Found A Nice One At The APS Stamp Store Today.

It's few and far between, but every now and then I stumble across some nice items at www.stampstore.org.

I already have two examples of R3a, but both are faulty. This one is not only sound, but has superbly balanced margins as well. I called the APS to find out who the expertizers were (one always wonders whenever you see an older cert; also APEX has not always been consistent as to the parties they have expertizing revenues). For this stamp it was Robert Cunliffe and Richard Friedberg, so I'm quite sure it's legit.

The price was quite reasonable, given the centering. Can't wait until it arrives!

I will wait for the fix, I sure would like to see a picture!

Well that was odd. I figured out what was going on. It wasn't a typo on my part or a problem with the image. The problem is the board's automatic URL rendering.

If you notice, I have a URL earlier in the post. I had not encoded it with URL tags. I just had it as plain text. The board "autosenses" URLS, however, and tries to turn them into links automatically. But there's something in the code that breaks subsequent IMG tags.

All I did to fix the image display problem was to put [url] tags around the website address rather than just leaving it as plain text.

So the URL autolink is a nice feature, but its implementation is broken. If URL tags are really required, I would disable the auto link rendering unless it can be fixed.

When you have the time and money to throw in a hole and build your own forum, you may code it as you please. You were told you how to fix it (which takes a total of about 3 seconds), if you don't like the solution, post elsewhere. It not that big of a deal that you have to send multiple notes to staff, make multiple posts on the forum, and send multiple emails. Get over it.

I apologize for providing what I thought was helpful information. I was not intending to sound like I was criticizing.

Nothing is perfect on the net. But let's face it - this forum is the best and easiest philatelic forum for posting images, whether hosted here or on the users own website.

Well this one was disappointing, and a reminder that one should always be careful when considering stamps with old certs: you don't know what may have happened to the stamp since it was certified.

In this case, the stamp had been hinged for a long period of time, resulting in a hinge stain that is strong enough to have caused the paper along the top center of the stamp to turn translucent. When held to the light it looks like the stamp has been thinned.

It's on its way back to the APS.

Too bad.

that's too bad..