Just when you thought it was done...

Another new generic sheet popped up on E-bay today. This one is a May 25th 2010 printing of the blue and white stamp. I have seen 2 different versions, the one pictured here with the Jonah and the Whale coin, and another with a Menachem Begin coin. Both are from ICMC (Israel Coins and Medals Corp), and both with a 38 NIS sheet price. They are listed on E-bay for $99 each. I have not yet seen this date offered elsewhere, but I am looking. At the $99 price, I won't be adding them to my collection. I have added this to my catalog listing as GEN11.10.

Generic Sheet listing summary

As far as I know, the previous 7 entries detail all of the generic sheets offered by Israel. I am sure there will be additions in the coming months and years, but it is as complete as of today as I could make it. If anyone knows of any I missed, please let me know.

Since as far as I can tell, no catalog adequately addresses these sheets, I have decided to create my own catalog numbers, and hopefully they will stick.

The *'s indicate dates on special sheets.

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Catalog #	Description	Printing Date	First Day
GEN1	Flowers	2/4/2001	3/18/2001
GEN1.1	Flowers - Telabul	7/8/2003	7/15/2003
GEN2	Yellow Flower	12/2/2001	7/15/2003
GEN3	Good Luck	7/17/2003	10/19/2003
GEN3.1	Good Luck	10/21/2003
GEN3.2	Good Luck	1/12/04
GEN3.3	Good Luck	12/1/2006
GEN3.4	Good Luck	12/2/2006
GEN3.5	Good Luck	12/5/2006
GEN3.6	Good Luck	4/12/2007
GEN3.7	Good Luck	6/17/2008
GEN3.8	Good Luck	12/1/2008
GEN4	Hugs and Kisses	7/17/2003	10/19/2003
GEN4.1	Hugs and Kisses	10/21/2003
GEN4.2	Hugs and Kisses	1/12/2004
GEN4.3	Hugs and Kisses	4/12/2007
GEN4.4	Hugs and Kisses	2/10/08*
GEN4.5	Hugs and Kisses	12/1/2008
GEN5	Mazel Tov - Wedding	7/17/2003	10/19/2003
GEN5.1	Mazel Tov - Wedding	1/12/2004
GEN6	Mazel Tov	7/17/2003	10/19/2003
GEN6.1	Mazel Tov	3/21/2006
GEN6.2	Mazel Tov	10/7/08
GEN7	Thank You	7/17/2003	10/19/2003
GEN7.1	Thank You	1/12/2004
GEN7.2	Thank You	12/5/2006
GEN7.3	Thank You	4/12/2007
GEN7A (3 stamps)	Thank You	1/3/2011
GEN8	With Love	7/17/2003	10/19/2003
GEN8.1	With Love	12/5/2006
GEN8.2	With Love	12/1/2008
GEN9	Jerusalem 2006 Generic Flower Sheet - Lily	3/21/2006	5/8/2006
GEN10	Jerusalem 2006 Generic Flower Sheet - Tulip	3/21/2006	5/8/2006
GEN11	My own Stamp - Blue and White	5/15/2007	8/27/2007
GEN11.1	My own Stamp - Blue and White	11/14/2007
GEN11.2	My own Stamp - Blue and White	6/17/2008
GEN11.3	My own Stamp - Blue and White	11/6/2008
GEN11.4	My own Stamp - Blue and White	2/4/2009*
GEN11.5	My own Stamp - Blue and White	3/24/2009*
GEN11.6	My own Stamp - Blue and White	5/15/2009*
GEN11.7	My own Stamp - Blue and White	8/5/2009*
GEN11.8	My own Stamp - Blue and White	12/2/2009
GEN11.9	My own Stamp - Blue and White	1/6/2010*
GEN11.10	My own Stamp - Blue and White	5/25/2010
GEN11A	My own Stamp - Blue and White (8 stamps)	11/14/2007
GEN11A1	Elvis Presley	11/14/2007	11/?/2007
GEN11A2	Moses Montefiore	11/14/2007	12/5/2007
GEN11A3	Mickey Marcus	11/14/2007	6/11/2010
GEN11A4	Jerusalem 2010	11/14/2007	11/21/2010
GEN12	Red Flower	1/30/2008	5/14/2008
GEN12.1	Red Flower	1/21/2009
GEN12.2	Red Flower	7/26/2010*
GEN13	White Flower	1/30/2008	5/14/2008
GEN13.1	White Flower	10/7/2008*
GEN13.2	White Flower	1/21/2009
GEN14	Love	5/4/2009	6/30/2009
GEN14.1	Love	6/5/2009*
GEN14.2	Love	10/27/2009*
GEN14.3	Love	4/7/2010*
GEN14.4	Love	2/9/2010*
GEN14.5	Love	10/24/2010*
GEN14.6	Love	1/3/2011*
GEN14.7	Love	5/24/2011*	6/19/11
GEN15	With Compliments	6/29/2010	8/25/2010
GEN16	Happy Holidays	6/29/2010	8/25/2010
GEN16.1	Happy Holidays	2/20/2011*	3/15/2011
GEN16.2	Happy Holidays	7/18/2011*	8/7/2011
GEN17	Flag	8/19/2010	11/21/2010
GEN17.1	Flag	8/27/2010
GEN17.2	Flag	10/25/2010
GEN17.3	Flag	3/22/2011*
GEN17.4	Flag	6/5/2011
SGEN4	Jetix	2/10/2008	3/16/2008
SGEN11A	Afiko-Man	2/4/2009	3/3/2009
SGEN11B	Pope Sheet #1	3/24/2009	5/4/2009
SGEN11C	Pope Sheet #2	5/15/2009	6/1/2009
SGEN11D	Casi Angeles	8/5/2009	9/6/2009
SGEN11E	Grandpa Nissans Afikoman	1/6/2010	2/21/2010
SGEN11E1	Herzl	1/6/2010	4/14/2010
SGEN12A	My First Hebrew Calendar	7/26/2010	8/1/2010
SGEN13A	Commedians	10/7/2008	10/30/2008
SGEN14A	Disney 2009	6/5/2009	7/15/2009
SGEN14B	Hannukkah 2009	10/27/2009	11/19/2009
SGEN14C	Valenitnes Day 2010	5/4/2009	2/1/2010
SGEN14D	Disney 2010	4/7/2010	5/2/2010
SGEN14E	Cabbage Head	2/9/2010	10/13/2010
SGEN14F	Hannukkah 2010	11/9/2010	10/24/2010
SGEN14G	Family Day 2011	1/3/2011	2/1/2011
SGEN14H	Winnie the Pooh	5/24/2011	6/19/2011
SGEN16A	Passover 2011	2/20/2011	3/15/2011
SGEN16B	High Holidays 2011	7/18/2011	8/7/2011
SGEN17A	Latin America	10/25/2010	11/22/2010
SGEN17B	Nachal Army Song Group	3/22/2011

