Missing overprint

Here is another interesting item I found. The zodiac issue of 1962 was overprinted with new values before being sold. Apparently, some got out without the overprint. Not sure how rare this is, but it is something to add to my collection.

Deja Vu

Well, I did a double take when I was searching through e-bay today. I saw a new lot that looked familiar. Of course, most FDC's from Israel look the same, since nearly everyone uses the official cachet cover. This one, however, was uncacheted. And it looked very familiar. A quick check through my covers turned up nearly the exact same covers as shown in the lot. I think the address is different (it is hard for me to tell), and the ones on E-bay show the designer name on the cover, but otherwise they are the same. At least, they were similar enough for me to do a double take. Now, I will watch the auction to see what they sell for. I don't keep good enough records, so I have no idea what I paid for these covers, nor do I recall where or when I got them, but I know I must have paid less then the start price for the e-bay auction. So, assuming it sells, I did well.

Show Labels

I plan to go through my collection and catalog all the different show labels I have. I think I have at least one from each major show in Israel. I have some mint, some on cover, and some in sheets. For some shows, there were perf and imperf versions of the same labels, and sometimes there were different overprints. I have yet to see a catalog that lists these. Any ideas?

Items I don't collect

While I have spent a lot of time talking about the items I do collect, there are a few things that I have decided to avoid. One item I have avoided is Souvenir Leaves. I do collect the ones that are available through the philatelic service, but the vast majority of these souvenir leaves are never sold to the public, and are instead printed in limited quantities for specific organizations. Some of these limited edition leaves "catalog" for insane amounts of money. The only catalog that I have seen to list these is the Carmel catalog. When I see these for sale on E-bay, the seller usually lists them at 10% of the catalog value, and 99% of the time, they fail to attract a bid. My conclusion is that the catalog values are extremely inflated. In my opinion, these are one step above the gold leaf stamp covers in collectability, and in value.

Shai covers

I have a bunch of Shai covers in my collection. These are first day covers with a rubber stamp saying Shai, or gift, and sometimes with an JNF stamp attached to the cover as well. I assume these were given away to contributors in some fashion, but have not seen anything that says who they were given to, or how many were given out per issue. For some issues, I have multiple different Shai covers, mostly from the JNF, but also a few from other groups such as the Judaica Society of Collectors, or the Army Welfare Committee. Looks like I have about 200 different Shai covers in my collection. Since there is no telling how many different covers exist, I don't have any way to generate a want list. I can just compare ones I see against the ones I have. It is a bit of a pain to do it this way, but it is the best I can come up with. Any suggestions?

Touring Stamp Exhibition

I have quite a few covers from the Touring Stamp Exhibition from the 1950's. It looks like they had a couple of shows a year, and had different cachets and special labels printed for each. This is one of my favorite ones, as it appears they have taken the second coins tete-beche sheets and overprinted them in both English and Hebrew. Other covers I have were used as receipts for the show entrance fee, and have a revenue stamp attached. According to the Mosden catalog, I am missing covers from only 4 of the 38 shows. These are Nahariya (6/4/50), Hadera (11/24/50), Even Yehuda (10/16/51), and Ramatayim (1/1/56).

Real?

Another suspicious item I came across recently in my collection. Here is a set of the owls stamps from 1987. This set has a second set of perforations just above the one attaching the tab to the stamp. What is suspicious to me is that this set of 4 all have the same error. These were printed as 4 separate sheets, so how can they all have the same error? Any clues?

Special plateblock

This is a plateblock of the draw your own stamp from the telabul show in 2004. The bottom right stamp in this plateblock of 6 is the center stamp from the special sheet. I am not too fond of the scribbles the person used for the stamp, but never the less, this is a modern rarity. I am glad to have one in my collection.

Rejected designs

This is a test stamp done for a design that was rejected because it looked to much like a German soldier. I am not sure how common these are, but I see them come up on e-bay from time to time.

Remembrance Letters

Ever year since 1952, the Israel government sends letters to the families of soldiers who were killed on duty. These remembrance letters are sent on memorial day, usually in a special envelope with the memorial day stamp on them. Inside is a letter from an official (not sure if it is the prime minister, or the minister of defense). Just another interesting category of philatelic collectibles to get into.

Puzzled

I was tracking two similar items on E-bay, and I am really puzzled by the results of the auctions. the 2 items were nearly identical, one is a set of 10-14 vertical gutters with tabs and the other is a set of 10-14 vertical gutters with colored tabs. The only difference is that one comes from the left side of the press sheet, the other the right. Each press sheet has 2 sets of each of these, so there should be an equal number. So, why did the colored tabs go for $400 more (nearly 15% premium), and attract 10 more bids? Of course, both sold for less than half the 2006 bale catalog value. This is typical of other high priced stamps listed in the catalog. Either the catalog value is wrong, or E-bay is not the way to sell better Israel stamps. I suspect it is a combination of the two.

Found something new...

Just when I think I have my want list pretty well up to date, I found that I am missing something. The Massad label issued for Israel 98 (shown on the left here), was actually issued as 9 different sets, one for each day of the show. And, it is not just that the date changed each day, but the text printed on the label was changed each day to correspond with the theme of the show that day. The opening day (5/13/98) was Tel Aviv Day, as shown on these, but the other days were: Postal Authority day (14th), Israel Jubilee (15th), Doar Ivri Day (16th), Youth day (17th), Olympics day (18th), Computer day (19th), Environment day (20th) and Collectors day (21st). I checked in the Bale catalog (2006 edition) and it doesn't mention this. It does show that the Massad labels were only sold for the 9 days of the show, but it makes no mention of the fact that each days labels were different. So, another 8 items (16 if you count the FDC's) were added to the old want list.

Speaking of my want list, back in my Halloween blog, I mentioned that my want list was at 10,254 items. Now, it is down to 9,715. Most of this is due to adding about 500 special cancels to my inventory list. But, I have managed to catch up quite a bit on my boxes of stuff to be put away. I did manage to add another 200 items to the database (including the 8 mentioned above). Another few years (more like decades at this rate) and I may catch up.