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?

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?