First Kiloware(Ish) Purchase - Not What I Expected (Photos)

Not a disappointment, though! This ~$20 ebay purchase was described as a "Mixed Lot of Cancelled Stamps". My daughters and I enjoyed doing a preliminary sort tonight.

Most of the US stamps included the postmark, many Boise, ID, which is where the seller is located, but there are several Nebraska and a handful of Grand Island, NE, which is my hometown.



Most of the stamps look to be from the 1980s/90s.



The description said they believed all the stamps were US, but there might be some others. There was maybe 10-15 WW... and this ridiculous amount of Machins!



The listing photos also showed a small block of Easter Seals. So I wasn't expecting this many Easter Seals/Christmas Seals/National Wildlife...


And there were more unexpected finds:







LOTS of fun for a newbie like me, and I KNOW I'll be posting more pictures (and questions) as I get into my goodies!

This is a real unexpected super good stuff! lucky you!

When big-soak-day arrives (if it does), remember to pull out ALL stamps on colored paper, such as the red and green corners from Christmas card envelopes, and the pink envelopes from fussy greeting cards. Sometimes the colors will run, quickly ruining all the other stamps in the pot.

You can also make up a lot of Easter seals and Wildlife stamps, offer them here, and recover $5 to $7 of your original cost.

I spy a MN town cancel (Wayne, Minn)

Zuzu,

Nice lot with some pretty sweet suprises! Kind of like a mystery box. Have fun, Dan

i like the covers with the 19th century 2 cent Washingtons !

Thanks Doug. There will be soaking (for some of those US at least - not sure if I'm going to keep all those Machins) sometime down the road. We've only soaked a handful of stamps before, so the reminder about colored envelopes is appreciated.

And I do think I'll be offering up some of those seals at some point, too.

smauggie, I think there are some more modern MN cancels, but that Wayne one you're seeing is from Wayne, Nebraska. Here's the original listing with some decent photos. I'd been trolling ebay for US kiloware/mixtures, and I decided to pull the trigger on this auction when I saw those photos of the Wayne and Omaha cancels. I'm all about NE.



Me too, philb! Several of the envelopes still have letters inside that I'd like to read, but I am concerned about handling.

How would one go about carefully handling such enclosures??

Just carefully remove contents from the covers read (maybe scan & post) then return the contents to the covers and safely package the covers and mail them to me...errr- I mean, place in your collection.

http://www.adminware.ca/machin/machins101.htm

Zuzu....do like I did, print the free Machin pages and try to fill them up....once you fill up a space add the rest to your trade pile

Nice!
Lots of fun in there, you got yourself a good deal!

You're going to have a lot of fun. Congratulations!

Brandon, thank you for providing that link. I know I had come across it a while back, but I appreciate the reminder! I'm going to try to print the guide and album pages and see if I can't do some Machin sorting this weekend. ;)

stampgal & Zipper, you are both correct! After the initial rough sort, I haven't really had a chance to dive in much more. We're in the process of reorganizing things around the house, unfortunately. Speaking of which, anyone have a copy of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Buying New Carpet"? :P

Ha Ha...they say the family that chooses carpet together stays together!

Have any idea how many of those are WW stamps yet?

one thing to be wary of on the machins..........I found 6 varieties of the 2p Green Machin, in a stack last night.

Other than the Machins, only a handful - 15-20 maybe. I wasn't really expecting any WW, so those are just a little bonus, I guess. ;)

Brandon, I have my guide and basic album pages all printed out and three-hole punched, and I'm ready to do some sorting and soaking this weekend. =)