What Was In Your Mailbox Today??

For me, today was kind of a fun day.

After collecting most of my adult life, and then some, I finally started to desire a Penny Black about a year. Broke down and bought one and it arrived today.

Now for where to put the durned thing.

I got several new Argentine stamps today.

Columbus Day (1964), 437th Anniversary of the Discovery of America (1929), and two minisheets for the International Exhibition of Philatelic Literature and Journalism (1979)

Today I got an Indonesian bird stamp as well as stamps on an envelope that was used to mail it to me. Pretty neat!

My old lighthouse shortwave uv-lamp had died. My longwave lamp, also, was getting on. I ordered new ones. They are 'Lindner' lamps but look suspiciously like 'SAFE' lamps. The shortwave one has the same silly standard that allows you to direct the lamp at your eyes, handsfree.

A few bargains I picked up on ebay. My definition of bargain may differ from others opinion. I will say it was a bargain to me. As always some would say I picked them up cheap , others at the right price and others I over paid. The rule I guess is are you happy with the price you paid. If so then others opinion doesn't apply.

Uknjay, WHAT arrived today??

Received the cover shown in the attached image. Ordered a single stamp last week, one that I actually spotted in this forum. The cover is clean and it's obviously sent by someone who knows how to trigger a manual postmark. Unfortunately the one applying the postmark did an average job - clean and readable, but not in the prefered place. Okay, it's better than what can be expected.

Some details:

• Postmarks are blue in Germany due to the QR-code in black on the postage stamps - increased readability.


• Postage stamp is with tab since it's a lickable stamp - to differentiate from self-adhesive, if they exist - good habit.


• The OCR-reader at PostNord in Sweden can also read and sort addresses with the cover upside down - made my single stamp leave the glassine mount inside the cover. Advise: no open glassine mounts.

Germany, Michel #3739, issued January 5, 2023.
Tourist attractions in Germany - Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex (UNESCO World Heritage)

Some auction lots. Malaya (actually two lots, one a group of three albums, the other an accumulation), with a decent range of the 1940s definitives.



and a hole filled in my French collection.

Nice French sheet Geoff!&
Regards
DavidR

Thanks, David. Can't afford to eat for a few days,of course!

I could not resist this great deal on Amazon the other day; 4 TB blazingly fast external Solid State hard drive for $198 with free two day ship.

I do complete hard drive file/directory copies (as opposed to using backup software) as a data recovery strategy. So having more external 4TB hard drives is always a good thing.
Don

For philatelic purposes alone that sounds like giant overkill. I'm struggling to fill up a 1 TB USB-stick before I commence with the two empty ones I've had in reserve for years.

My website (StampSmarter.org) is almost 2 TB just by itself and I have 3TB of drive space in two of my laptops. So not overkill at all.
Don

I see, a website. Very nice indeed. That explains it.

I generate a lot of philatelic content in many ways. I just finished helping a friend do a new presentation for several stamp clubs (will post link in the next few weeks). He did all the research and wrote the presentation; I added the graphics, videos, and animations. This directory, with all the development files is 1 GB. I also do a lot of digitization of philatelic hardcopy resources; over the last years, my wife and I have scanned and OCR nearly 2 millions pages.

Given the amount of man hours in this stuff, I use redundant external drives and multiple computers to ensure no data loss. The new drive above is capable of copying 100 MB per second, so I was able to copy my 275GB working (current) development directory in about 35 minutes.
Don