too expensive. He decided to shelve them, however, because Montrose is so far from his home near Dumfries and the Broughty Ferry fairs were doing well. I have already been looking at potential dates with dealers who were disappointed at the loss of the fairs and hope to announce the first date soon.
The very busy Kinross fair will be taken over by Gareth Burgess, who runs the successful Bass Rock fairs in North Berwick and Berwick-upon-Tweed.
Anthony Duda, the experienced stamp dealer who trades under the name of Stenlake and McCourt, is taking over David's fairs in Carlisle, Prestwick, Motherwell and Bathgate. He told me at the Glasgow Postcard Fair that he has plans to try to widen the appeal of the events, such as trying to attract dealers of ephemera and other collectibles. David told me the Buxton, Derbyshire, fair he established recently will go ahead this weekend but will not continue after that.
I'd like to add a few words in praise of David. He has been a tireless worker and his fairs have been a great boon and extremely popular with collectors and dealers for 25 years. He is a scrupulously fair and highly organised man and it has always been a pleasure to attend his events. He encouraged me when I was starting out, especially when I started to increase my postcard stock considerably.
His knowledge of the Scottish postcard market is immense and he has never been slow to share information. His smile and sometimes wicked humour were always forthcoming and highly welcome as well. I hope we'll see plenty of him in years to come in one way or another.
Hundreds of people in the Scottish postcard and wider collecting world owes him a great debt of gratitude.

IS THE BEST PRICE ALWAYS THE LOWEST PRICE?

2009-01-17T14:11:00.002Z

Surely all stamp collectors should always look for and pay the lowest possible price. And when choosing between similar copies of a stamp or cover, a buyer should always opt for the cheapest one, especially if it is nicer looking.
Not necessarily. In fact, while cost is always a factor in any purchase, always insisting on a rock-bottom price is one of the worst ways to put together a good collection. Indeed, it can result in throwing away a lot of money and cause frustration and disappointment.
Quite apart from the well-known fact that a high-quality item always holds its value better than a poor-quality one, several compelling reasons exist for considering a range of prices for any purchase.
A story told by an experienced stamp auctioneer illustrates the point well. At one of the excellent annual American Philatelic Society summer seminars in Pennsylvania, the teacher of my course on the economics of the stamp market told how two boys offered one wintry day to shovel the snow off his drive. They wanted $25 for the large job but after some discussion reluctantly agreed to $20.
The hard bargainer settled down smugly to watch TV, but later was astonished to find his snow intact and the boys working away industriously on his neighbour’s. "Why are you doing his driveway?" the auctioneer asked.
"He is paying $25," one of the boys said.
Anyone who believes this cannot happen in the stamp world is sadly mistaken. I was once contacted by a collector in a popular postal history area who had seen my advert in a club magazine. He asked me to send a list of covers for sale, which I went to some effort to do. Then he made a large order of these reasonably priced covers, but said he had to see them before paying. I bundled them up with some annoyance, for this was a second job I’d had to do without receiving any money.
The collector then wrote back to say the covers were the sort of thing he wanted, but made a counter-offer for them. As I had gone to a fair bit of work and did not want to lose the sale, I gritted my teeth and accepted the offer, but resolved never to have anything to do with the person again.
A few months later the collector phoned, wondering why I hadn’t sent any more lists. He was quite anxious to acquire more items, but he wasn’t having much luck for some reason. I said I didn’t have anything suitable to offer, but the fact is I’d rather donate stock to charity than deal with him.
Just in case you’re thinking that this is a self-serving plot by a dealer to get more money from collectors, the same is just as true for the dealer making purchases. A fair offer is not only more likely to result in a transaction, but is more likely to result in a long-term relationship. I sometimes pay a bit more than I’d like just to keep a seller from looking for other pastures, and anyway I often then realise the vendor was justified in asking for the price. Occasionally I find I’ve seriously underestimated the value of an item and make a second payment, confident the value of the seller’s future offers will far exceed the modest sum involved.
The collector should be wary of the lowest price for several other reasons. While dealers have genuine sales, and true bargains are often found for many good reasons, a very low price is often too good to be true. The item might be a forgery, have a faked watermark or postmark, be repaired, regummed or reperforated or have a hard-to-spot flaw. Anthony Duda, of the Scottish stamp dealers Stenlake and McCourt, explains that forgeries abound on many early stamps. "The reasons that these forgeries were produced is that the originals are rare. People wanted copies to fill up their printed albums."
I have a highly experienced friend who gave up stamps in favour of postal history because he was so disillusioned about some purchases. When he tried to sell a group of stamps from one seller he was horrified to find virtually all had been "improved". "I knew the prices were low when I bought them," he explained, "but I thought it was because he liked me."
Another way that paying a bit more can result in a better bargain is having an expensive or tricky item examined by experts. While this will cost a few pounds it will almost certainly insure you are receiving what you are paying for. And the certificate will make the item much easier to sell if you decide to part with it, and a satisfactory price is more likely.
Collectors should be especially wary of very fine looking stamps or covers at a price well below market values. Forgers who go to the trouble of producing an item might as well make it a superb copy. The collector who has long been searching for a key item at an affordable price and finds one whose vendor admits the price takes into account a slightly blurred postmark or a bit of a crayon marking is far more likely to get the real McCoy than by buying a fabulous looking item an internet seller "just found in his grandfather’s loft." Of course the buyer should understand that the potential price for the item in the event of resale will be similarly affected.
Collectors who insist on paying the lowest price possible also run another risk. Anyone who offers material at prices well below market value could have another secret to hide. The goods could be a hot bargain of another sort: stolen goods. Collectors who buy heavily discounted high-quality material without asking any questions could well get an unwelcome knock on the door one day and find their prized item is not mounted in an album but entered as evidence.

NEW: SEE BELOW AT END OF SALES LIST FOR MY BUYING LIST

2008-12-17T17:47:00.001Z

EBAY 1000: COLLECTORS AND VENDORS PAY THE PRICE, THE CREDIT CRUNCH, DUELS WITH TURBO DELISTER AND THE IMAGES FROM HELL

2008-11-19T19:18:00.000Z

Now that my eBay feedback rating has passed the nice round figure of 1,000 – dare I say it with no negative or neutral ratings -- it seems like a good time to do another eBay commentary. One reason for taking the time to do this is that I received several positive and appreciate comments about my eBay 500 article and it seems people are interested in commentary somewhere in between the official eBay line and the rantings of those with a vendetta against the super cyber salespeople.
Of course I realise 1,000 is a highly modest number, which some people seem to manage in a busy afternoon, but it’s not bad considering that I rarely list more than about 10 lots a week, as I have no wish to be chained to a computer once more after a career as a newspaper editor. My first 500 took almost exactly five years, with only sporadic buying and no selling for the first few years, while the second 500 took 16 months. Of course changes in feedback rules that took into account repeat sales speeded this up.
One unfortunate trend that seems to be more prevalent now is taking a photo of postcards (but, thankfully, usually not better postal history, first-day covers and the like) rather than scanning them. The result at the worst is a crooked, out-of-perspective image with a flash area and looking like it’s six inches under water. The best is still far inferior to a half-decent scan. I’m sure I’m not alone in seeing postcards that simply cannot be viewed well enough to make an informed decision, especially when the vendor does not bother to tackle the thorny issue of condition. Time to hit the X button and move on.
Of course scanning is not without its pitfalls. Some vendors think nothing of trimming the faults off a scan to make a card look better – although one claimed to me this was not intentional but was the way his scanner worked. To this I replied that vendors are responsible for the accuracy of what they post, and what sort of vendor puts things on eBay without checking it first? I feel quite justified to send a card back that has been misrepresented this way.
Meanwhile, I’m not alone in feeling uneasy about the lengths eBay seems to be prepared to go to in pushing PayPal. PayPal is a very convenient way to send and receive money, especially across national boundaries, but hardly without faults and it can be quite slow in the case of eCheques. I am happy to offer PayPal as an option but I do resent attempts to make it the only way to pay. I firmly believe that cheques, money order and -- gasp! -- even cash have roles to play, even in today’s high-tech society. My eBay US listings are going in with the cheque and money order option deleted by eBay, but my statements still make it clear that I accept these options and others by mutual agreement, and so vendors generally realise they can indeed pay with a cheque or the euros they brought home from Spain. PayPal’s splutterings about the mortal danger to anyone who touches a cheque or banknote are entirely self-serving. It’s interesting to see how the new-economy and cyber firms are all for freedom of expression and unfettered economic movements – until it looks like it might cost them a few pennies. I think this is a highly dangerous game in today’s credit crunch economic times and given the volatility of the international on-line economy. One long-time stamp friend and eBay dealer told me recently: "They [eBay] have really soured me on their system, due to the heavy handed way they shoved PayPal down our throats. Seems they would like all of us ‘small’ dealers to just go away." Today’s big player can easily turn out to be tomorrow’s bit player.
On the subject of inflexibility, for the first time I’ve had bids on the US site rejected simply because I don’t live in the States. While some vendors – a bit foolishly, in my opinion – say they don’t accept bids from overseas (if you’re stung by a bad buyer from Pennsylvania, do you stop taking bids from that state?), almost all will accept them once I explain I can pay any way they choose and can even offer a US delivery address. However my bids for interesting flood postcards from Abilene, Kansas (I was born during a flood in that historic town) were rejected, and it was only through last-minute arrangements with my brother that I was able to bid on and win the cards. I think the problem was that the vendor didn’t accept PayPal (but presumably he has "seen the light" or defected to one of eBay’s competitors in the meantime) and he wasn’t allowed to accept other forms of payments from abroad. In the end I paid him with a dollar cheque from a US-based account.
Of course everyone is watching the economic winds uneasily. I found that the autumn listing season started well, but quickly went off the boil and then all but collapsed when the worst news of the credit crunch hit. Strangely postcards seem to be less affected than postal history. Now people seem to be drifting back, but a small loss of bidders can make a big difference in realisations. As in a room auction, the loss of 5 per cent of serious bidders can easily cause prices to fall by 25 per cent or more.
Finally, I would like to fill up a bit more space on the expensive failure I experienced with Turbo Lister. This is a helpful tool, although it’s not suited for beginners for various reasons. However it has a serious flaw: When you start to hit roughly 1,000 lots, it can freeze up. I’d been warned by an experienced dealer about this, but expected to have some sort of foreshadowing. Instead, one afternoon I simply couldn’t get into Turbo Lister anymore.
Unfortunately, as it was a cheap listings day and I’d done a lot of listings for once, I over-reacted. I started deleting other versions of my listings that had been inadvertently created when I had trouble switching over to Turbo Lister II. When this didn’t work I reverted to the old "sell your item" form, and managed to get everything listed before the midnight deadline.
However, worse was to come. A few days later I decided to re-import all my eBay listings to build a new data base on which to expand for future lots. I also, unfortunately, hit the "synchronise" button, which I assumed would make this process more complete. Instead, every one of my active lots was taken off eBay and the bids tossed out. If someone looked at the newly deleted listing, they saw a notice to the effect that the vendor had withdrawn the lot and the item was no longer available, neither of which was true.
Of course I immediately complained to eBay and asked them to look into the matter, restore my lots and so forth, but they asked for lots of documentation first. However, because I had deleted so much material to try to free up Turbo Lister, or Turbo Delister as I was calling it at the time, I had somehow deleted information from the crucial period. This was despite the fact that I regularly back up my Turbo Lister files as recommended. eBay of course washed its hands of the matter, and I was out all the fees I had paid to list the lots, and didn’t get the usual refund when on lots that sold when I relisted them. What’s more, probably because of the confusion understandable suspicions by buyers about possible hanky-panky (although there wasn’t any), the ones with bids didn’t sell for as much the second time.
I don’t know if eBay would ever have provided satisfaction over the debacle, but the fact is my haste had made any chance of that impossible. So if your Turbo Lister files are approaching 1,000, weed them out or, as my dealer friend recommends, clear them out completely and re-import your current listings and unsold lots. I would not, however, recommend hitting the "synchronise" button.
PS: When I spell checked this article, the stupid thing's alternative for "PayPal" was "payola".

