Arbor day surprise

Last week, one of the dealers in Israel that I buy from regularly sent me a scan of an interesting item. It is the 0.01 value from the Arbor day set of 3, Scott number 552. Apparently, it was reprinted. The initial printing was on 9/9/74, and the second printing was on 12/16/74. I had not previously known about this reprint. It is not mentioned in Bale, as far as I can tell, and I don't recall seeing it mentioned in the Journal of the Israel Plate Block Collectors. I am not sure how much the dealer was asking for the set of sheets, but a quick check of my collection showed I only had the first printing. E-bay had no listings for either of the plate blocks, but I did find a full sheet of the second printing on Stamp Wants. It was listed for $1.50 with $1.00 shipping. It arrived in today's mail. I am not sure if it would have been cheaper to buy it from the dealer in Israel, but I am sure that he knows what he has, while the seller on Stamp Wants was probably just as unaware as I was that there were 2 printings of this stamp, and just listed this for what he thought a sheet of stamps would go for.

This and that

I don't have anything major to blog about today, but a few small things. last week, 4 of my 6 lots on E-bay sold. The 1948-1978 singles collection went for just over $200, and the US stamp announcement sheets for just over $100. Both revenue lots also attracted multiple bids. I have already used some of the proceeds to fill in some gaps in my plate block collection, picking up another handful of plate blocks.

However, the rest of the proceeds will probably be needed for the next set of special items that the Israel post is putting out now. There is a fifth printing of "The Israeli" booklet (not including the inverted die cut variety and the missing Arabic variety). There is also a special generic sheet being issued for Hanukkah, and a set of Christmas ATM stamps (not sure how many machine numbers they will have this year, but past years have had 3 different numbers).

Here we are at the end of 2009, and there has not been a new Bale Israel catalog released since 2006. They used to be released every other year, so does this mean that they will no longer be releasing them at all? Or, did they just decide to change it to every 4 years (maybe longer)? Anyway, I am not finding that it affects me at all, since I am able to find out what is being released through other means. I used to rely on the catalog to tell me about new postal stationary, booklets, etc. I even decided to not wait on the editors of the catalog to assign numbers to the new issues. They were doing a rather poor job of it anyway (the last postal stationary item listed in Bale 2004 was issued in 1998, before the new publishers took over). Rather than wait any longer for them to assign numbers, I did it myself. One day I will publish my own listings....