Generic Sheet Listing, Part 7

There are 3 new designs that have been showing up recently. Happy Holidays, With Compliments, and the Flag sheet. So far, the first two, which were announced in Bulletin 46, have only shown up with a June 29th, 2010 printing date. These sheets were released on August 25th, 2010.

However, the flag sheet, despite being the newest addition to the generic sheet world, has already had 3 separate printings. The first printing was August 19th, 2010. This was followed up with a second printing on August 27th, 2010. This second printing is a bit unusual, in that instead of having 12 stamps and 12 blank labels to be printed with a design, it has 12 stamps, plus 6 different labels with designs for Jerusalem 2010, and then 6 blank, customizable labels. The third printing was for the bicentennial of 4 Latin American countries (Argentina, Chile, Columbia, Ecuador, and Mexico). The sheet was printed on October 25th, 2010, and issued on November 22nd, 2010.

Generic Sheet Listing, Part 5

The next set of sheets were first issued for the WSC Israel 2008 show. There were 2 separate flower sheets, the White Rose and the Red Cyclamen. Both sheets were printed on January 30th, 2008, with a price of 27 NIS. I did not see them listed in the bulletins I have. The first day of issue was May 14, 2008, which I believe was the first day of the show. The personalized examples I have show the same printing date, but are missing the price info, instead having the admin information printed under the picture.

The second printing is for the White Rose sheet only. It was printed on October 7th, 2008, and offered in bulletin #37. This one shows the price of 37 NIS. The sheet was issued on October 30th, 2008. According to the bulletin, it was issued to mark the first anniversary of the death of Yisrael (Poli) Poliyakov. He was part of the HaGashash HaHiver trio. I believe they were comics, but that is purely a guess.