NORTH BY NORTH-EAST: A TOUR OF STAMP AND POSTCARD CLUBS IN THE NORTH-EAST OF SCOTLAND

2008-10-31T10:16:00.004Z

Leaving the philatelic hotspot of Edinburgh naturally caused me to experience some philatelic anxiety, but I hoped I would find activity centred around my new home of Montrose to help make up for it. In fact, the north-east of Scotland is just as busy for the stamp and postcard collector, although not as efficiently arranged. Stamp and postcard club evenings and fairs are plentiful enough that I have to pick and choose, particularly as getting to some requires a considerable effort on my part as I tend to go by bike and public transport.
I’ll start my tour of the north-east in Aberdeen, which also allows me to start with the biggest and busiest of the local clubs.
Aberdeen Philatelic Society: This is one of the most lively and active clubs in Scotland, possibly because it has a large, well-off population that is relatively isolated from the rest of Scotland. The average attendance is close to 40, and the twice-yearly room auction attracts even more collectors. What’s more, the atmosphere is lively and the club has a decent number of younger and female members. Meetings are held on alternate Thursdays at 7:30pm at the Rubislaw Church Centre, Fountainhall Road, Queens Cross, Aberdeen. The first half of the season started on 25 September and the second half begins on 8 January, so you can work out the meeting dates. Informal day meetings are held on alternate Fridays 10am to noon starting from 5 September.
Aberdeen also has two fairs: A Saturday event in Queen's Cross Parish Church Hall, Albyn Place, run by Cornucopia Collectors several times a year (which I attend as a dealer); and a weekday event run by Northern Fairs.
Arbroath and District Stamp and Postcard Club: This is a small society but with an amazing attendance record. It has about 15 members, but that is also the average attendance because just about every member attends every meeting. Meetings are on the third Tuesday of the month at 7:30pm, temporarily at Knox’s Church Hall this autumn and then in 2009 at the upper meeting room of Arbroath Public Library while the usual venue, St Andrew’s Church Hall, is being renovated. This club also has a well-supported auction.
Dundee and District Philatelic Society: This is a fairly small club, particularly for the size of Dundee, but meetings are still highly worthwhile. They are held on Thursdays at 7:30pm at the Art Society’s Rooms, 17 Roseangle. The meetings do move around depending on availability of the room, with sometimes a one-week gap and sometimes a three-week one, so do check on dates before setting out for a meeting. The society has also started informal daytime meetings at 10am on the first Friday of each month at the same venue.
A new fair venue in the area is proving successful: St Aidans Church Halls, Brook Street, Broughty Ferry DD5 2EH, near Dundee. The dates for 2009 (Saturdays) are 10 January, 28 March, 11 July and 24 October. I also take tables at this fair.
The Postcard Club of Tayside: One of a handful of postcard clubs in Scotland, this society provides a broad church of attractions, not always strictly related to cards. Local history figures prominently in the syllabus with, for example, a walking tour of Old Dundee this year. Meetings are on the last Wednesday of the month at 7:30pm, but with some extra events, at the Glasite Hall, St Andrew’s Church, 6 King Street, Dundee.
If you’re going to be in the north-east and would like further details about club meetings or fairs, please feel free to get in touch.

SE-TENANT STAMPS ON COVER -- NOT JUST A PRETTY FACE

2008-07-03T13:55:00.004+01:00

Collecting by format is a fun and yet challenging area that is likely to become more popular. One such area that is attracting a small but increasing number of people weary of endless mint issues is postally used se-tenants (different stamps that are joined). Many people think of such collectors as pioneers, forgetting that cylinder blocks, booklets and even first-day covers are also collecting by format.
In addition to pairs and blocks, full panes and other examples, it is a challenge to look for logical usages of se-tenants on cover. Such usages, which are just elusive enough to make the hunt interesting, help show how these stamps perform many postal functions and offer more than just a pretty face.
What follows is a small sampler of some of the many and varied se-tenant covers that can make an unusual collection on their own or add interest to a one-country or thematic collection.
Most collectors forget that the first-ever postage stamp, the penny black, is a se-tenant issue. This is because the check letters on each stamp, introduced as a security device, mean that each stamp on a sheet of 240 is different. So any multiple is an early se-tenant.
Indeed, a quite early and elusive se-tenant cover in my collection from the very first days of adhesive stamps bears a nice, four-margin, plate 2 penny black pair tied by red Maltese cross cancellations. This portion of an entire letter is noteworthy for two reasons. First, the pair on the double weight cover is a much scarcer vertical one; penny black pairs tend to be horizontal because clerks often cut them into horizontal strips to facilitate sales at the counter. So this one might have been from a sheet or block purchased by one of the law firms that used so many of the first postage stamp.
Second, the red Glasgow back stamps clearly shows the item was posted on 23 May, 1840, just 17 days into the stamp era. Covers from May 1840 carry a sizeable premium, but, astonishingly, the date was not mentioned in the auction description by the British firm that sold it. Perhaps not surprisingly, the firm is no longer in business.
At least two other early classic stamps also were issued in se-tenant formats – Brazilian bull’s-eyes and the Geneva cantonals of Switzerland. Indeed, the next cover I would like to describe bears a pair of the latter on cover – well, not exactly. This cover does date from the middle of the 19th century, but the stamps are modern versions from a mini-sheet added to an old entire letter in 1943 to create an anniversary cover. The stamps, like the 1843 classics, are se-tenants because the design above the 5c stamps is different on the left- and right-hand sides. Indeed, mini-sheets are a treasure trove for collectors looking for se-tenant issues.
Moving fully into the early and middle 20th century, more typically the era of the se-tenant, it is possible to find examples of another group of "classic" se-tenants that, again, are not often recognised as such. South Africa’s and South-West Africa’s bilingual issues came in English and Afrikaans versions and solved a potential language problem over decades. Again, any pair of these apart from a few coil issues is a se-tenant multiple.
Many South African covers are sent to the mother country, but a particularly interesting one in the context of se-tenants is a 1948 commercial cover from a printing firm in Mossel Bay to England. It bears a block of four halfpenny stamps that pays the then-current 2d surface rate. What is particularly interesting about this cover is its logical usage of the block of four. As students of these stamps have long realised, a block of four provides every possible vertical and horizontal combination of the English and Afrikaans pairs. That is to say, each block includes a pair with the English-language stamp on the left and on the right, and on the top and the bottom.
In the German area, many se-tenants can be found thanks to multi-value booklet panes and varied formats on semi-postal issues, although usages on cover of older stamps tend to be elusive. A good illustration of a se-tenant pair from a booklet is found on this non-philatelic postcard sent by a dentist in the Bremen area in 1943.
Many and varied booklets were produced using the Hindenburg definitives, the idea being that customers could buy a booklet and use the various stamps contained for a variety of rates. This postcard, posted in May 1943, is a cheap, wartime product with room for a message on the reverse. The sender even had to cut the card from a sheet for his routine message, as is shown particularly by the slanting right side. This pair can also be found the other way around, with the 1pf stamp on the left, and many other combinations exist, but do tend to be elusive on cover. The older Germania stamps were also issued in many booklet combinations, but these are extremely elusive on cover.
The United States has produced hundreds of se-tenants and these also result in interesting postal history. The 25-cent grosbeak and owl booklet stamps of 1988 were printed in the many millions and used pairs and blocks are common, but locating logical usages on cover is much tougher. As it happens, in 1988 the overseas airmail rate was double the domestic rate, and a pair on a cover to the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh neatly covered the 50-cent tariff. This cover also neatly illustrates the importance of pairs and blocks as sources of se-tenants.
Another group of issues that isn’t thought of as being se-tenant but can be are the computer-vended coils that for years have been dispensed mainly in northern Virginia post offices. The postal user specifies the face value, which is then printed by the machine, so it is a simple matter to create se-tenants.
One example is a highly contrived but probably unique cover to Edinburgh, Scotland. It bears a 21-cent stamp sandwiched between two 20-cent ones, overpaying the 60-cent rate by a penny, and making up an A11 plate number coil (PNC) strip of three. (These plate numbers were only printed on roughly every 50th stamp, so are elusive on cover and are highly popular in the US.) So it is doubly se-tenant in that it has stamps with different face values and one stamp with a catalogued variety, and highly popular collecting area in the US.
A priceless classic it most definitely is not, but it does show the infinite variety in the collecting world open to collectors who keep their eyes and minds open.

The se-tenant story

"Se-tenant" is a French term that means joined to each other. In stamp collecting it has come to mean two different stamps or varieties of stamps that remain attached. While it is often put in italics in stamp articles because of its foreign origins, I believe it has been fully adopted by English-speaking collectors, who after all don’t have an equivalent term in their native tongue. Therefore I believe it is no more deserving of italics than other adopted terms such as café or en suite.
As for the origins of the term’s use in philately, discovering just when it came into widespread use has not been easy. Logically it could have been after the Second World War, when so many more "modern" stamps were issued, but perhaps a website visitor can supply information on this subject.
The variety of se-tenants is enormous. The earliest definitions in philatelic literature (but still from just a few decades ago) tend to emphasis different die varieties attached to each other, but more subtle examples include pairs in which one stamp exhibits an overprint variety Other variations to look for include stamps with labels such as adverts or even the current Smiler stamps with their attractive labels.
Mini-sheets are another rich source for se-tenants, and yet small enough to be found on cover occasionally. Often they present several stamps that together to make up a picture. Such combinations are sometimes described as contiguous se-tenants, and of course can be found in sheet stamps as well, as with the attractive and cleverly designed Royal Mail issue marking the 150th anniversary of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Each stamp depicts the Rocket locomotive and tender or two following carriages in the train.
The author’s interest in se-tenants, by the way, stems from a trip to a satellite shop of Libritz Stamps in the pleasant area of Palmers Green, north London, in the mid-1980s. A bit of spare cash after a period of relative poverty prompted a trip to the nearest stamp shop to see if some of it could be spent.
During a happy hour or two someone came in and asked the owner if any modern used US stamps were of any value or interest. He said they really weren’t, apart from used se-tenant blocks. That bit of information taken on board, any such blocks started getting put aside, and it quickly became evident they provided the makings of an unusual, challenging and yet inexpensive collection. And as the accumulation of blocks and other multiples advanced, it was not long before it also became evident that good usages on cover should be collected that way rather than soaked off.

