Visit to a stamp show

Today, for the first time in close to 2 years, I made it to a stamp show. The show was Sacapex, in Sacramento, California. There were about 20 dealers there, and I stopped at all of them. Surprisingly, I walked out of the show with several items to add to my collection. I was able to find a set of Egypt overprinted Palestine stamps that I have been looking for, N1-19. Unfortunately, they were LH stamps, but the price was right and I wanted to be able to add the scans to my database. At another table, I found a set of the Jordan overprinted Palestine UPU issue (N19-22), and these were MNH. Another dealer had a copy of N4, again LH, but at a quarter it will make a fine space filler. I also found 2 covers, 1 a FDC of some Egypt overprinted Palestine and 1 a valid usage of Jordan overprinted Palestine with one of the NRA (revenue) stamps on it.
I also met up with an old friend at the show. I ran into Joe Schwartz who was there to judge the exhibits. He had even read my blog recently. Joe is a long time collector who has provided me with a lot of material over the years, including a lot of the bulletins that helped me complete the set.

Update

The Negev Camel FDC I posted a few days ago is apparently frequently counterfeited. There was a write up about it in the SIP journal I received this week. Luckily, Sid Morginstin took a closer look at the scan I posted (I actually sent him a higher resolution image to look at as well), and he says it appears genuine as far as he can tell. Of course, he didn't see the actual cover, just the scan, so it is a best effort estimate, not an expertization, but it is reassuring regardless. I saw this same cover up on eBay today, with a start price of $250 and a buy it now price of $400. I am watching the auction to see what ends up happening. The cover on e-bay does have a cert with it, so it is worth a bit more than mine, but it will give me an idea of what it is worth.

Managing my collection part2

Storing covers has been a problem for me. I used to use Showguard cover albums, but I have found that the separators tend to tear, and there is no easy way to add pages in the middle. A few years ago, I found the Supersafe cover albums, which are much nicer in my mind. The albums are a bit pricey, but you can add a bunch of pages to the stock album without overfilling it. The albums come with 25 pages, and each page fits 4 covers. They make pages without a horizontal divider on the page that fit 2 covers (1 on each side) per page. Really large covers go in in plastic sleeves in a binder.



I occasionally search e-bay to find used Supersafe albums, and have had some success. Since new albums cost $20 and up, depending where you buy them, used generally offers a significant savings. With my special cancel collection alone spanning a dozen albums, the albums become a significant investment. One reason my post office openings collection is still not dealt with is that at 4000 post offices, it would require 20-30 albums to hold these.



One issue I have resolved is how to leave blank spots in the albums for missing covers. There are times I am missing many covers in a row, and when I used to get one cover in the middle of a run of 20-30 missing ones it was difficult to figure out what slot in the album to put the cover in. It is made more difficult when the sequence of covers contains sub numbers (for example 1021, 1021a, 1021b, 1022). You need to know how many empty slots to leave, which I always seemed to mess up. My solution was to print markers for each slot. I bought a box of Avery business card blanks, then used MS Word to create a mail merge from my database to the business cards. I now have a business card with the number, date, and description for each cover. I put one in each slot and now I am quickly able to put covers in the right slot. Also, as a consequence of this, each cover i have now has an identifier in the same slot with it.

Managing my collection

Tracking what I have and even more importantly what I need is an increasingly difficult task. I try and keep an accurate inventory of my collection. To do this, I have an MS Access database with over 9500 records listing all the items I have. This doesn't mean I have only 9500 items. For example, the Doar Ivri low values (1-6) counts as one item in my database. I have 7 sub-items of this record, including 4 FDC's, 1 set of mint Tabs, 1 cover, and 1 error. In total, there are 13,100 sub items in my list. The majority of the sub items (over 8500) have been scanned in to JPEG form so that I can easily look through them.

I have found that MS Access is really not adept at handling scanned images however. So, I decided to right my own program to take an exported Access database with links to the scanned images and displaying them in a user friendly interface. OK, so maybe it is only user friendly if the user happens to be the developer, but it works for me. I call my program the Ultimate Israel catalog, and have been working on it for a few years. My goal is to have it be a complete Israel catalog. I have taken data from multiple sources and combined it into one place. So far, I have the majority of the Bale catalog (missing errors and interim period mostly), as well as the 4 volume set of special, slogan and post office cancels. Parts of the Wallach definitive catalog has also been added, along with parts of the revenue catalog. I have also pulled show card information from the Carmel catalog. Also added items not in any catalog that I can find, such as the bulletins, maximum cards, remembrance letters, and Duck stamps.

The best part of writing my own program is that I was able to add a simple want list generator. At the click of a button, I know what I am missing. Or, at least that is the theory. The problem is I have boxes of material that are not inventoried yet. The single biggest category that I haven't inventoried yet are the Post Office Opening cancellations. Out of 10,254 items in my simple want list, 7,815 are cancellations. Over half of these, 3,986, are post office openings, and the majority should come off my want list once I catch up with my inventory. The rest are Slogan Cancels or Special cancels. The second largest area is FDC Bulletins. As discussed previously, I am missing very few of the bulletins in mint condition, but I also have a fair amount that have the stamp attached and cancelled as a FDC. Still, i show that I am missing over 1200 FDC bulletins, including both formats, and the Hebrew and English versions.