Both sheets were reprinted on January 21st, 2009. I have seen several of these for sale, but none yet at a reasonable price. If anyone has some extras, please let me know.

The Red Cyclamen stamp was reprinted on July 26th, 2010 for the My first Hebrew Calendar sheet. This was offered in Bulletin 46, and has a 38 NIS price listed on the sheet. First day for this sheet was August 1st, 2010.

To date, as far as I know, there are only these 3 printings of each of these sheets. One other thing to note is that these sheets are supposedly scented, although I am not sure if they are (or were).

Generic Sheet listing, part 6

Next, we move on to the new workhorse of the generic sheets, the Love stamp. The first printing of this sheet was on May 4th, 2009. It was listed in bulletin #41, and has a 27 NIS price on the sheet with the smiling stamp. The customized sheet does not include this price, even though the sheet is from the same printing. The first day of issue was June 30th, 2009.

Bulletin 44 brought to light this sheet. It was for Family Day (as well as Valentine's day, I guess). This sheet has the same May 4th 2009 printing date as the above sheets, but it lacks both the pricing information seen on the smiling stamp sheet, and the admin printing message under the photo that Mark indicates a personalized order. So, I will call this printing 1A. The first day for this sheet was February 1st, 2010.

To date, there have been 5 additional printings of this sheet. The second and fourth printings of the sheet, from June 5th 2009 and April 7th 2010 were aimed at children, with Disney themes. The first sheet features Hannah Montana, the Jonas Brothers, and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. This sheet was offered in bulletin 41 as well, however it has a price of 37 NIS printed on it. The first day of issue was July 15th, 2009, and I believe the September 9th date shown on the sheet was the first date that the Disney Channel was on in Israel. The second sheet features only the gang from Mickey Mouse clubhouse, and was offered in bulletin 45. The price on the sheet has risen to 38 NIS, and the day of issue was May 2nd, 2010.

The third and sixth printings were for Hanukkah 2009 and 2010. The 2009 sheet was printed on October 29th, 2009, was listed in bulletin 43 and issued on November 19th, 2009. It shows the 38 NIS price for the sheet. the 2010 edition also shows the 38 NIS price, but has a printing date of October 24th, 2010. The first day was November 9th, 2010 and I have not yet seen it offered in the philatelic bulletin.

So, you might have noticed that I left out the fifth printing (if you didn't, you can scroll back and check). The fifth printing was on February 9th, 2010. The only time I have seen this printing is on the Cabbage Head sheet shown here. I don't believe this is a customized sheet, since it lacks the printing info under the picture on the left. The sheet is being sold on E-bay by several dealers, and they show a first day of October 13th, 2010. This sheet does not have the price on it though, so I am not sure what to make of it. Regardless, it is a new printing date. Perhaps it will be offered by the philatelic service in an upcoming bulletin.

Generic Sheet Listing, part 4

As if the various printing dates for the Blue and White stamp weren't enough, a second version of the sheet has been sold occasionally. This version of the sheet has just 8 stamps (and 8 labels) as opposed to the 12 of the regular sheet. All 4 sheets that I have seen have the same November 17th, 2007 printing date. The only one of the 4 that might be available from the philatelic service is the most recently released one for the Jerusalem 2010 show. It shows a price of 18.70NIS The others are blank.

I am not really sure of the issue dates of the Moses Montefiore sheet. It is claimed by the seller on E-bay to be issued December 5th, 2007. He also claims an edition of 500. The Elvis sheet is one that I have never seen on e-bay, but did see it offered in Linn's, and on the seller's website. He claims an issue date of November, 2007 (no date listed) and a quantity of 1000. The Mickey Marcus sheet is one I have in my collection, and it was issued on June 11, 2010. I have seen no claims as to the number issued. None of these have the serial numbers on the right hand margin, like the Herzl or first Pope sheet, so I have no way of knowing for sure. I assume the Jerusalem 2010 sheet was issued on November 21st, 2010, the first day of the Jerusalem 2010 stamp show. I will know more about this sheet when my order arrives in a few weeks.

Correction to Generic sheet listings

I just noticed a difference between some of my generic sheets that I hadn't spotted before. The sheet on the left here is the first printing of the With Love stamp, from July 17th, 2003. The FDC of the same printing date is on the right. But, instead of the price of 21.20NIS appearing above the top left label, there are some different marginal markings above the first 3 columns. I see the same thing on the Mazel Tov sheets from the same date. The Mazel Tov sheet from March 21st, 2006 has blank margins above the first 4 columns. The Good Luck sheet from December 1st, 2008 also has the margins above the first 4 columns blank, but has what appears to be the same information printed under the picture in the right column. Does anyone know if this was a seperate printing, or if it is a different pane position?