SOUVENIRS OF THREE MEMORABLE VISITS TO NORMANDY

2008-05-16T15:55:00.002+01:00

My first time Charles H. Neighbor laid eyes on continental Europe was shortly after dawn on 6 June, 1944, better known as D-Day. His latest visit to Normandy was in June 2004, and he returned in the company, literally, of many of his acquaintances from the first time around.
This is a personal philatelic story of June 1944, 1994 and 2004 has been made much easier to tell because my father has written and privately published a book about his experiences in the Second World War, "One Man's War Story: An Account of my Experiences in the United States Army During World War II."
In the introduction to it he explains: "I write this for myself so that I shall never forget those days nor fail to appreciate what I fought for and what I now have; for others who experienced that time that they might see or remember a little of how it was to fight the war; and for those who have come afterward, that they might know something of the World War II years."
After the usual long, drawn-out training in the US and England, Charles H. Neighbor boarded the USS Thomas Jefferson, a troop transport ship, for the slow and uneasy trip out into the English Channel. He was 19 and a half years old. He and other members of E Company landed on Omaha Beach in the first wave, in fact 10 or 15 minutes ahead of the planned time of 6.30. He was a flame-thrower operator, which made him a walking human bomb.
"I assumed the attitude, `I must do it, even if I am shot at, so I'll just start and hope I make it,' and, finally, rose and moved a few yards ... A lane had been marked off ... I crawled through ... only Sgt. Hatchet, and, perhaps, one or two others, had reached the ravine, so we were able to stop and rest while waiting for the others. The firing continued as we took our break ..."
In fact his unit, unlike the others in his company, had hit a relative weak spot in the German defences, and suffered less than 10 per cent casualties the first day. His flame-throwing equipment proved to be of little use and he reverted to rifleman.
When he was reunited with the rest of E Company, sobering reports awaited him and the others. "It was then that I became aware of the holocaust D-Day had been and how fortunate any of us were to be alive."
And yet the sending and receiving of mail figures prominently in my father's account. In fact, only eating seemed to have been a more popular activity. He found time after a few days to write a short letter to his mother using paper tucked in his helmet liner and a pencil stub. One limited mail call came at about the same time.
More than two weeks after D-Day, in defense of St-Lo, conditions began to improve in some ways. "As soon as we were settled, mail began coming in ... We received stacks of letters. Some of them were as old as the hills, but it was if they had been written the day before. After the backlog of letters had been delivered, they brought our packages ... For a while, I was averaging a package a day ..."
He generally employed postal stationery that prepaid the airmail rate of 6 cents for military personnel outside the continental U.S. These personnel could write via surface mail for free, but they tended to prefer, not surprisingly, the more expedient air mail service. His US Army Postal Service covers contain a "29" above the date for the 29th Division. The envelopes were signed by the censor as well as being stamped. Some examples received an parcel front stamp of Iola, Kansas, my fateher's home town, which indicated that a request in the letter for a parcel had been met. (To keep postal traffic to a minimum, soldiers could not be sent a parcel unless it had been requested.)
In his book, he writes of this period 20 days after D-Day: "I caught a glimpse of myself in a full-length mirror. I was startled at the image I saw. I hardly recognized myself! Instead of the carefree, easy-going kid I considered myself, I had the look of a hardened fighter. My face was hollow, with dirt smudges and several days' growth of beard. I had my steel helmet on, my clothes were dirty and the BAR was slung over my shoulder. I really had the appearance of a combat soldier."
A cover mailed two days later is similar in most respects but bears no arrival marks. As was standard practice to assist in monitoring of mail, the writing was in pencil.
Of this period he remembers one of many close calls: "In the thin dawning light, we tried to glean something of worth from the rubble that was strewn around. Soon, it was becoming light enough to see, so we hurried back to our lines and ran across the last field in broad daylight. We did not return any too soon, for just as we were scrambling over the last hedgerow, shots rang out behind us."
He also employed some of the hundreds of millions of "V-Mail" letters sent to or from American military personnel. To save fuel, letters were microfilmed, flown to a special postal facility, reproduced and delivered as normal postal items. A letter to his grandmother dated July 3 starts with a report of receiving mail.
By this time, the daily struggle to survive was becoming harder and harder. "Except for Lt. Garcia, all our casualties (six or eight) had been fatal. This began to have a depressing effect upon us, for it was no longer a matter if whether or not you were hit, but when. As our numbers diminished, we each carried more responsibility, and our chances of survival grew slimmer," he writes of the period before lost comrades could be replaced by significant numbers of reinforcements. One green replacement who did arrive was killed before most of the soldiers learned his name.
A V-Mail dispatch from 13 days later was sent under much different circumstances. In fact, this typewritten letter was sent just three days after the "inevitable" occurred: "As several shells came in, I huddled up to the hedgerow ... Then a shell came my way. It sounded as if it landed right in my ear. Well -- my helmet went somewhere and I knew I'd been hit ..."
In fact, perhaps not surprisingly, this letter is highly economical with the truth. Despite talk of being "wounded slightly", the reality was more serious. Years later he wrote that as well as head injuries, "I received what was called a sucking wound. Shrapnel entered my diaphragm through the lower right part of my back, leaving a hole through which inhaled air could escape."
It was nearly Christmas 1944 before my father was able to return to his unit, by then in Germany. Two weeks later he tripped a grenade booby trap, was seriously injured in the leg and did the hospital circuit a second time. This time he managed a trip to Scotland to visit a pen friend in Penicuik, a town outside Edinburgh, where, coincidently, I live. Again he returned to his unit in Germany, this time to see the war out safely.
Back to Normandy
Along with several hundred veterans of the 29th Division and their families, my father and mother, Clarice, participated in the vast array of activities marking the 50th anniversary of D-Day. The American guests were wined and dined from morning until midnight by their grateful French hosts.
For my father, the highlight of the week and a half was a parade through the streets of St-Lo on June 5. French schoolchildren took the hand of each veteran and other guests. My father appeared in a photo in "France-Ouest" newspaper on June 6.
My parents stayed in the town of Vire and, with a minimum of persuasion from me, my father took advantage of the local post office to create several philatelic souvenirs.
A fitting Franco-American one is a 29th Division card posted from Vire on June 6. The card was written on the 5th and the French commemorative stamps had not yet been issued. Calvados, by the way, was just one of the souvenirs handed out to guests.
The message says, in part: "Going to the beach again today and, of course, tomorrow for the big one with Pres Clinton. Then several more occasions before winding up the tour in a return to Paris and a march down the Champs Elysees."
He also made up first-day covers of the two French stamps issued on June 6. One bears a block of the French Debarquement stamp while the other features the stamp commemorating liberation. Both bear a 6-6-94 Vire handstamp. He signed them later in Scotland.
First-day ceremonies for the American issue marking D-Day and other 1944 milestones were held, appropriately enough, in Normandy and stamps received the cancellation of the USS Normandy aircraft carrier. Unusually, President Clinton and the postmaster general of the US Postal Service, Marvin Runyon, were present. This MS, half of a sheet, was one of up to several thousand handed out to veterans in Normandy on June 6.
Some veterans showed no interest in these souvenirs but my father, well into the philatelic swing of things, was only too happy to accept unwanted copies. Even though he does not consider himself to be a collector, he has acquired all the U.S. World War II stamps and souvenir booklets. He kept a copy of the 1944 sheet for himself, to be sure. Other philatelic items, some of which I prepared for him, count among his treasured souvenirs of his Normandy days.
As my mother had died in the intervening years, I accompanied my father to the 60th anniversary, a highly memorable occasion. I used 1994 FDCs and postcards to make up mementoes, obtaining signatures of French village mayors and US generals and veterans. The St-Lo Philatelic Society put on a superb display of D-Day and local postcards, and many reproduction cards of wartime photos were available.
On 6 June 1944 my father and I had such good seats for the speeches by Presidents George Bush and Jacques Chirac that Tom Hanks, the actor, and Steven Spielberg, who directed the D-Day film Saving Private Ryan among many others, were seated in the row behind us. They kindly signed my programme.

RICH ASSORTMENT OF STAMPS FROM A WELL-TO-DO ISLAND

2008-03-19T15:04:00.002Z

I’ve never been to the Caribbean, (although I’ve been as close as the Bahamas) and if I ever get the chance to wander about some of the islands I think I would enjoy the tiny state of Anguilla. Rarely heard from, and often mistaken for the slightly larger Antigua, Anguilla staged a short-lived revolution in 1967 and became a fully "legal" stamp issuing entity in 1981. Since then the 17-mile-long island has gone from strength to strength in most ways
Mind you its stamp issues didn’t get off to the most promising of starts, as the first set that legally bore the name of "Anguilla" only was a Easter issue featuring those well-known Anguillan cartoon characters, Minnie Mouse and friends. However, Anguilla’s philatelic administrators have largely avoided the sell-out school of stamp issuing and the result is a modest issuing programme based on local culture and postal needs – in fact, a collector’s dream.
These days, as philatelic traveller and writer Basil Herwald notes as he continues his tour of the Caribbean in Britain’s Gibbons Stamp Monthly, "Most stamps issued are of indigenous interest." Just a few commemorative sets are issued each year , with a heavy emphasis on the island’s natural history, and definitive sets are replaced just every five years. Few if any Anguillans collect their island’s stamps, although postal officials have hopes of changing this eventually through marketing and clever ploys such as putting an internet café in the post office building and selling greetings cards along with the stamps.
Because Anguilla keeps control over its stamp issues, and pays the printer’s bills itself rather than relying on an agent, one thing you will not find relating to its new releases is a great sense of urgency. Visitors to Anguilla Postal Service’s web site (www.gov.ai/angstamp) will find no details on issues after those of 2004, although T-shirts featuring nicely cancelled Anguillan stamps seem to be readily available, Stamps tend to go on sale rather later than planned. As Herwald notes, glossy brochures were printed to herald stamps marking the 40th anniversary of the revolution, but the date in question, 30 May, 2007, came and went without the stamps being sighted on the horizon.
John Harrigan, the deputy postmaster and the chief power in the philatelic bureau, admitted some time after this date: "We were a bit late sending the listings to John Lister [the UK selling agents and philatelic advisors and fixers for the island]. So we don’t know the prospective date of issue."
As Anguillans soon "saw the light" after their revolution and once again became a British colony, the stamps are still sent to Buckingham Palace for approval, the islanders are in the unusual position of having to ask Queen Elizabeth II to put her stamp of approval on a set honouring the men and women who rose up against British rule.
The revolution, by the way, was not just the result of a bit of restlessness on the island in the Leeward Islands to the east of Puerto Rico. Anguilla, as true blue collectors will know, had long been lumped in with St Kitts Nevis, although it is well separated from those islands by sea and the French and/or Dutch islands of St. Martin and St. Bartholomew. The name of the island did not even appear on a stamp until 1950, and then it was in the form of an overprint: "Anguilla Tercentenary 1650-1950." The first stamp with "Anguilla" printed on it as part of the issuing entity’s name was the 1952 definitive set.
Development lagged badly on Anguilla and resentment simmered and then boiled up in the form of the revolution. Anguillans soon "saw the error of their ways" – the fact that 400 British paratroopers who dropped down on their pristine beaches was probably a factor -- and returned to the fold. Long-delayed development came to pass, and today the island is a holiday paradise with a wide selection of hotels and other accommodation.
The stamps of Anguilla are generally attractive and not too complicated, although critics might say the attempt to keep issues relevant to island culture results in a certain sameness from time to time. One brilliant exception to this can be seen in one of the 2004 stamp sets marking the island’s third running of its Biennial International Arts Festival. (The others, in varying degrees of sophistication, picture hotels, telephones, Olympic athletes and goats.) This set reproduces paintings by Anguillan artists, and one of them, "Party at the Beach" by Jean-Pierre Ballagny, vividly captures island life at its best as "the joy and pleasure of living on a peaceful, tranquil island is celebrated in dance after a family picnic at the beach." If you don’t have at least faint stirrings to visit Anguilla one day after looking at this stamp you probably should have your pulse checked. You can see this stamp by going to www.gov.ai/angstamp and clicking on "New Releases".
While Anguillan stamps are reasonably popular by tiny Caribbean island state standards and many are used by the island’s tourists and hotels and other businesses, postally used examples are a bit thin on the ground, along with samples of postal history. I went through my fairly large holdings of Commonwealth stamps and small islands postal history and postcards without finding a single mint Anguillan stamp, never mind a used one or, even better, a nice registered letter to Madagascar.
Basil Herwald ends his account of Anguillan philately with a fine story, and I will too. He reports that after he left the island he was told by an administrator in the neighbouring French island of St. Martin that islanders approached the British government, cap in hand, after a recent hurricane caused widespread damage. The British government’s response was reportedly: "Your gross domestic product is higher than Britain’s – you can afford to make the repairs yourselves!"
Editor's note: This article first appeared in Canadian Stamp News as one of my Commonwealth Communique columns for this excellent publication.

