I Inherited Grandfather's World Stamp Collection, Help?

Good stuff! Sounds like fun.

Don't forget about the cancels and markings and postmarks. Nice ones or interesting ones can be valuable also, or make an ordinary stamp worth5c worth $1 to a appreciative collector.

Oh yeah Puzzler, I'm trying to make sure I pull everything like that as well to try to research myself, or start posting them here to ask about them.

Are screw ups like this ever noteworthy, or is this pretty common? I've seen plenty not exactly centered, but this is quite an extreme...

Ah, my favorite 'error' in stamps (so far anyway). Mis-perfs. Or misperfs. I would collect them if ever the hexagon cancels gave out but there is no end in site with those yet.

They are indeed collected by some. Sold as errors or varieties or an EFO (error, freak, oddity). The sheet of stamps was not centered correctly under the perforating machines.

Not listed in the regular catalogues but any eye-catching, noticable error like this or missing colour or extreme colour shifts and collected.

Thanks for showing them.

Very interesting, I'll keep that in mind and continue to set those that I find aside as well.

Today I found an old Ben Franklin of some sort, pretty bad shape, but it was on a piece of cardboard so I decided to use that to test soaking. I'm shocked at how easy that went to remove it and then dry it. Pretty cool.

Alright, I have a few more that I'd love to hear your thoughts on, and also to help identify some of them, especially the ones with OP. Here we go...

1st is Austria (I think) going by the denomination (kroner) in that time era. Zooming in on it, does it have a leave pattern in all that plain looking background? Sorry no catalog.

2nd is Italy, King Victor Emmanuel III, floral issue, 1926 1.25 Lira.
I posted a question about it here:
https://goscf.com/t/23927&SearchTerms=italy
Yours is similar to mine in that the floral surround is partially missing. Interesting variety for those that collect Italy.

3rd is Italy again, same guy I think, search for Victor Emmanuel on ebay (works better when you search on ebay dot it but then you should search in Italian words.

4th is Germany with an interesting overprint. I don't know what it is though.

5th is a Polish stamp overprinted while under occupation by Germany. Look in the back of Poland or the back of Germany. I don't have enough experience with these.

6th is New Zealand 1895? showing Queen Victoria of the British Empire. Nice colour for Queen Vic that pink is.

7th is France, showing Napoleon III Ceres (Goddess of Agriculture) with a nice cancel (I don't know the name) look on this French site to find which city used it http://marcophilie.org/ all about the collecting of cancels or Marcophilately.

From thread on France Ceres 25c see new thread here:
https://goscf.com/t/24978

8th is Great Britain showing Queen Victoria, 1881 1d lilac, used $25 or so. Look at the watermark to see if it is inverted (upside down) then it's worth $475. Nice Manchester cancel looks like. A beaut. Hope I have that right, My luck with catalogues hasn't been too great lately!


Note, the use of the letter 'd' to denote a penny or pence is from the Latin denarius or silver penny.

edit: fixed my mis-identification of France

Thanks Puzzler. Here is a scan of the front and back of that last 1881 QV. It is hinged - in cases like that is it best to leave it as is or should I try to remove it?

How do you check for the watermark? Is it possible to do with a scan, or must it be soaked to reveal it?

I'm shocked how many older stamps I have found in this collection. As I mentioned before, I assumed that just about all of them were all from the WWII period.

I had a thought on this one and looked in the catalogue again. There are two dies or versions. One has 14 full dots in the corners and one has 16 dots. Yours is the 16 dot cheaper $2 variety, inverted watermark $20. Nicely centered and light postmark, which you have +50% so $3 but because of damage maybe 50c now.

There are different colours to these also, lilac, deep purle, mauve, bluish lilac, sut yours is the garden variety lialc I think.

Thanks for the back scan. Lower corner creased and torn. Darn. Value just dropped out the bottom. Looks good from the front though so that may save some value.

A soak in regular water with just a drop of dish washing soap (mild) should have that looking better than ever. That's how you remove hinges, they should float right off in 15 minutes. Sometimes multiple hinges will hide a problem underneath like a thin or a rip or something. This looks OK so go for it I say.

Warm water. You should, especially with hinged used stamps, rinse them a couple times as the glues and assorted finger oils and dirt will combine in the water and be left somewhat on the stamp if you do not rinse.

Be careful because of the rip and crease, the stamp will be more delicate and fragile in those areas.

Wish I had specialized German and Polish catalogues to help you. Those others look nice so probably are sought after and all that.

In my experience, the rusty and moldy ones have a softer feel to them. if you pull a batch, make sure to wash your hands before rehandling the stamps.

Not that it likely matters, but on the above stamp - does that likely say "Manchester"? What would that be under it, the date I mean?

That could be a railway cancel perhaps.
The AB 51 could be the train number or clerk number or direction of travel or other things. They are called transportation cancels or TPOs in Britain. RPOs here.

The actual date looks like AP 7 or April 7.

Or, since I really am not sure what it is, it could be just a clerk number and time stamp combined or something completely different.

A TPO should really be in the form Manchester - Glasgow or & or Liverpool - Manchester or or some such. Hmmm could be a Depot or Station TPO cancel though.??

Well, I have started going through the batch of 1k+ that I said I bought for around $60 or so. I'm having a ball and I'm having a ball going through it. Everything is well organized, and I think there are some decent things included. I'll post some images of those later.

I do have one question though. What is this kind of stamp exactly? This feels like a piece of a postcard or something, and the stamp seems to be a part of it, not stuck on it...

Generally called postal stationery, the thickness of the 'cut square' (named from old time collectors having pictures of these in their albums and having to cut the corner off in square shape usually so they could place it in their albums) will sometimes tell you if it was a postcard or newspaper wrapper or envelope of some sort.

Priced in most catalogues as the whole item, eg the postcard, but sometimes a cut square piece is priced also.

Also called pre-printed stamps or stationery. Still in use today, although more colourful at times.

Belgium, King Leopold II, postmark is probably Anvers. The months would be spelled in French as Belgium has two or three official languages.

Puzzler, say what you will but you are a fountain of knowledge for a newbie like myself!

Thanks, I worried I was saying too much and rambling on.

It's more fun once you know something about the history and use.