Generic Sheet Listing, Part 3

The next Blue and White sheet was printed August 5th, 2009. It shows what I think is a band called Casi Angeles. It was issued on September 6th of 2009 and was listed in Bulletin #42. Notice that the price listed was 38NIS, as opposed to the 37NIS on the previous 3 sheets, and 27 NIS on the original generic sheet.

Returning to the generic sheets, there were printings on June 17th, 2008 (for Mom's birthday, I guess), November 6th, 2008, and December 2nd, 2009. These were all issued without being offered for sale to the public via the bulletin. I do not believe there was a way to know what date you would get on a sheet when you ordered it. I was unable to acquire these with the stock image of the smiling stamp, but I did manage to find them customized.

The latest printing was on January 6th of 2010. It was used on at least these 2 sheets offered in Bulletin 44. The price was once again 38NIS. The sheet on the left is the 2010 Passover issue, which was called Grandpa Nissan's Afikoman. The sheet on the right is for the 150th anniversary of the birth of Herzl. This one has a serial number on the lower right hand side that shows that it was an issue of 10,000. The first Pope sheet also has this same serial number and limit of 10,000. None of the other sheets, including the second Pope sheet, so far have shown this.

Generic Sheet listing, Part 2

The next generic sheets weren't issued until Jerusalem 2006. It is a set of 2 flower sheets issued May 8th, 2006. Both sheets have a printing date of March 21st, 2006, and I have not seen a reprint of either. The sheets were offered for sale in bulletin 23. I have seen some personalized versions of these sheets, but they had the same print date as the generic sheet.

The next generic sheet offered was the My Stamp - Blue and White pictured here. To date, it has undergone ten separate printings. It was placed on sale on August 27th, 2007 and listed in bulletin 30. The first printing date was May 15th, 2007, and it was followed by a second printing on November 17th, 2007. 2008 brought an additional 2 printings, June 17th and November 6th.

2009 brought a new twist to the generic sheets. For Passover, the philatelic service offered a package of a children's Hagaddah and a sheet of stamps picturing Afiko-Man (and you thought my puns were bad!). This sheet has a printing date of February 4th, 2009 and the sheet was offered in bulletin 39. The first day of issue was March 3rd.

This pattern was continued when the Pope visited Israel later in the year. Two different generic sheets were printed for the occasion, on before the pope visited, with pictures of sites He would see, and one after he left showing the pictures of the Pope in Israel. The first sheet was printed on March 24th and issued on May 4th, and the second on May 15th with a June 1st issue date. Both were offered for sale in Bulletin 40.

I will discuss the additional printings of this sheet in part 3.

Updated Generic sheet listing, Part 1

I have continued to update my list of generic sheets, and had a few collectors send me lists of what they had seen as well. Since my list has changed a lot over the last few weeks, I figured I would post my findings here. If you have a generic sheet not on the list, please let me know so I can add it. I am missing a few, so if you have extras to trade, please let me know as well.

Flowers. As far as I know, this is the first generic sheet offered by Israel. There were only printed twice. The first printing was February 4th, 2001. The second printing was July 8th, 2003. The second printing was done for Telabul, and has the smiling stamp logo in the blank spots. The second printing was offered for sale to philatelic service customers in bulletin #8. The first day for this was March 18, 2001 with the Telabul one being released on July 15, 2003.

The second generic sheet was also done for Telabul, and was also offered for sale in bulletin #8. This one was printed on December 2nd, 2001. Even though the sheets were printed in 2001, I haven't seen from before this Telabul publicity one in 2003. The first day was July 15, 2003. I do have a sheet with the same printing date but with 24 stamps. The 3 columns of the smiling stamp are replaced with actual stamps, and the column of flowers to the left of the leftmost smiling stamp on this picture are perforated, but I do not believe this was ever personalized.

On October 19, 2003, a set of 6 generic sheets were released. The all had greetings stamps and were offered in bulletins 10 and 11 from the Philatelic Service. This one is the Mazel Tov stamp. As far as I can tell, there have been 3 printings for this sheet. The first was July 17th 2003. The next printing was March 21, 2006. I have only seen this second printing with Israel's gold medal winning windsurfer pictured, but that doesn't mean other personalizations don't exist. The third printing was October 7, 2008.

