While I was sleeping....

Looks like Israel Post was busy releasing new stamps. Once again, they are heavily slanted towards collectible topics and formats. There are 2 new sheets issued in both the generic sheet format and a regular sheet format (Happy Holidays and With Compliments) plus a booklet containing both stamps, a mini-sheet with Animals and their offspring, a sheetlet of 9 celebrating 150 years of settlements outside the old city walls in Jerusalem, an Urban Renaissance stamp, the seemingly annual Zahal stamp, and the annual Festivals set of 3. I still haven't put away the last set of new issues I received. Looks like I better hurry and catch up!

Is this real

I saw an interesting lot on E-bay today. It is a copy of the Imaba booklet with tab pairs of the Doar Ivri stamps. This is a fairly rare booklet, and it is more common to see it with blocks of 4 stamps, rather than the tab pairs. The stamps are normally hinged into the booklet. From the pictures, it looks like the tab pairs are placed in mounts, rather than hinged into the booklet. Maybe someone took the original stamps out of the booklet and put them back in using mounts. Or, it is possible that someone bought a booklet with blocks of four and replaced the stamps with the more valuable tab pairs. I don't know if it is possible to tell for sure what happened. Maybe someone who knows more about the Doar Ivri issue than I do would be able to tell if the right versions of the tab stamps are included or not. To me, the value of the booklet is severely diminished by this. What do you think?

Negev Auction #72

In the latest Negev auction, which is scheduled to complete next week, there is a lot that contains a large collection of definitive plateblocks. Since no listing of blocks was available, Sid Morginstin was nice enough to send me the lot to preview. The lot is well over 200 plateblocks, and I need only 19. When I look at the catalog value of those 19, I was shocked that the Bale 2006 value was $701. However, the majority of that value was in only 3 blocks. JA18, the 1NIS value from the Archaeology set printed on 5/5/89 was listed at $500, and SH19 and SH20, both the 10ag value from the Herzl definitive set with printing dates of 8/8/91 and 2/23/92 respectively list at $50 each. I was so shocked, that I went back to my 1998 Bale catalog to check the value there, the JA18 was listed at $4, and the 2 Herzl blocks at $2.60 and $2.75 each. That is a huge difference, so I checked the 2000 catalog, and the JA18 was listed at $10, and the Herzl blocks at $5 each. I can think of no reason that the blocks would have doubled in value between 1998 and 2000, let alone why they would have each at least added an extra 0 to the price somewhere between 2000 and 2006. Does anyone else know of one?

My own stamp, again

Do you notice anything different about this My Own Stamp sheet? I recently saw this listed on E-bay, and it caught my eye. There are only 8 stamps on the sheet, while they normally have 12 (2 columns vs 3). According to the seller (Marlen Stamps), this Moses Montefiore sheet was "issued" on December 5, 2007 in a very limited quantity (500). On E-bay, the seller is asking for $69.95 for the sheet. The same seller has an ad in Linn's, offering it for $59.95. He also has a similar sheet for Elvis Presley, this time claiming a print run of 1000. None of the bulletins from the philatelic service have offered this sheet, although most of the other special print generic sheets have been offered for sale through the bulletin (as opposed to the private printings where you can get your own pictures added to a sheet). The sheets that the philatelic service offer are in the $12-15 dollar range. While this is an interesting variety, I am unwilling to pay such a steep premium for the sheets.

Israeli Fruit and blue boxes

On April 11th, Israel issued the second printing of the Fruit booklet. Like all recent re-issues of the self-adhesive panes, they added a second menorah on the back cover to show it is the second printing. However, it appears this time, there were two separate varieties issued. Some of the booklets have a blue box in the upper left margin, next to the second stamp down. You can make it out in the scan attached here. I am not sure of the frequency of this variety, but it is not on every pane. So far, it does not appear that dealers are charging a premium for this variety.

I am also being told that a third printing for this pane was released on June 1st. I am not sure if this same variety exists on the third printing as well. I have not seen any mention of it having occurred on the first printing, from 11/26 of last year.

Generic Sheets and Printing dates

I keep seeing new generic sheets offered on e-bay at outrageous prices. People get them printed, then list them on e-bay as "rare" or "error". I normally don't look twice at them. Except, today I decided to look at the printing dates of the sheets. I noticed that several of them had been reprinted, and the reprints were not sold as generic sheets (as far as I know). For example, the Blue and White stamp (the beach scene) has had at least 10 different printing dates. Of these 10, I only have 7 in my collection at this point. The first printing was on 5/15/2007, and there was a second printing on 11/14/2007. I have both of these with the generic smiling face stamp on them. Then, there were two printings in 2008, 6/17/2008, and 11/6/2008. Both of these are offered on e-bay only with custom printed designs. In 2009, there were 5 different printings. The first was 2/4/2009 for the Passover comic book, then came the 2 sheets for the Pope's visit (3/24/2009 and 5/15/2009). The Casi Angeles sheet had an 8/5/2009 printing date. The last one in 2009 was the 12/2/2009 printing that again I only see offered on e-bay with custom printed designs. So far in 2010, there was 1 additional printing date (1/6/2010) that was used both for the Passover 2010 and the Herzl sheet.

The fun was not restricted to only the Blue and White stamp. The greetings stamps from 2003 also saw some reprints. It looks like the original set with the generic picture had two printing dates (7/17/2003 and 1/12/2004). There is also a bunch of good Luck stamps sheets with custom designs with a 12/1/2008 printing date, as well as a Thank You design with a 4/12/2007 date. The Good Luck design was also used for the soccer issue, with a 6/17/2008 date. The Hugs and Kisses stamp was reprinted for the Jetix issue on 2/10/2008.

The red and white flower design each had multiple printings. The original printing run was dated 1/30/2008, but the white flower sheet was reprinted on 10/7/2008 for the comedians issue, while both the red and white flowers appear to have been reprinted for custom designs with a 1/21/2009 printing date.

The Heart stamp has also seen multiple printings already. The initial printing was on 5/4/2009. That was followed with a 6/5/2009 printing for the Disney issue, and a 10/27/2009 printing for the Hanukkah issue. There was a 4/7/2010 printing for the second Disney issue as well.

I am missing several of these issues. Does anyone have some available for sale at reasonable prices? I am not interested in paying the hundreds of dollars a sheet some of the dealers want for their "scarce", "rare" and "error" creations.

To page or not to page...

That is the question. Whether tis nobler to make ones own pages, or to use a pre-printed album? So, my Shakespeare may not be the greatest (I was never a fan), but the question is serious. I use the White Ace album for my tab collection, but just recently I found out that Lindner makes a Minisheet album, as well as an album for the Klussendorf stamps. Both of these are rather pricey. Does anyone use them? How complete is the Klussendorf album? Right now, I am using a SuperSafe sheet album to hold my mini-sheets, is there any reason to switch to the Lindner minisheet album?