What Was In Your Mailbox Today??

Nothing. That's exactly what I got in the mail today... nothing. A cold wind blows through my empty soul. Life has lost its luster. I have no purpose and no drive to go on...

Oh, wait... there's always tomorrow! Hope is renewed!

I did well today - photography book of fellow stamp collector William Eggleston, two R Crumb volumes and a pack of light bulbs. The information superhighway is an expensive place.

I wonder if this will ever catch on as extremely lightly cancelled. It appears the automatic letter facing machine in Valladolid is on the blink.

Someone in Switzerland mailed me a Postcrossing card with a fabric stamp on it!! She said that these were made from old uniforms turned in by postal staff. She ALSO said that she feels Switzerland has "boring stamps".

Delivered by UPS, not by the post office, so, not technically in my mailbox, but I received this, something I've been wanting for a long time to fill a very visible hole in my France collection, and now I have all three of the elusive French souvenir sheets of the 1920's and '30's. This one was purchased from a dealer in the Netherlands and it was delivered in what I think was an incredibly quick time. I ordered it from ebay on Sunday, it was shipped from Rotterdam on Monday, and was delivered to my house in California this morning,(Wednesday), so just two days! I also purchased a used single from this sheet but it's not here yet. I ordered one because my album (Lindner) has a place for both the single and the full sheet. In some ways it's a bit of a sacrilege to break up what is a pretty pricey sheet - even back in the day, the total price of 20 francs was many times the price of an ordinary first class stamp - but on the other hand for every sheet that was broken up into individual stamps, it means there are fewer of the intact sheets available. I suppose that despite the price these are going for they can't be all that rare given how many are available for sale on ebay. Something still puzzles me: what is the purpose of the three small holes, two diamond shaped and one banana shaped, at the bottom of this, as well as the 1927 Strasbourg sheet and the 1937 PEXIP sheet? Does anyone on this forum know?

It's the mark of the Imprimerie.

Sweet map of New Brunswick. A good place to motorbike next June.

<It's the mark of the Imprimerie.>
Geoffha: thanks for that, it's been puzzling me for a long time. I thought it had something to do with holding a stack of them in place
Also I forgot to mention that on the seller's ebay page it said that upon delivery I would have to pay import duty so I was envisioning having to fork over some money when the UPS driver came to my door, but all I had to do was sign for it, no additional payment, to my relief.

What did I receive today? Well, I recently bought 21 MNH topical sets, and they arrived to me today, from a Hip Stamp dealer I often buy from. Nice mix - shells, birds. Some nice Iceland. Still waiting on a recent set of birds from Tristan Da Cunha, that I could only find from a dealer in England. Finally. I should receive 2 sets soon from stamp dealer Stanley Lisica. A very nice Ciskei birds set, in addition to a Botswana birds set. Good times indeed!

Auction lot of Malayan States - couple of albums, three stock-books and an alarmingly full shoebox, chiefly of Straits material.

paddle_more

If you come near Fredericton let me know.

Dianne

A nice variable value stamp from Spain with a very high face value.

I received this nice cover today, and the receiving mark on the back shows that it was delivered to Monsieur Berthelot in the 17th Arrondissement in Paris, exactly 91 years ago: March 30, 1935. The lettering above the cachet will go nicely in my Art Deco collection. I didn't notice it until I received it, but the slogan cancellations read (in French of course): Smoke Gitane cigarettes, and Enjoy Le Patriota cigars. It shows how much times have changed in that it would be inconceivable today for a government agency (La Poste) to encourage smoking.

Received a partial set of gummed 1934 National Parks plate blocks for my Farley Collection. It's really a shame they didn't have the 1c and the 5c plate blocks.

Still working on filling in as many spaces in the early part of my French collection as I can. I needed Scott #17, and instead of just the loose stamp I found this very nice cover postmarked June 24,1854. It's one of those covers that's formed using one large sheet of paper, with the letter itself on one side and then folded into an envelope which was sealed with a tiny dab of wax. I don't speak French so can't decipher the letter but I think it might be business correspondence. I've just finished watching an excellent TV production of The Count of Monte Cristo made for Masterpiece on PBS and I couldn't help thinking that this letter was sent only a handful of years after the book itself was published and Parisians were still reading it avidly as a fairly new book