PHILATELISTS GIVE PEACE A CHANCE IN NORTHERN IRELAND

2008-02-04T15:12:00.000Z

One of the joys of stamp collecting is that it is a great way to get away from the stress and problems of daily life.
But it must have been even more of a blessing for the collectors of Northern Ireland, now seeing life returning to normal after more than 30 years of the Troubles. Not only could they retreat to their stamp corners and worry about se-tenants instead of sectarian divides, but the stamp clubs largely remained islands of non-sectarian coexistence.
Ray Morgan, a part-time stamp dealer and a prison officer in the troubled province, said its stamp clubs have remained as an oasis of reason and respect. "I see all the troubles in the streets. At the clubs I never see it at all." He noted that a general agreement at the stamp groups has been: "If you want to be a bigot, go out on the street … Catholics and Protestants seem to get along."
To make this fine objective easier, the topics of religion and politics have generally been banished at the meetings Morgan added that he feels the general higher education level of collectors and their quest for knowledge made them much less susceptible to bigotry.
Thus was answered one of the questions I had in late spring last year when I set off, along with wife and four Siberian huskies, in our camper van for a stamp and collectibles fair in Lisburn, a bustling small city some ten miles from Belfast. I had taken tables at the fair, for a small fee, as one part of a trip to see an old high school and university friend, take in the centennial edition of the North of Ireland Philatelic Society’s annual auction, and enjoy some good food and scenery.
The fair, in a church hall that had undergone a multimillion pound renovation a few years ago, was a pleasant and lively event. In fact I had visited it two and a half years earlier, and the atmosphere seemed even better than my pleasant recollections of it.
One of my main aims was to buy Scottish postcards to take back. A major postcard dealer at the fair had not brought his Scottish cards, but arranged for them to be delivered within an hour or two so I could look at them, and I was pleased to make a sizable purchase.
One reason that the event went smoothly and attracted a wide variety of well-informed and many-faceted collectors was that Morgan, an Englishman who came to the province as a British soldier and stayed when he married a local woman, has been organising the fair for 20 years. He has long been active in philately in the province and in fact helped form one of its stamp clubs, the Lagan Valley Philatelic Society, some 20 years ago to try to increase the activities available to collectors.
"Any fair run by Ray Morgan in Northern Ireland will be a well-run fair," was one comment made later in my trip by James O’Brien, a Dublin dealer in stamps, coins and postcards who has participated in the Lisburn events. He also highly praised the hall in Lisburn, by the way.
To be sure, organised philately is hardly a powerhouse in Northern Ireland, which has a population of 1.6 million, as it has only four stamp clubs and one for postcard collectors, and no stamps shops and no commercial auctions.
The fact that stamp collectors might seem to be a bit thin on the ground in Northern Ireland can hardly be totally blamed on the Troubles, as I had assumed, however. It was pointed out to me that Belfast had a thriving stamp shop, with up to 12 employees, during most of the Troubles, including the most violent times. When it finally shut for the last time, it was down to the fact that business did not cover the ever-rising costs – hardly a phenomenon limited to Northern Ireland.
One veteran observer commented: For boys in Northern Ireland, it was "rugby, Scouts and collecting and that was it, that was life". To be sure, the problems that are dogging the social side of the hobby around the world – aging populations, alternatives such as computer games and the internet – are factors in the province too. Morgan says he will feel lucky if his fair and many others still exit in ten years, as he feels eBay and other computer-based outlets are attracting collectors to the detriment of social activities.
As a matter of fact, stamp opportunities in the more populous Republic of Ireland are not all that much more prolific. Dublin, a metropolis of about one million people but a booming national capital that seems far bigger, has one stamp shop, two good stamp and postcard stalls in markets and a semi-annual philatelic auction. Ireland does have a fair number of philatelic societies and fairs, with the national one, Stampa, being a well-organised three-day event in the autumn that I have attended several times and found to be excellent for meeting Irish collectors and examining a wide variety of material for sale.
After an enjoyable few days in Dublin, which included a whirlwind tour of stamp and postcard venues, we found ourselves driving our van into the lush and peaceful grounds of a school campus in Finaghy, a suburb of Belfast. We had spent the day enjoying the scenic delights of Northern Ireland, and I was about to take advantage of something else the once-troubled province now has to offer: a stamp auction.
Hunterhouse College, a preparatory school, is the attractive and comfortable venue the North of Ireland Philatelic Society has found for its meetings, and the draw this particular evening was the society’s centennial year auction. Philately is also a great way to meet people, and I had hardly stepped out of the van when I was recognised by someone from the Lisburn fair I had attended a few days earlier. The way to the club venue was quickly pointed out, and before I knew it I was purchasing a coffee from the vending machine and starting to view some of the 400-plus lots.
The North of Ireland society, the province’s oldest and largest stamp group, with some 100 members and small auctions at its monthly meetings, took steps ten years ago to help make up for the lack of a commercial auction. Its annual auction was born when a serious collector of better material left his philatelic estate to the society, as the auctioneer, Uel Barkley, explained.
That material has long since been sold, so now the auction is entirely dependent upon what local collectors submit. Members of any of Northern Ireland’s five stamp and postcard societies are invited to hand in lots, and even members of the general public may do so as long as they get in touch in advance.
Perhaps because many of those present had seen me at Lisburn, I was made to feel most welcome. The atmosphere was friendly and relaxed.
This year the 400-some lots varied widely and were an interesting mix, especially for collectors of Republic of Ireland stamps. I found 25 lots worth bidding for and won ten of these, usually at the reserve, although most of the value in these was in postage material. As in past years, total sales were somewhat over £2,000.
At no time during my stay did any sectarian subjects arise. Uel Barkley conducted the evening professionally and when a certain town with contentious name came up he described it as "Derry, or Londonderry, or whatever you want to call it."
As for the auction: an entertaining and highly worthwhile evening is what I would call it.
All credit to the society, which as part of its centenary celebration also organised an exhibition a bit later in the year in a attempt to extol the virtues of a collecting to a wider audience. By the way, details were handed out at the auction for the Northern Ireland Postcard Club Collector’s Fair, in Cadogan Park, Belfast, and I hope to attend one day.
For those collectors who might like to visit both the republic and Northern Ireland to take best advantage of the opportunity, I can report on several promising opportunities south of the border. As we arrived in Dublin on a Saturday, my first outing was the next day. We walked our huskies on the beach at Dublin Bay and then went to Blackrock, a pleasant seaside suburb of Dublin and its weekend market off the high street. It boasts a well-stocked stamp, coin and postcard outlet, the Collectors’ Shop, run by James O’Brien. I quickly got stuck in and found a sizable number of Scottish, English (and Northern Ireland) cards of interest, doing a part swap for some of the Irish cards I’d brought along.
O’Brien is apparently one of just two Irish postcard dealers who handle significant amounts of non-Irish material, and I also bought a fair few US and continental European cards from him. I ran out of time long before the supply of boxes was exhausted. O’Brien was busy for the several hours I was there and said business is booming, especially in coins.
The next day, a Monday, I popped into the magnificent General Post Office in city centre Dublin for golf new issues, buying a few extra lenticular ("moving" image) and other attractive mini-sheets, before visiting Dublin’s only stamp shop, Cathedral Stamps. This busy-looking shop on Cathedral Street, above a sports shop, has mainly coins and Irish philatelic material, but in the limited time allotted I found a few euros’ worth of covers and postcards.
Time was short as I still had to get to Bygone Days, a book, coin and postcard stall in George’s Street Arcade, near the shopping Mecca of Grafton Street, which is open daily until 6pm except on Sundays. Again I found a fair few cards of interest.
I have long enjoyed my visits to Ireland, and now -- with new contacts in Northern Ireland, just a short ferry ride from Scotland -- I have even more reasons to visit.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF STAMP COLLECTING