Other than these categories, my want list is pretty manageable. IRC's, private MAX cards, Egypt and Jordan overprinted Palestine are the next biggest gaps in my collection, and none of these are over 100 items. Of course, my want list is only as good as the source data I have entered into the database. If I don't know if something exists, I can't add it to my want list. For example, I have yet to add plate blocks to the want list generation logic. There are 2 reasons for this. First, I have not had a chance to scan and inventory the plate blocks I have (~10 albums worth, from 3 different collections I bought on E-bay), so any want list would be inaccurate. Second, I am not sure how to account for issues with multiple plate blocks. Most definitive issues have multiple printing dates and plate block varieties, and the earlier commemoratives also have different perforation varieties in the plate blocks (imperf corners, fully perforated corners, partially perforated corners), left vs right plate blocks, and even different plate #'s (for example, the second coin issue has plate 1 and plate 2, and the first festivals issue has 6 different plate positions). I have yet to find a catalog that has a comprehensive list of plate blocks. Anyone out there know of one?

Not in my album 2

In 1991, another imperf souvenir sheet was issued. This time, instead of being a free gift to subscribers, the souvenir sheet was sold in order to raise money for The Postal and Philatelic Museum. Subscribers were able to buy both Mint and FD cancelled souvenir sheets through the philatelic service. As you can see, the imperf souvenir sheets are also individually numbered. I don't recall if there were any limits to the number of souvenir sheets you could order, but there was a hefty premium on the sheets over the normal perforated variety. Once again, there are no spots in the majority of albums for this issue.

Bulletins part 2

There is a second format of bulletins that I have been collecting. I call these "W Bulletins", where the W stands for White. These are single page bulletins printed on plain pieces of white paper.

The early ones are available in both English and Hebrew. This same format was used from Bulletin #1 to Bulletin #151. I have seen several varieties of paper used, from a thin, almost transparent paper to normal typing paper, to a thicker more glossy paper. For these bulletins, I am missing only a handful of the English ones, including #1, 2, 4, 6, 11, 14, 20, 23, and 31. For the Hebrew version, I am missing more, a total of 92 of the issues. If you have extras for trade, let me know. I do know that #11 is the Negev camel stamp, #14 is the UPU issue, #20 is the New Years issue of 1950, and #23 is the official stamps. These bulletins cover many more issues than the bulletins in part 1 of this blog, since there are bulletins for several Tete-Beche issues separate from the general stamps, as well as bulletins for both the Flag envelope and the Camel envelope.

Starting with bulletin #152, the format changed. A single bulletin now was printed in 4 languages, and a colored background was added to the central portion of the bulletin. The bulletin orientation also changed from portrait to landscape. This design was used through bulletin #286. One thing to note, however, is that the numbers are no longer strictly integers, as several a and b suffixes were added over the years.

Bulletin #287 started the use of a new format. The paper was cut approximately in half, and the bulletin was now printed on both sides, with the front having only a picture of the stamps, and the information being printed on the back. This format was discontinued after only a brief usage, with bulletin #308 being the last one printed in this format.

The next format, shown here on the right, is the last one I have seen used. Once again, these were single sided bulletins, with the color now restricted to the title. The stamps and descriptions are printed in a single color, but it is no longer limited to just the black ink used previously. I believe each bulletin was printed in only a single color, since I have yet to see multiple color versions of a single bulletin, but there are ones printed in black, brown, blue, and green. This last format was printed in strips of 3 consecutively numbered bulletins, I have several uncut strips of 3 in my collection. I have shown one below. Of these, I am once again missing a few, #401, 437, 442, and 460. The last bulletin I have is number #498, the 40th anniversary souvenir sheet issued in 1988. If anyone knows of ones issued later, please let me know.

Bulletins

One of the most fun areas to collect has been the stamp bulletins. These came out in several different formats over the years, and they are numbered, so it is relatively easy to tell what is missing.

The first format I started collecting was like this one to the left. It is a color folder that has pictures of the stamps on the front, and some description and issue details inside and on the back. These were issued starting in 1959, and appear to start only with #4. There are 3 issues with no number on the front, and I assume those were #1-3. I have not found any documentation to back this up, but no one I have talked to has ever seen #1-3. There is also a fourth issue with no number, that I believe is supposed to be #19.

There are also some varieties of these bulletins. Later issues came with both a blank front, and printed with the agency name, like this example here. I have several different agency names, not just the philatelic services one shown here.

These bulletins currently go through number 780, which was the August 2007 issues.

There are also a few errors that I have seen in these notices. Here is one such example:

Between the printing of the bulletin and the printing of the stamp, the value changed. Rather than issue a new bulletin with a new number, the same number was re-used. Thus, there are 2 bulletin #375's.