The next one in the set of 6 is the Hugs and Kisses stamp. I know of 6 printings of this sheet, but only have 4 in my collection. The first printing was once again July 17th, 2003. The second printing was October 21st, 2003. It was quickly reprinted a third time, on January 12th, 2004. The fourth printing wasn't until April 12th, 2007. The fifth printing from February 10th, 2008 was a special one, as I have only seen it on the Jetix sheet. The sixth printing was December 1st, 2008. I am looking for the second and fourth printings if anyone has them available.

Next comes the Thank You stamp. This one has had four printings so far, with the first once again being July 17th, 2003. The second was January 12th, 2004. The third, and only one I do not have in my collection so far was December 5th, 2006. The fourth printing was April 12th, 2007.

The next stamp is once another Mazel Tov stamp. This one has a scene at a Huppa with a bride and groom. As far as I know, there have only been two printings of this sheet. The first was July 17th, 2003. The second is January 12th, 2004. I only have the first printing, and have not personally seen the second printing listed for sale yet, but a collector in Israel has told me it exists. If anyone has a spare, let me know.

The fifth member of this series is the With Love stamp. This has had three printings to date, with the first once again being July 17th, 2003. The second printing was December 5th, 2006. The third printing was December 1st, 2008. I have the first two printings, but do not yet have the third.

The last member of this set of 6 is the Good Luck stamp. It must have been very lucky for the Philatelic Service, since it has undergone nine separate printings. The first, like the other five members of this set was on July 17th, 2003. The second was October 21st, 2003. I have neither of these first two printings, the first I have in my collection is the third printing, from January 12th, 2004. The next three printings were all in December, 2006. The 1st, 2nd, and 5th were the dates. I am missing all 3, as well as the seventh printing from April 12th, 2007. This was followed with an eighth printing on my parents anniversary in 2008 (June 17th for those of you not related to me who are still reading this!). The ninth printing was December 1st, 2008. Hopefully, nine printings will be enough. I am missing 6 of the nine, so maybe the issue has not been that lucky for me.

That time of year again

Next week, there will be another big stamp show in Jerusalem. This is a five day show, and of course Israel Post will be offering a complete slate of special issues.

To start with, 3 new vending stamps with 11 different varieties. There will be the special SIMA label for the show, with two different machine numbers (001, and 061). The Christmas SIMA label will also be offered, apparently with 4 different machine numbers (001, 010, 015, and 062). And there will be a Massad sheet of 10 for each day of the show (available as 10 x 1.70 or a sheet of 10 different values).

Then, there is the new generic sheet. This is an Israel flag design. There is a normal sheet with 12 stamps, a smaller version with 8 stamps, and a special Latin America friendship version. I believe all 3 will have different printing dates, but I am not 100% sure. This is in addition to the recent Cabbage Head sheet (with its own printing date) and the Hanukkah sheet with a new printing date as well.

Next, we have the booklets. 2 new ones as far as I know. There will be a prestige booklet, not sure what the subject is. The second one is a flip book. It is 15 pages, and has the new animation stamps in a way that you can flip through the pages and see a cartoon.

Next comes the joint issue with Vatican city. This is a sheetlet of 4. In addition, there will be some other special sheets. A set of 3 decorative sheets of bible stories, plus a souvenir sheet. Plus, a re-issue of the 1NIS menorah definitives (3rd printing).

And finally, the special imperf souvenir sheet of the bible story stamps available in the show catalog.

I am not looking forward to the bill for these!

Updates

I blogged a few weeks ago about White Ace. I finally was able to get a reply from them. They will be updating the Menorah definitives page to include the 40ag value, and to be int eh correct order. They are also adding the correct pictures for the International Year of Astronomy. Supposedly, they will mail me the replacement pages in a few weeks. I am not sure how other people will get the updated pages at this point. They are also still trying to figure out whether to include the Mejujaim stamps in the pages or not. If they do, it will be in next years supplement. The pages with the missing background are normal, as they didn't want the stamps to go over the background, and that is the only way they will fit.