2007-12-14T14:20:00.000Z

Every stamp collector has experienced it. After several years the difficult used value of a long butterfly set from an island state finally shows up. Or, one day after years of looking through dealers' cover boxes, what pops up but an example of a postmark that was known to exist but had never been seen.
The feeling of success, of exultation, of euphoria, is well out of proportion to what might be logically ascribed to the assembly of a few bits of hardly pristine paper, or the acquisition of a slightly soiled envelope with an ink imprint only slightly different than thousands of others.
To true collectors, however, this feeling is as real as the floor beneath them or a pay packet at the end of a hard week’s work. And, collectors might be surprised to learn, it is just as real and understandable to psychologists. For, to use a bit of psychological jargon, the fortunate finder has just "attained closure."
That is, the collector has set out to do something challenging and, despite setback after setback (and probably more than a little enjoyment, it must be admitted) has accomplished this very feat. You have fulfilled a human need, psychologists suggest, that in a way is every bit as compelling as hunger or thirst.
In fact, the psychological underpinnings of stamp collecting and other such hobbies are so strong that, once you think about it, it’s hard to understand why someone would not be a collector. David Weeks, an American-born but British-trained psychologist who practices in Edinburgh, Scotland, reels off psychological factors that figure in a potentially demanding endeavour such as stamp collecting:
-- Intellectual stimulation. Humans thirst for knowledge, and any activity that provides it in a useful or entertaining way will prove satisfying.
-- Aesthetic stimulation. Collectible items such as stamps often are highly attractive (even if, in some cases, it is only to the person who realises the rarity of an item in fine condition).
-- Rarity values and financial rewards. Most collectors dream of the fantastic discovery and its monetary worth -- even if, they would have to admit, they would not sell the item if they did uncover it.
Dr Weeks is not convinced by the hunter-gatherer theory put forward by some to explain the human penchant for collecting. He notes that hundreds of centuries of evolution have dimmed the life-or-death compulsion to collect or kill for food. And if the hunter-gathering instinct did motivate modern collectors, far more women would be avid collectors as they tended to be responsible for the gathering segment of the food chain.
AA Brill, in Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, wrote "that the collecting mania is a reaction to an unconscious need, to an inner feeling of voidness concerning some particular craving." Collectors might not be too happy, however, to learn that this comment was based on his observations of "collections made by the insane."
Collectors might be relieved to know, however, that Dr Weeks firmly places hobbies such as philately in the realm of normal psychology. People collect stamps because they find it rewarding although, admittedly, one huge reward might be enough to carry a collector through a dry spell lasting years.
While some extreme forms of collecting might seem irrational to some, Dr Weeks notes that deeply unbalanced people are not likely to find philately satisfying. People with two of the most common psychological disorders -- true perfectionism and obsessive-compulsive disorder -- would likely find stamp collecting either too untameable or too earthy (stamps and the places they've been stored over the decades are not as clean as hospital operating theatres).
Stranger forms of collecting (say gathering more material than can ever be examined in any detail) will be the result of a "normal" obsessive personality within the ranges of predictable and harmless activity. And there is no doubt that stamp collecting has a tendency to attract introverted people, as it is usually a solitary activity, although, to be sure, exceptions to the "rule" are numerous and many aspects of collecting are highly social.
At any rate, the undeniable attraction of collecting has long been noted by scientists and educators, and is even being used in a systematic way by the latter to help students learn to the best of their ability.
Dr Ann McGreevy, professor of education at Notre Dame College of Manchester, NH, has studied the collections of children over the past century or so and shed much light on the whys and wherefores of gathering collectible items.
She notes that while the majority of children collect something at some time in their youth, gifted children are especially likely to form advanced collections and learn from them. In a 1990 article for an educational journal, Early Child Development and Care, she wrote: "Research suggests that collections offer children broad opportunities for growth and have been influential in the lives of eminent individuals. Collections integrate many subject areas and thus are appealing as part of curriculum for the gifted. For example, a child who collects stamps learns about foreign cultures, maps, famous events and prominent people from a country." She adds that collections often lead children beyond textbooks and classrooms and help them "learn skills of selection, classification, labelling, organisation and presentation . . ."
As for an eminent individual whose collections may have been instrumental in a profoundly productive life, she points to none other than Charles Darwin, the naturalist and author of The Origin of Species. "As a young boy," she writes, "Darwin’s passion began with shells flowers, seals and signatures, coins and bird’s eggs but only one for each kind of bird." (This was pre-1840, remember).
Yet even a giant of intellect such as Darwin started to collect systematically only gradually. He wrote in his autobiography: "With respect to science, I continued collecting minerals with much zeal, but quiet unscientifically -- all that I cared for was a new NAMED mineral and I hardly ever attempted to classify them." (One obvious lesson here for collectors working with youths is the need to be patient and let budding philatelists find their own way.)
Interestingly, Dr McGreevy notes that the collective urge in children appears to have remained remarkably constant over the 20th century. She notes that in a turn-of-the-century study in California by G Stanley Hall, an eminent psychologist, found that most children were collectors, with an average of three gatherings apiece. The main collections of boys (in rank order) were cigar tags, stamps, birds’ eggs, marbles, shells, buttons, rocks and picture cards, Dr Hall found, while the ranking for girls was stamps, shells, picture cards, cigar tags, buttons, marbles, pieces of cloth, paper dolls and dolls.
When Dr McGreevy conducted a similar but smaller survey in the state of New Hampshire nearly a century later, she found that while a greater number of children were not collectors, those who were maintained an average of three collections. The age of most avid collecting continued to be about 9 or 10. The most popular collections for boys were sports cards, small cars and lorries, coins and foreign money, rocks, he-man figures, marbles and stuffed animals, while girls opted for stuffed animals, stickers, rocks, shells, books, posters and dolls. Philatelists might lament that stamps off dropped off the top of these lists, but Dr McGreevy had some consolation: "It was curious to see that rocks, stamps, marbles and picture cards have survived nearly a century as collectibles for boys," while the main common thread for girls was limited to dolls and shells.
While Dr McGreevy concentrates on the educational implications of collections, her findings do hold out some hope for the future of philately in that young people seem to still have an innate need to collect. No doubt stamps, as colourful and easily obtainable as they are, will continue to hold an attraction for many children, if only temporarily.
Indeed, psychologists give firm backing to the philatelic observation that adult collectors are likely to have had childhood collections. Dr Weeks feels that a major motivation for stamp collecting, particularly among men, could well be the nostalgic element, an activity "to capture a lost youth."
Indeed, this is a major reason, he suggests, that men are more likely to collect stamps. In addition, in very broad terms, women tend to be heavily committed to more practical and every-day matters such as raising a family and/or conducting a career or significant contributions to the family budget.
A retired social psychologist consulted informally for this article noted that men, on the other hand, often may have relatively little beyond work to command their attention and so may be more susceptible to the charms of a diversion such as collecting. This is particularly true if they have a highly demanding or unsatisfying job. Dr Weeks also noted that men tend to have more disposable income and more power to do as they please, in addition to more time.
While it could be highly dangerous to infer too much from what a person collects, it is interesting to note a comment by Karl Abraham, a psychiatrist: "A passion for collecting is frequently a direct surrogate for sexual desire, and in that case a delicate symbolism is often concealed behind the choice of objects collected."
Having read an early version of this article, one American philatelic observer commented: "Give those error-freak-and-oddity collectors a wiiiiide berth."

EDINBURGH LEADS QUIET REVOLUTION IN STAMP GROUPS

2007-10-31T11:40:00.000Z

Edinburgh has long had a busy stamp community, but in the 1990s some forward-looking philatelists were convinced many local collectors or potential collectors were not being catered for. They felt drastic action was needed to reverse the slow but noticeable decline in traditional stamp activities.
These collectors, chief among them an active and well-known philatelist named Tom Rielly, floated an idea in Scotland that some people doubted could possibly work. That idea, based on the afternoon format of the then-relatively new Bookham Stamp Club in Surrey, was to have a daytime stamp club with no bureaucracy, speakers, set agendas, subscriptions -- or indeed most of the trappings of typical British clubs.
Instead, collectors would simply gather to chat, buy, sell and swap stamps, show pages from their collection and do anything else philatelic they fancied. In lieu of subs, anyone who showed up would just pay £1, which by the way would also cover bottomless cups of tea and coffee and a biscuit or two.
Tom Rielly convinced the philatelic establishment to stump up some seed money, and hired a hall spread publicity far and wide. But would anyone come?
They did come and now, ten years later, the Edinburgh Stamp Club is a runaway success and is celebrating its 10th anniversary. It has the city’s largest philatelic attendance at its 10am meetings on the last Friday of the month. It boasts an average turnout of about 40, from school pupils on holiday to pensioners, from total beginners to veteran exhibitors, and provides a low-intensity but fun and friendly atmosphere for all things philatelic. People come from across the Central Belt of Scotland, and occasionally from even further afield. Perhaps half of those who attend also belong to one or more of Edinburgh’s two philatelic societies or its postcard club, but for the others it is their only organised philatelic activity. Ironically, perhaps, in this high-pressure and electronic age, it provides a throwback to stamp collecting much as it was in the much-lamented "good old days".
Just as importantly, perhaps, it provides a working model of what can be done to widen the appeal of stamp collecting in just about any area with a sizable population.
"It has hit a niche in the market and it’s been very successful," said Frank Souter, a former chairman of the group and one of the people involved in the beginnings of the club. "It’s so easy to get into," added the busy participant in organised philately in Scotland and across Britain.
The current stamp group chairman, Bob Bell, said of the club’s success: "I feel it’s the general informality, and we have hit on an attractive way of having individuals volunteer to display their material." This system is simply a sign-up sheet, backed up with a bit of gentle encouragement, and anyone who offers is given space with no vetting. He added that he felt the group offers a good mix of activities. "It’s a mix of stuff for sale, the stuff to look at, and that there is nothing that anyone has to do. It does rest on informality."
This informality was a key aspect of the club from the beginning, although the adoption of a basic constitution was found to be necessary. The club went nearly ten years without having a guest speaker, but an exception was made in March when Margaret Morris gave a short and interesting talk on social philately and displayed a collection on astronomy and communications. This was done, by the way, only after a survey conducted among members identified considerable interest in such an event. Yet another first was to be the club’s tenth anniversary luncheon following on from the May meeting, and commemorative covers were created and sold to mark the anniversary.
Nor is the club shying away from taking a place in the wider world of philately. Preparations are well underway for the major step of being joint hosts, along with another relatively new organisation, the Lothian Postcard Club, of the Scottish Philatelic Congress in Perth in 2009. Gentle persuasion and examples by doing are gradually preparing members for filling a frame at this major annual event organised by the Association of Scottish Philatelic Societies.
The format for the meetings at St Johns Church, at the corner of Lothian Road and Princes Street in Edinburgh’s West End, is simplicity itself. The doors open well before 10 so volunteers can set up tables, chairs and display boards. The first table participants encounter is covered with philatelic handouts, and the kitchen servery with its continuous supply of tea, coffee and biscuits is open from the word go.
A few tables at the near end of the room are available for collectors with stamps, covers and postcards for sale, while the heart of the room is taken up by a semi-circle of chairs and the chairman’s table. No formalities take place for the first hour or so, however, and the chairs are used only for rest and relaxation for most of the meeting.
The far end of the room has a few more of the popular tables for vendors, with much of the taking going to charities, while display boards line one side of the room and much of another. The minimal amount of "formal" business takes place at about 11am and consists mainly of announcements and brief comments on the displays that have been on view and the ones that are going up for the second half of the morning.
One meeting a year is given over to an auction, with up to 200 lots brought in on the day. This remains one of the most popular and well-supported meetings of the year, despite (or because of?) the fact that the Scottish and Edinburgh philatelic societies have felt it necessary to abandon their annual room auctions because of diminishing attendance and sales.
The officers organise occasional outings, to a popular stamp shop in Glasgow, for instance, with a particularly memorable one being organised by Tom Rielly, not long before his premature death, of the British Philatelic Bureau’s new headquarters at Tallents House in the western outskirts of the city.
The atmosphere at meetings is animated, with the buzz of stamp collectors left to their own devices. The tables are invariably busy, and the displays well perused. Yours truly finds he is so busy chatting away and participating in low-level stamp commerce that the first cup of tea sometimes is not taken until nearly 11, and that the displays sometimes get little more than a quick glance.
Everyone wears a name badge, picked up at the table when signing in and dropping that pound coin in the bowl, so it is easy to learn the names of the participants who are new or perhaps not as well known as the capital’s usual philatelic suspects.
The Edinburgh stamp group certainly has marked its first decade in style, and it looks like enjoying many more.
-- The Edinburgh Stamp Group meets at 10am on the last Friday of every month except December and the Festival month of August, with July meetings earlier in the month because of Festival preparations. Meetings take place at the St Johns Church Hall, on the corner of Lothian Road and Princes Street in the heart of Edinburgh. Information is available from the secretary, Margaret Turner, on 0131-334 6363.

