What Was In Your Mailbox Today??

Banana, please be careful! If my feeling is correct it is only a stiffener in the cover. You might want to approach the seller and ask them before you damage your cover for nothing?


Peter

Thank you Peter. I have taken your advice and dropped the seller a wee message to check.

Technically yesterday, but the second to last sheet I need for the Japanese album.

Arrived this morning. Let the plate number hunting commence

For the top row, those plate numbers should be in the side margins.

Banana Bread.

Recommended resource: Stanley Gibbons' Great Britain Concise catalogue.

For that first and fifth stamp in the top row: https://www.gbps.org.uk/information...phabet-I.php
SG Concise does not help in identifying plates (of the Penny 'Stars').

This stamp has a strange green inclusion on the N in United. It's not a pinhole but something solid I've been tempted to scrape off. Just arrived and freshly scanned. Need to get it under the microscope.

Edwin Healey - The Royal Postage Stamp Album from1896.

Arrived today - Really looking forward to having a proper look through it. A quick shufty through it has revealed a decent amount of stamps with a focus on the Commonwealth.

For my Great Britain postal stationery collection, I received this 1 penny postal card issued for the second running of the British Empire Exhibition, held in 1925 in the London suburb of Wembley. Using the same designs, denominations and colors as the much better known postage stamps, the postal stationery was issued in four different formats, a 1 1/2 penny envelope, a 1 1/2 penny letter card which had three perforated tear off strips which enabled the user to access the writing surface, and one penny and 1 1/2 penny plain postal cards, and each format was issued for each of the years 1924 and 1925, so eight in all.

Arrived in my mailbox a few days ago - this 1893 Finland postal stationery item. The penmanship is amazing - check out how they shifted the writing by 90 degrees to be able to cram more writing onto the small card. Dimensions 3 1/2 x 5 1/2. Fun stuff!

Philatelia that is a great cover and in fabulous condition! I have actually seen a few letters from the 19th century where a return letter was written in the rows of space between each line of the letter. Perhaps paper was scarce and/or expensive in the 19th century? It would be a challenge, at least for me, to both write and read letters like this one with the distraction of the original letter to work around.

Thanks for sharing, you must be very pleased with it!

Thanks, Shermae- the previous owner (s) did a wonderful job protecting this postcard. I try to do my best to do the same, you know what I mean?

That writing just amazed me, too. Yes, very Delighted to find this one.

I think John James Audubon used to write this way to save paper. I visited his birthplace museum as a kid and remember they had some pages from his journal like this on display. IIRC he used different colored ink on the cross pattern to make it easier to read.

Google isn't helping me find verification of this about Audubon, but apparently Charles Darwin used this technique as well, when he was out in the field and ran out of paper.

"He used to write just as you do normally, but then because he would be off exploring on the HMS Beagle and started running out of space, he would turn the pages sideways and write back across them ..."
https://oceanographicmagazine.com/f...ean-stories/

Back on-topic, this package came in the mail recently, with some nice used blocks neatly cancelled in red. But then the postal clerk plastered the postage meter and tracking number on top of all the stamps, instead of folded over the side like my post office does. These labels don't soak off easily in water or anything else that I have found. Oh well.

My newest arrival is an addition to my collection of postcards written in the constructed international language Volapük. It's a U.S. postal card (Scott #UX6) that was sent by Ferdinand Nehls in Solms, Texas, to J.G.M. Reynders in Delft, Netherlands, on 18 December 1897.

The Solms post office was only in service from 1894 to 1903, so two postcards I have that were sent to Nehls in 1904 and 1906 have his address as New Braunfels.