On a related note, I was looking up the Scott catalog numbers for some recent issues, and found that the June issues were not given catalog numbers. The April issues were, as were the August issues. Turns out that Scott gets its new issues direct from the philatelic service, and there account ran out of money, so they missed a shipment. Hopefully, they have that resolved and the numbers for the June issue will be in the December Linn's super issue. Since I had a quick response from the Scott's new issues editor, I asked about some other things that I noticed. The 40ag self adhesive definitive was not listed. They actually didn't know anything about the stamp. It was not included in their standing order since it was considered a reprint of the water activated gum stamp. When I pointed them to the bulletin where the issue was offered, they went to get a copy so they could list it. It should get a new catalog number shortly. The editor then asked me if I had a copy of the Gagea stamp without the oval (syncopated) perfs, and the Hyacinth stamp with oval perfs, since they had heard of these but didn't have them. I will be lending them these from my collection so they can be added to the catalog.

Sacapex 2010

This past Sunday, I took Julie to the Sacapex show at the Scottish Rite temple in Sacramento. We went last year, and from the day the postcard came in the mail for this years show, she was ready to go. She was up bright and early Sunday, chomping at the bit to leave. Since we had just turned back the clocks, she had to wait an extra hour.

When we did make it to the show (at 10:05), she went to the youth table and started picking out stamps. Unlike last year, she didn't just grab every flower stamp she saw, she would check each against the ones already in her pile to make sure she wasn't getting doubles. After about 5 minutes, a man came out from the main room of the show, and asked Julie if she had a stamp album yet. She said she didn't, and the man handed her a two volume Harris Statesman album. She was thrilled. Since I was the one that had to carry this through the rest of the show, I was a little less so, but I am sure she will love filling them up. I bought her a pack of hinges from a supplies dealer at the show so that she could put her stamps away later. Julie also picked up a USPS comic book, a stamps coloring book, and a couple of US Stamp yearbooks. When she was done at the youth table, we walked into the main show. Several dealers gave her free covers, one even gave her a few colorful souvenir sheets.

I didn't expect to find much at the show for myself, although I did spend a few minutes at each table looking through their Israel stock. Most had nothing, and the ones that had anything mostly had common singles. Then, at one table that Julie was looking through a cover box, I asked about Israel stamps. They had a small box with common singles, and when I finished looking through it, the dealer said he thought he had some in a stock book he had just bought. The stock book had a bunch of different countries included, and about 4 pages of Israel.

It was on those 4 pages that I found a handful of Town Emblem plate blocks. I checked the dates, and lo and behold, there were 3 I needed. He even had duplicates of each of them. I assumed they were common dates that I was just missing. I asked the dealer how much for the 3 I needed, and he said half catalog. I didn't have my Bale catalog with me, having assumed that I wouldn't find anything that I needed to look up, but the dealer went to the table next to his to borrow a catalog to figure out the price. He returned with a Scott catalog. I told him that Scott doesn't price Israel plate blocks. He said, no problem, it will be just 5 times the price of a single. Of course, all 3 stamps were valued at the minimum price of 20 cents a piece. Meanwhile, Julie had found a cover she liked, so for $3 I got the 3 plateblocks shown above plus Julie's cover.

When we got home from the show, I showed Julie how to hinge stamps into her album. She is still working on getting the hang of it. I am not sure how Harris chooses which stamps to picture int eh album, but it appears that many of the ones she has aren't pictured, but she is working through the ones that are. While she was doing that, I pulled out my Bale catalog to check the value on the 3 blocks I had bought. The first one I checked was listed at $25, not bad. The second was $65. So, those two weren't common ones at all. Then I checked the third one. It is listed as TE25. $750. The rarest of the Town Emblem plate block dates. I was shocked. I had just bought 3 plateblocks that catalog for over $800 for about $2. And then I started thinking, he had at least one more of each of these in his stock book. I could have had one for my collection, and one to sell. If I had the catalog with me, I would have known these were rare, and purchased all he had. Then, I remember, if I had my catalog to know the value of these, the dealer would have known the value as well, and I don't think I would have gotten them for $2 at that point. I guess it worked out OK.

While not expecting to find anything for me, I found perhaps my biggest bargain to date (eclipsing the UPU booklet FDC I bought on E-bay for $5). And Julie had a great time. Yes, it definitely was a great show. Too bad the next one is a year away. Maybe that same dealer will be there with that same stock book...

White Ace pages...missing stamps?