THOUGHTS ON COMPLETING MY FIRST EBAY 500

2007-07-04T14:16:00.000+01:00

I’m way behind many sellers and buyers on eBay, but have just received my 500th feedback. So now I have my purple star, although just occasionally it felt more like it should have been a purple heart.
(For those not familiar with US military decorations, a purple heart is awarded to members of the US military wounded in action. And this is not meant of course as a slight to the sacrifice of anyone who has received it; indeed my father was awarded it twice, in Normandy and in Germany during World War II.)
This of course is a glib comment, for the process has not been that difficult, if much harder work and more time consuming than I expected. By and large the sellers and buyers with whom I have dealt have been most reasonable. Of course I had the people who were too slow to get in touch and even slower to pay – but everyone has paid, so far. I had two cheques bounce, but these were just oversights and new cheques were immediately issued and went through without any problem. I have never had to give negative feedback, but once I did report a case of non-payment and it was eventually resolved satisfactorily.
I have had a couple of frustrating experiences involved with PayPal payments as well, notably a fairly large payment that was frozen and then taken from my account because the buyer made the payment from someone else’s computer while on the road. PayPal acted to combat possible fraud, of course, and therefore it was commendable if frustrating at the time. A second payment was made once the person got home, and it sailed through. Also I found it annoying once to wait two and a half weeks for a sizable e-Cheque to clear.
I of course have also had mainly quite minor problems with the eBay system, but given how much data is being handled I would say I’m generally impressed with eBay's efficiency. One fairly recent and very useful "discovery" is the system whereby eBay sends users an e-mail when an item fitting their favourite searches is listed. This all but eliminates the need to browse -- useful for people who see eBay as a work tool rather than entertainment -- and has allowed me to make regular fine purchases of late for my collections or stock.
And, to be sure, I’ve met some extremely interesting and helpful people and learned a lot in the new world that eBay opens up.
I guarantee everything I sell and allow no-quibble returns, but I have never had one item sent back. I have had no negative feedback, and I will do everything I reasonably can to keep up my clean record. Unlike some sellers I welcome the new detailed feedback, and my score here is good: 5 out of 5 for descriptions and 4.9 out of 5 in the other categories. These less than perfect ratings have spurred me on to try to improve my service, and no doubt that has been the same for many other sellers.
I have had at least one item sent beyond Europe go missing, but in that case I was able to arrange a refund for the buyer.
I started on eBay in June 2001, strictly as a buyer for the first four years. I have long been a keen collector of stamps and postal history, but by that time had narrowed my collections considerably. In fact I concentrated on just three areas: postal history and postcards from my home town of Abilene, Kansas; used compound postal stationery (items with more than one value printed on them); and a few nice items for stock for what at the time was a part-time stamp and postal history business.
The buying for my collection was spurred on by the fact that I had a presidential display for the Scottish Philatelic Society coming up, and I needed totally new displays because the good collectors of Edinburgh had already seen my other collections during a year as president of the Edinburgh Philatelic Society. The power of eBay quickly became evident. I would say 90 percent of my Abilene collection and 25 percent of my postal stationery items were acquired on eBay. In fact I have never ever acquired even one item for my Abilene collection in the United Kingdom, as this material is so hard to find once you have the basic Eisenhower and downtown postcards.
I started selling on eBay in March 2005, when my feedback total was about 75. Now nearly 80 percent of my feedback is for selling. I only got started on eBay when I left my job as an editor on the foreign desk of The Scotsman newspaper, as suddenly I had more free time and a need to beef up my alternative income.
However I did not want to get chained to a computer again, so I decided to adopt what I call the Dave W method of selling on eBay. This I got from a dealer friend in Ohio who wants to take advantage of the internet but doesn’t want it to take over his life.
So, like him, I list roughly 10 lots a week: fewer if other things are taking lots of time or during slower sales periods such as the summer, more if eBay UK is offering reduced price listings. I list roughly equal amounts of postcards and postal history, with a lesser amount of stamps, ephemera and anything else I come across that I think might prove popular. I sell roughly half of the lots the first time around, then relist items generally just once. As half of the relisted items sell too, I don’t have to return all that many items to stock after exposure on eBay. Eventually my wife is going to be able to help me more with my business and then I hope to double the number of lots I list.
I have found Turbo Lister to be a big help, but would not recommend it for beginners because of the lack of prompts for the various steps. I particularly like the fact that you can make up lots in advance and download them at a convenient time.
Like most vendors I have had some tremendous successes. Once I sold some covers for nearly 500 times the price I paid for them as a postal bidder in a stamp club auction, but of course such excellent realisations are few and far between.
As I said, I have had little trouble with buyers, but I do have a few small bones to pick with some sellers, although the ones I have had dealings with have almost invariably been excellent. Here are a few things I don’t like to see from sellers: (Some of them rule out any bidding at all as far as I’m concerned.)
* Listings where postage costs are not given.
* Listings of postcards and envelopes, etc, where the vendor has taken a picture of the object rather than scanning it. These photos invariably provide inadequate detail and are squint, ruining the perspective.
* Vendors who do not mention serious faults. Usually you can see the fault on the photo and bid accordingly, but sometimes the image is so poor, or in the lower left-hand corner and obscured by the eBay anti-copying device, that you are caught out.
* Vendors who do not allow refunds or returns.
* Sellers who pack only one day a week.
* Hidden reserves -- but I understand why people use them. One thing that annoys me a bit is when sellers say their lot has no reserve, but the minimum bid is $9.99. Call it what you like, but that is a reserve, a sum below which the vendor will not go. It is perfectly reasonable to set a minimum price, of course.
* Wild claims, usually with lots of capital letters, about the rarity or investment value of an item.
* Inadequate descriptions or simply "see scan". Of course these offer opportunities to the alert, well-informed buyer.
* Sloppy descriptions with lots of spelling errors and other mistakes, sometimes in the midst of elaborate templates.
* Vendors who do not give feedback until they have received theirs. All we need is for buyers to decide not to give feedback until they've received theirs and the whole system will grind to a halt.
No doubt many people could look at my listings (I have a link from this page) and find fault with them. To be sure, I have made some howling errors, but often eBay browsers are kind enough to point these out to me. In fact, I would be delighted to hear from buyers or potential buyers about anything I can do to improve my listings. I am not, however, interested in adding a lot of bells and whistles as I want to keep my listings simple and costs down.
I do not claim to be a world-beating seller. I just don’t want to miss out totally on the astonishing power of the internet.

COMPLETING THE CHALLENGE WITH U.S. SE-TENANT STAMPS

2007-06-05T10:22:00.001+01:00

One of the biggest challenges for the collector of used modern United States stamps is obtaining joined se-tenant blocks and other complete multiples as issued. Se-tenants are the increasingly common formats in which different stamps are printed together on one sheet, booklet pane or mini-sheet. The term, which is French but has been adopted in the English-speaking philatelic world as well, means roughly "holding on to one another".
Apart from the express mail high values (and errors and other such material, of course) few modern U.S. stamps pose much of a problem to the collector of used issues. Finding the U.S. se-tenants postally used as issued in undamaged blocks or panes and with decent cancellations, however, can be fiendishly difficult. In the case of sheets of 50 different stamps, of course, it is impossible without special arrangements.
The relative scarcity of joined se-tenants is sometimes reflected in catalogue values. The 1969 Botanical Congress issue (Scott numbers 1376-1379) is catalogued as 60 cents for singles but $3 for a block, a 500 per cent premium.
On the other hand, with the minimum price of 15 cents the total for the singles often is more than the listed value of the whole piece, a particularly "good" example being the 1973 postal people set (1489-1498). The easily found singles are listed at $1.50, while the much, much scarcer full strip weighs in at just $1. This is one of the major anomalies of the current Scott values but I am sure few people if any have torn up blocks to "increase" the value of a collection.
In fact, it appears that complete postally used se-tenant items are undervalued by Scott and this is one area where collectors will often have to pay more than the catalogue price.
However the dedicated collector in this increasingly popular field need not draw the line here. For se-tenant items can be collected in a variety of configurations. The USPS presents all issues in a certain way, but there are no guarantees postal users will employ them so. Or bigger blocks or strips may be used and show several or even all possible configurations.
With pairs of two stamps, the permutations usually are quite simple, particularly if the stamps are not arranged checkerboard fashion. A horizontal strip of three of the second US se-tenant issue in ordinary sheets -- the 1967 space twins set (1331/1332) -- illustrates the two possible combinations as each vertical row includes just one design.
Similarly, a 1976 strip of six stamps portraying the signing of the Declaration of Independence (1691-1694) shows the full panoramic set plus the one other possible pair, the right-hand stamp of one grouping and the left-hand stamp of another. No matter how big a block you have, you will find no other combinations. Note that the pair on the left is incomplete; the panes were 10 stamps wide, resulting in odd pairs. Left and right panes were mirror images, so each design was printed in the same numbers.
The set of six stamps marking the 75th anniversary of the first powered flight in 1903 came with two stamps on each sheet, with each horizontal row being of a single design. Any vertical strip of three, therefore, displays the two possible combinations. All horizontal pairs and strips, by the same token, are not se-tenant. A vertical block of six of the high value, designed to pay the basic overseas letter rate, is sufficient to illustrate the format well.
Yet another arrangement is found in the panes of the 1978 Captain James Cook issue. Half of each pane was the vertical portrait stamp, while the other featured his ships in a horizontal layout. The middle strip of 20 stamps, therefore, consisted of se-tenant pairs. A central strip of 4 demonstrates the only se-tenant combination and gives an idea of how the stamps were arranged on the panes. Interestingly, even though these se-tenant pairs are numerically less common than other se-tenant pairs, an unusual number seem to have been kept or used as pairs and so they are no harder to find.
When it comes to blocks, the situation can get much more complicated. One way to show each possible configuration is with an example of each block, as with the 1964 Christmas issue, the first U.S. se-tenants on ordinary sheets as opposed to mini-sheets. These were sold in huge numbers, of course, and people would take a few for letters and then perhaps take a block for posting a package. The result is that the various combinations showed far more use than is normal for a se-tenant issue. The block at the upper left is the official format.
Each possible arrangement of a block for a particular issue can also be shown as part of a larger block. If the stamps are in a checkerboard arrangement with just two designs in each horizontal or vertical row, a block of nine is required to show the four combinations. If you look at the upper left-hand block of the 1990 US sea mammals issue and then imagine each stamp is the upper left-hand stamp in a block of four you will see the possible combinations. Note that while there are four killer whale stamps, there is just one dolphin issue. Other blocks of nine, of course, would have different arrangements but each would have at least one of each combination of four.
The result is slightly different if each horizontal strip of four has four different designs as well. This arrangement was used in the 1993 Christmas issue, and with it a horizontal block of 10 (two stamps by five) is required to show each configuration of four.
As US stamp designs literally go popular, obtaining examples of all variations is getting increasingly difficult. In the rock and roll stars sheet of seven different designs a full pane of 35 is required to show each possible block or strip (and of course the sheets of 50 different stamps, as in the 1993 wildflowers issue, cannot be complete if even one stamp is left off).
With the country and western music stamps, however, less than a full pane is required to show all combinations. Each horizontal row has four different stamps in various orders, but each vertical row has only two, so a horizontal block of 12 suffices to show all variations.
Formats wherein mini-sheets were printed and issued in larger sheets also are of interest when it comes to additional configurations. The 1978 mini-sheet marking the Canadian International Philatelic Exhibition was issued in panes of six complete mini-sheets. In the basic layout the two rows of four stamps are separated by text.
However the top four stamps from one mini-sheet can be found combined with the bottom four stamps from the sheet above it. This eliminates the selvedge and one possible motivation for the use of this block may have been to save space on an envelope.
The series of mini-sheets marking the five years of US involvement in World War II takes a similar format. Because of the large size of each design, however, each pane has just two full mini-sheets. A "block" of 15 shows each possible combination.
Mercifully, perhaps, one issue of four designs makes things much simpler for collectors. The 1978 quilts issue is cunningly arranged so that each block of four is identical. The "different" formats are obtained simply by turning it around. This format has not been repeated. No doubt it does not lend itself well to most designs, but it is also possible that it may have not offered enough potential for multiple sales to philatelists.

