Are Ebay Sales Indicative Of Existing Stamp Populations?

'Junk' is too pejorative a word to mean merely 'extraneous to one's interests'.

There are foods I don't eat, art I don't care for ... but that hardly makes them 'junk'.

The gardeners long ago perfected a definition of 'weed': a plant for which no use has yet been found.

For stamps, I persist in offering "bearing defect(s) so severe that only someone indifferent to those particular defects, or indifferent to condition (period), would buy it for their collection".

So, a stamp with perfs invading the design might be 'not for me', while it would still do for someone who collects by topic, engraver, postmark, slogan cancel, paper variety, color variety, precancel, perfin ... yes, as always, until a better one came along, with the means to acquire it.

That having been said, a early NYP (Not Yet Posted) chrome (postcard) of the Manhattan skyline is about to hit the shredder because the image is so fuzzy that you cannot tell which buildings are still under construction, and dating that image would be about the only 'redeeming social value' of that card.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

This piece of kit from my favourite SF movie would be useful.

Terry

ikeyPikey, you're missing the point I was making. Applying the word "junk" to anything is highly subjective, and its significance is also subjective. You tip your hand by the use of the expression "'highly' pejorative," indicating that you are sensitive to its use. I say that in the hobby realm that word gets tossed around with far less seriousness than you are giving it, and that you make yourself vulnerable by being sensitive to it. Relax. Allow yourself the luxury of a functional understanding of the word and don't try to impose a one-size-fits-all definition.

As far as "weed" goes, if I am trying to raise a small plot of daffodils for color effect and a rose pops up in the middle of it, that rose is out of place and is coming out. And if I don't have another place for it, it's history. At a functional level at that point it is indistinguishable from any other weed that might have grown there. And I don't need an abstract definition of weed to tell me how to handle that rose.

As always, especially in English, CONTEXT sets the parameters for semantics, and that occurs in a field of meaning, not a uniform abstract definition.

Terry, just to be clear, was that from "Blade Runner?"

Yes essayk, it was. The machine was reading the 'precious' snaps of replicant Leon. The implication is that the photos contained holographic data and the machine could read this and look round and behind objects in the 2 dimensional hard copies. I confess my sympathies were with the replicants in this excellent portrayal of Philip K Dick's novel, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep". Even Batty and Gaff are revealed as having soft spots at the end of the film. One SF movie way, way ahead of the rest. Didn't spot any stamps in it, though.

Terry

Yes a great movie Terence, one of my favourites of all time.