I finally received my White Ace pages in late August, and put them in my album a few weeks ago. I found some curious design issues with the pages. I sent a mail to Washington Press asking for feedback on the issues I found, but have yet to receive a response. So, I decided to post here to see what others thought of the issues. There are two cases where half of a booklet is needed. I am not sure why they choose half a booklet, it would have been much easier from my perspective to just include the whole booklet. I guess they made this choice to save collectors from having to purchase the whole booklet, but I have yet to see a dealer offering half booklets for sale, and you certainly can't get them from the philatelic service, so I don't see the point. If you have to buy the whole booklet, why not just display it intact? There are also 2 pages missing the decorative border. I am not sure if this is just my copy of the pages, or all of them, but pages 370 and 374 are borderless. The International Year of Astronomy issue is shown as a set of 3, but all with the same picture and value. I assume this is just a copy and paste error.

Now we get to the bigger issues I have with the pages. The set of Menorah definitives is shown as 3 stamps (30ag, 50ag, and 1NIS). The 40ag is not included, even though it was issued in September of 2009. The stamps are also shown out of order, with the 1 NIS being first, followed by the 30ag and then the 50ag. Normally, the high value is last, so that would put the 1NIS last. The last big issue is the Mejujaim stamps are not shown at all. This is a unique issue, one that I have spent a lot of time documenting here. At the very least, I would expect the 8 sheets available from the philatelic service would be shown. While the stamps are the same as various definitive issues from past years, the fact that they are without phosphor, with rouletted perforations, and self-adhesives make them very different from the earlier versions.

Fruit booklet varieties

Notice anything different about this booklet? The serial number is not in the normal location. It also appears to be a different font. Other booklets show the serial number in the correct location. According to Bulletin #46 from the Philatelic service, this was an inadvertent error. Both varieties of the third printing are offered for sale at $8.60 directly from the philatelic service. I guess they wanted to avoid speculation. In addition to these varieties of the third printing, it appears a fourth printing is now available.

Before E-bay

I first started using the Internet while I was at RPI in the early 1990's. I had my old 486 computer set up in my dorm room, and there was an ISDN line that I was able to use to connect to the college network. FTP and Telnet were the way to access other computers on the network, and the place to go to find things was Usenet. Usenet is still around (I think it got swallowed up by Google, and is now called google groups), and while looking at the various groups available, I came across rec.collecting.stamps. My Israel collection was still just a basic collection in those days, with lots of gaps in just the basic tabs. One day, i came across a post on the newsgroup advertising a box of Israel items. I remember the post described that it contained a few coin booklets on presentation sheets, and a bunch of other items. I think the asking price was $50. That was a lot of money for this college student, but I e-mailed the person who had posted, and eventually ended up calling him after a brief exchange of e-mails. Long story short, I sent him a check and a huge box arrived at my dorm room a week or so later. The box had a ton of stuff, including 2 of the booklets. The picture here is one of them. The only other items I recall from that collection are a couple of early FDC's with short tabs, including the Camel and the Menorah stamps. But, I still consider the booklets to be among my best finds.

Special cancel...special ink?

I collect both FDC's and special cancels. Most new issues from Israel have a special cancel designed to go with them, and this Simon Wiesenhal sheetlet of 4 was no exception. Do you notice anything different about the cancels? The one in the center of the block is in silver, while the one on the bottom is in black. The special cancels provided from the Israel Post with my standing order were in black only. This is not the first issue I have seen it on (I believe they used the silver ink on the Holocaust remembrance stamp earlier this year, and maybe one or 2 last year as well). It is just interesting to me that they would only provide the black version to there special cancel subscribers.

L'shana Tova

The Israeli post offices have been selling New Years cards for years now. I have never seen them listed in any of the catalogs, and I am pretty sure there was no reason to list them. after all, they are similar to Hallmark greeting cards, and would need to have a stamp added to them in order to be mailed. However, this year it appears things are different. The scan here shows one of the five envelopes included in this years New Years cards being sold at the post office. The imprint at the upper right is the postage. Does this make the envelope postal stationary? The five cards included in the package are all different, but the envelopes are identical. Apparently, they were issued (not sure that is the correct term for these) on July 1st. I was able to pick up a package of 5 from one of the people I buy stamps from in Israel, and he was kind enough to provide me with one of them with a first day cancel as well. As far as I can tell, these aren't listed in the bulletin from Israel post listing new issues (while other postal stationary is). What do you think?