JOINED-UP THINKING ABOUT A DIFFERENT WAY OF COLLECTING -- SE-TENANT STAMPS

2007-02-21T11:36:00.001Z

To me, collecting by format is a fun and yet challenging area that is likely to become more popular. When tell people I collect postally used se-tenants (different stamps that are joined) they often think I am a bit of a pioneer, forgetting that plate blocks, plate number coils and even first-day covers are collecting by format.
In addition to blocks, full panes and other examples, I look for logical usages of se-tenants on cover, which I feel helps show these stamps perform many postal functions and offer more than just a pretty face.
In fact, collectors forget that the first-ever postage stamp, Britain’s penny black, is a se-tenant issue. This is because the check letters on each stamp, introduced as a security device, mean that each stamp on a sheet of 240 is different. So any multiple is an early se-tenant.
Indeed, one of my favourite se-tenant covers bears a nice, four-margin, plate 2 penny black pair tied by red Maltese cross cancellations. This portion of an entire letter is noteworthy for two reasons. First, the pair on the double weight cover is a much scarcer vertical one; penny black pairs tend to be horizontal because clerks often cut them into horizontal strips to facilitate sales at the counter. So this one might have been from a block purchased by one of the law firms that used so many of the first postage stamp.
Second, the red Glasgow back stamps clearly shows the item was posted on May 23, 1840, just 17 days into the stamp era. Covers from May 1840 carry a nice premium, but, astonishingly, the date was not mentioned in the auction description.
At least two other early classic stamps also were issued in se-tenant formats – Brazilian bull’s-eyes and the Geneva cantonals of Switzerland. Indeed, I am fortunate enough to own a pair of the latter on cover – well, not exactly. My cover does date from the middle of the 19th century, but the stamps are modern versions from a mini-sheet added to an old entire letter in 1943 to create an anniversary cover. The stamps, like the 1843 classics, are se-tenants because the design above the 5c stamps is different on the left- and right-hand sides.
Moving fully into the 20th century, I particularly like examples of another group of "classic" se-tenants that, again, are not often recognized as such. South Africa’s and South-West Africa’s bilingual issues came in English and Afrikaans versions and solved a potential language problem over decades. Again, any pair of these is a se-tenant.
As I live in Britain I see many South African covers sent to the mother country, but perhaps my current favourite is a 1948 commercial cover from a printing firm in Mossel Bay to England. It bears a block of four halfpenny stamps that pays the current 2p surface rate. What I like about this cover is the logical usage of the block of four. As students of these stamps have long realised, a block of four provides every possible vertical and horizontal combination of the English and Afrikaans pairs.
Of course the United States has produced hundreds of se-tenants and these also result in interesting postal history. The 25-cent grosbeak and owl booklet stamps of 1988 were printed in the many millions and used pairs and blocks are common, but locating logical usages on cover is much tougher. As it happens, in 1988 the overseas airmail rate was double the domestic rate, and a pair on a cover I have to the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh neatly covered the 50-cent tariff.
Another group of issues that isn’t thought of as being se-tenant but can be are the computer-vended coils that for years have been dispensed mainly in northern Virginia post offices. The postal user specifies the face value so it is a simple matter to create se-tenants. A typical example of my handiwork is a highly contrived but probably unique cover to myself in Scotland. It bears a 21-cent stamp sandwiched between two 20-cent ones, overpaying the rate by a penny, and making up an A11 PNC strip of three. A priceless classic it most definitely is not, but don’t ever try to tell me there is nothing new under the sun.

If this article has whetted an appetite for se-tenants, look at my All-Seasons Price List below. It includes many lots of se-tenants, both off and on cover.

THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF WASHINGTON 2006

2006-06-21T11:24:00.000+01:00

The United States stamp collecting world threw virtually everything it had into Washington 2006, the country’s once-a-decade international exhibition, and the result was fantastic – well beyond just about everyone’s expectations. Roughly 226,000 people attended over the eight days ending in early June, with an estimated 85,000 different people attending the $3.3 million show for at least one day. Some 6,000 of them were children, and judging by the happy looks of the kids the hobby has won some of the recruits that it so desperately needs to help ensure the future of the hobby. I would guess 80 per cent of the adults who attended were serious or very advanced collectors, which meant the dealers who had invested vast sums ($10,000 for a double corner booth, for instance) enjoyed a rare bonanza.
The event was not all smooth sailing, to be sure, however. Booth setup was running far behind schedule on the main floor; dealers who had been promised completed booths by the morning of the day before the show opened found only piles of construction materials and their stock on pallets in the aisles. I had a table at the dealers’ bourse the day before the main event opened, and the boothing problems quickly reared their head.
David Canning, the veteran Scottish-based dealer returning to international shows after a 20-year break, looked worried and expressed deep concern about the state of the booth he was sharing with John Auld and Trevor Harris under the banner of British Philatelists. Early in the morning the bourse temporarily came to an embarrassed halt when a top US postal history dealer loudly gave vent to his frustrations at my table when I asked him how things were going. "This is a disaster -- I want my $10,000 back. I want to go home!" he sang out plaintively.
He explained he needed strong dealer sales before the show opened to have a realistic chance of winning the $50,000 in sales that would cover his $10,000 investment in a double corner booth. Modern collectors’ interests are as narrow as laser beams, he added, and he could only count on $30-50 from each, while dealers are likely to spend much larger sums.
Another early casualty in the booth fiasco was Allan Grant of Rushstamps Ltd., who had to abandon his table at the dealers’ bourse to oversee the furious catch-up work on the floor.
Joe Savarese, executive vice-president of ASDA, and his newly recruited replacement, Jim Roselle, had more on their plates than ensuring the bourse went smoothly (and indeed its tables too were still going up at the last minute). They were extolling the virtues of ASDA membership, especially to internet dealers, three of whom had joined recently for "the value of the logo".
However the ASDA officers were especially keen to talk up their latest, highly ambitious initiative -- a glossy magazine designed to sell stamp collecting and the services of dealers to the general public. They were handing out 50,000 free copies of The American Stamp Dealer, an impressive-looking 64-page publication edited by Randy L. Neil, a veteran editor, that is trumpeted as a 10-times-a-year "full-scale national stamp collecting publication".
Savarese said the magazine developed from a regular ASDA brainstorming session and is designed to be "a positive voice for philately today, not political. We want to show the positive side of stamp collecting." At from just $15 a year delivered (in the US) the price looks attractive, but only time will tell, of course, if the magazine can attract enough subscribers in the declining US philatelic market to survive.
The organisers knew, despite the problems, that they were probably on to a winner even before the show opened at 10am the next morning. Advance registration was brisk and continued to be so strong that workers ran out of registration forms after a couple of days. Indeed, the two-block-square exhibition area was jammed, with queues to see the fabulous stamps in the Court of Honor, to have collections value and to buy US stamps. The demand was similarly great to view dealers’ wares, though the vast amount of space and wide aisles meant the floor rarely seemed overcrowded. The Cover Man of New York reported that he had 10 to 30 people at his booth virtually nonstop for the length of the exhibition and that sales had been tremendous.
What’s more, the feeling on the floor was of excitement, with a real buzz of the sort that is rarely present at philatelic events these days. I kept running into people I know from previous trips to the States, including three from Scotland. I concentrated on buying European postcards, and indeed took home more than 500, so people who visit my tables at British stamp and postcard events or peruse my eBay listings should find plenty of interest in the coming months.
Grant of Rushstamps, as ever, had more than a few robust views pro and con about the exhibition. He was deeply unhappy, as were most dealers, about the serious boothing troubles. The delay in building them situation forced him to abandon his table at the dealers’ bourse the day before the exhibition opened – "That was $225 down the Swanee. It should have been more professional. It was just one of those crazy things." He was one of many dealers who noted the lack of numbers on the booths, which was corrected by the second day. (Numerous misspellings could be spotted on the signs as well.)
However he noted that the show proved "It pays to advertise because we have had a flood of people with good, mixed and indifferent material to offer." He said Rushstamps had given out 1,000 pricelists and met a lot of customers who would not go to New York. He was selling lots of British commemoratives, with strong demand for a Brunel prestige booklet with an unofficial Washington 2006 overprint at face value.
He was pleased that the Royal Mail had a large and highly visible presence near the US Postal Service area. "I think it’s good they are here – the more stamps they sell, the more people will go back." However he questioned the lack of a Royal Mail Washington 2006 souvenir on sale only at the show (Washington ‘06 Smilers were available). Furthermore he suggested someone had failed to do their sums because British mint stamps were going at 10 per cent below face value for the first four days of the show, and the Royal Mail had to pay sales tax out of that.
Despite the large amount of talk about the Afinsa of Spain selling scheme debacle, it seemed to affect the exhibition or the operations by Greg Manning and the other Afinsa-owned firms present little if at all. Grant suggested of the immense rotating circle over the group’s stands: "I’ve heard they are going to take it down tomorrow and put it in the shape of a pyramid."
A hotter topic of conversation among dealers was the release of 10,000 $15 duck stamp conservation mini-sheets during the show. These were introduced last year, but only in an edition of 1,000 that quickly sold out, and I heard of collectors paying up to $1,750 for the 2005 MS. Ten copies were reserved for each booth at Washington 2006, and dealers who took up their quota typically sold them for nearly ten times faces value. This potential for instant profit created some tension, with one dealer threatening to sue one who had promised to resell his booth’s MS at $700 but couldn’t because another standholder had already done the deed.
John Auld said: "Generally speaking it was an excellent show – and I could come again." He added that it was not all work, as ever-changing groups of British dealers had worked hard to sample local hostelries, including one with 80 different draught beers and 600 different bottled brews, including a Scottish one made from seaweed.
David Canning, the Scottish-based dealer behind the revival of Caledonian Auctions, said the show was his first international since 1986 so "It’s a learning curve. But I’ve been pleased. I’m more here to pick up customers for the auction and that has been very successful," he said. He brandished a fistful of sheets from customers who had asked to be put on his mailing list as soon as they heard of the auction.
Trevor Harris added: "It’s been great. There’s much more atmosphere than at past internationals and a more exciting atmosphere." Furthermore, he suggested: "It would be nice if the organisers of London 2010 saw how the Americans did it here and they could do as well."

THE HAPPY TABLE -- FUN IN PHILATELY

2005-11-01T13:00:00.002Z

A few years ago, when I had a table for the first time at the biggest Scottish stamp and postcard fair, Scotex, I was quite busy but disappointed with my takings. In fact I did not break even at the event. My wife, however, had quite a different perspective to offer. First of all, she reminded me that breaking even at a prestigious and high-cost event such as the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre in Glasgow is neither very realistic nor the main goal.
"Besides," she said, "You had a happy table. Everyone was enjoying themselves."
And indeed she was spot on. A large number of collectors, not necessarily big spenders, came by and found items they were looking for. They showed their discoveries to their friends and neighbours, and the tales and laughs came freely. I enjoyed myself quite a bit too.
And the next time I attended a fair in the west of Scotland, a lot of these people came back to say hello and make purchases -- and I did a roaring trade. That was a happy table as well, and I have tried to make my table at subsequent appearances an enjoyable place to be.
I am not alone in feeling that those in the hobby of collecting stamps, covers, postcards and related items need to do as much as possible to make the experience as pleasant and light-hearted as possible.
One reason I feel this so strongly is that I had an extremely bad, nay humiliating, experience when I was a young collector. Like many people, I collected just for fun and did not look at stamps as an investment. I had a large worldwide collection and loved building it up. After university, when I had my first proper job, as a newspaper editor in a small city in New York, I had some real disposable income for the first time in my life and set out to spend some of it on my collection. I strode happily into the only stamp shop in the city and was immediately, and brusquely, asked what I was looking for. When I said I was looking for stamps to add to my worldwide collection, the dealer lit into me. He said that was no way for a grown person to collect stamps and that I was wasting my time. I listened to this for a minute or two and then beat a hasty retreat, my tail between my legs.
I felt so horrible about the experience that it was four or five years before I went into a stamp shop again, except to buy supplies. I built up my old-fashioned collection through approvals – and thoroughly enjoyed myself. I was strictly a closet collector, one with no personal contact with dealers and other collectors, who I feared would give me another philatelic lecture. In fact it was not until a dealer sent me a card about joining the American Philatelic Society that I took this basic step. I quickly found myself sucked into the mainstream of philately and starting writing articles for "The American Philatelist" and – best of all – going to stamp events and meetings and encountering like-minded collectors. When I moved back to Britain so my wife could be near her parents, my philatelic universe expanded even more quickly. I even started to specialise, and eventually began to build up a stock for the days when I could no longer cope with the demands and unsocial hours of daily newspaper journalism.
Today my stamp, postal history and postcard business is well established. Whether customers or potential customers are spending an hour to pick out 70p worth of stamps on leaves or buying £90 worth of crash covers, I try to treat them like royalty. Above all, I want to keep them happy.

ALL SEASONS PRICE LIST

2005-09-10T21:38:00.002+01:00

Blocks, se-tenants, interesting covers and postcards -- and much more

I have been slowly but surely gathering a wide variety of unusual and even exotic stamps and covers over the last 20 years or so. I try to have all items listed available at all times, but it might not always be possible because of heavy demand or difficulty in restocking. Therefore I suggest you give several alternatives when placing an order. You might notice that the unit price usually goes up on larger lots. This is because they include more elusive items.

Note that many lots include choices of several countries or regions. Specify which you want, or ask for a mixture.

Don’t see what you want? Let me know what you are looking for and I will try to help.

Note also that I give details of what I am buying at the end of this list.

STAMPS

1. 20 different postally used blocks. Your choice of world-wide, GB, Machins (QEII definitives), US, Canada, Commonwealth, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Scandinavia or South America £5

1B. 40 different used blocks from any of the above £10.50

2. 15 different high-value GB or high-value US blocks £5

2B. 25 different HV GB or HV US blocks £9.50

3. 50 different blocks -- GB, Machins, US or Canada £15

4. 100 different world-wide blocks £25

5. 15 different fine used blocks (neat circular date stamp cancels) £8

Se-tenants – different stamps attached. I have long collected postally used se-tenants and have one of the largest stocks in the world. Se-tenants are very attractive and add a lot to a country collection. They also are a lot of fun and something of a challenge to collect on their own.

6. 15 different used se-tenant pairs -- world-wide, US, South Africa or GB Machins £2.50

6B. 25 different used se-tenant pairs from any of the above £5

7. 15 different used se-tenant blocks – world-wide, US or Canada £5

7B. 25 different se-tenant blocks – world-wide, US or Canada £10

8. 15 different se-tenant blocks from GB, Scandinavia or South Africa £6

8B. 25 different se-tenant blocks from GB, Scandinavia or South Africa £12.50

9. 15 different used coil pairs – world-wide, US, Canada or Scandinavia £2.50

9B. 25 different used coil pairs -- world-wide, US or Canada £5

10. 15 different used coil strips (three or more stamps) – world-wide or US £3.50

11. 25 different used overprinted or charity single stamps (not blocks) £2.25

12. 15 different used singles with selvedge markings (plate numbers, printer marks, etc) £2.50

13. 15 different singles with socked-on-nose cancels (central date stamp cancels) £2

13B. 25 different socked-on-nose singles £4

13C. 10 different postally used mini-sheets £6

13D. 50 different used horizontal pairs – your choice of world-wide, GB, US definitives, US special stamps, foreign or Commonwealth. This is just 2.5p per stamp. £2.50

13E. 100 different used horizontal pairs -- your choice of world-wide, GB, US definitives, US special stamps, foreign or Commonwealth £5

13F. Set of five different unmounted mint 1970 decimal training stamps that were issued to train post office staff in the same colour as the new decimal Machin (QEII) of 1971 (2p, 2.5p, 3p, 3.5p and 4p) £1

13G. Same but in mint blocks of four £3.75

13H. 25 different stamps on Scottish subjects £2

13I. 40 different stamps on Scottish subjects £3.50

COVERS

I can offer a large selection of postally used (except where stated) and collectible covers in good to fine condition. Again these are from stocks I have amassed over the last 20 years or so. Most are modern (1960s on) and no bigger than A5 size.

14. 15 different covers from small countries, small island countries, ex-USSR (some of these might not have stamps on them), Russia (not all have stamps on them), Baltic States or Canadian centennial (statehood) issue £5
14B. 25 different from any of the above £9.50
15. 15 different with art stamps, stamps on stamps, Europa stamps, better usages of Machin (QEII) stamps, Christmas theme or Europa first-day covers (FDCs) £5.50
15B. 25 different with better usages of Machin stamps £9.50
16 15 different United Nations theme or hotel covers £7
16B. 25 different UN theme or hotel covers £14
17. 25 different FDCs – world-wide, GB or US £6
18. 15 different postally used covers with joined se-tenants on them £6
18B. 25 different joined se-tenant covers £12
19. 15 different used se-tenant covers -- US, Canada or GB or world-wide better (blocks, scarcer pairs, etc) £10
19B. 25 different US joined se-tenant covers £20
20. 15 different covers with ordinary blocks (not se-tenants) on them £7
20B. 25 different covers with blocks £14
21. 15 different postal stationery items – world-wide, GB, mint US or used US £5
21B. 25 different from any of the above £9
22. 15 different plate number coil (PNC) covers from the US. (Every 50^th or so of these coil stamps have a tiny number at the bottom of the stamp, and these are a challenge and a lot of fun to look for.) £6.50
22B. 25 different US PNC covers £12
23. 15 different covers with coil pairs or strips on them £12
24. 15 different covers with charity stamps (surcharged) £10
24B. 25 different charity stamp covers £19
25. 15 different covers with overprinted stamps on them £9
25B. 25 different covers with overprinted stamps £18
26. 15 different covers sent registered, with cinderellas, framas and other postal labels or pictorial meter marks £7
26B. 25 different covers with any of the above £14

POSTCARDS, SUPPLIES AND MISCELLANEOUS

27. 15 used postcards from small countries, smaller island countries or pre-WW2 US £5

28. 15 different used cards from Asia £4

28B. 25 different used cards from Asia £7.50

28C. NOW AVAILABLE AGAIN! 15 Mexican postcards with different exporta definitive series frankings £12

28D. 25 different Mexican postcards with different exporta definitive series frankings £20

29. Scotland and Philately handbook No 13, Edinburgh, by Stanley Brown and Ken Norris £1.50

30. Stamp hinges: 100 for 25p

30B. Stamp hinges, 1,000 for £1.25

31. Postcard protectors per pack of 100, small size £4 (Don’t forget that for buyers in the UK postage for these is free if your total order exceeds £25, making this excellent value for postal customers.)

32. Postcard protectors per 100, large size (for modern cards) £4.50

IF YOU CAN’T MAKE UP YOUR MIND

If you can’t make up your mind or want a large starter collection to get you going, I suggest trying a bargain package. You can choose stamps, covers or postcards, or a mixture of all three. These offer better value than the smaller selections and I always throw in a bonus or two. Give me your preferences and I will make up a packet especially for you.

33. Texas bargain package, post free to the United Kingdom £25

34. Alaska bargain package, post free to the UK and Europe £50

Terms and postage and packing. Orders of £25 or more are post free to United Kingdom addresses; for orders under £25 add £1. Orders of £50 or more are post free to anywhere in Europe; for orders under £50 add £2. Orders of £100 or more are post free, international signed-for service, to anywhere in the world; for under £100 add £5. (I do not recommend sending larger packets by ordinary post beyond Europe.) I try to use better stamps on your envelopes. I accept payment by cash in pound sterling, euros and dollars sent at your risk; pound sterling, dollar and euro cheques; and PayPal; inquire for the current exchange rate before paying in euros or dollars. Undamaged GB full-gum mint stamps valid for postage are accepted in payment at 80 per cent of face value to a maximum of £25. Satisfaction is guaranteed.

BUYING!

I have a large show stock, sell lots of material by mail (and e-mail) order and list all sorts of items on eBay, which means I need to do a lot of buying. Last year I spent some £5,000, and I would spend more if I could find the right material.

Below are a few examples of the sorts of things I am almost always buying. Please get in touch if you have such covers, cards or stamps. You can send the material to me for an offer or price it yourself. I will pay and return any unwanted items within two or three days.

Postcards

-- Better Scottish topographical and social history cards, especially from towns and villages and most especially Fife and Angus. I do not need cards showing "empty" scenes of lochs, mountains and seaside, nor of the city centres. Cards of suburban Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen often are of interest, however. Some towns and villages of little interest are Oban, Callander, Luss, Braemar, Ballater and Inverness. Generally the older the better but good modern cards can be of interest.

-- Cards on the subjects of golf, football, speedway, whisky, Judaica, Scottish military, coal, quarries and volcanoes

-- GB cards with clear, scarcer (thimble, squared circle, skeleton, etc) postmarks, and U.S. cards with neat hand cancels of villages and small towns posted overseas. Also I can use cards with missent markings, auxiliary markings, postage due labels and the like. Ialso always am looking for cards with anything highly unusual about them -- messages in Braille for instance.

-- Used cards from the Cayman Islands (any era) and Egypt, and used and mint cards from Sudan.

-- US airmail postal stationery cards properly used overseas. Even very ordinary-looking modern cards can be worth several pounds.

Stamps

-- Used blocks, especially se-tenant ones (different stamps attached), mini-sheets and booklet panes.

-- More advanced collections, especially on leaves that can be broken up and added to my worldwide fair stock of these.

Covers

-- Virtually anything but basic first-day covers from the Caymans and Sudan.

-- Mexican covers bearing "exporta" definitive stamps and Canal Zone covers -- both of these to any destination except the US.

-- U.S. covers overseas with marks of the receiving country, especially small countries, and auxiliary markings. If you find an envelope that is highly unusual in some way I probably can use it.

-- Covers with good small town and Scottish handstamp cancels, but generally not double circle ones, and covers from overseas places with Scottish names. Also Scottish cinderellas, tied labels and the like.

-- I specialise in out-of-the-ordinary material, not necessarily older, so if you find an envelope that is highly unusual in some way I probably can use it. I'm always looking for covers with postage due labels on them, tied cinderellas and the like, and interesting advertising covers, especially from Scotland and the US.

If in doubt -- get in touch!