What Was In Your Mailbox Today??

Great find, moneil!

I received this cover with a copy of the penny halfpenny brown issued for the second running of the British Empire Exhibition set in 1925. This second event was shorter in duration, was less well attended than the 1924 version, and the stamps and postal stationery issued catalogue for more than their 1924 counterparts. The envelope itself is a halfpenny stamped envelope with King Edward VII, issued either 1902 or 1904, so it was already over 20 years old when the sender used it to send a letter to Hungary. Noting that the addressee was a "Sir" and had loads of titles after his name and was associated with the British Legation in Budapest, I surmised that he might be some sort of diplomat. I googled his name (his full name was Sir Colville Adrian de Rune Barclay) and found out that he was a career diplomat, and between 1924 and 1928 he was: Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Kingdom of Hungary and Consul-General to the Kingdom of Hungary. (imagine putting all that on your calling card!). He was also the son of a baronet, the brother of two baronets, and the father of another baronet. Talk about always a bridesmaid and never a bride! This stamp, although fairly common is surprisingly pricy, even more so in used condition than a MNH copy, $80 in Scott and 70 pounds in SG, and that's for an off paper copy

It took more than five weeks to arrive, but these leave me two sets of traffic lights to complete that collection.

Today I got my first ever Stamp Auction Network win, and my first certified stamp! Very exciting day

When you buy general worldwide collections and even a lot of single country collections, unless the previous owner had spent a lot of money on them, you will usually see run of the mill material, and in the case of long sets as were the norm in the early twentieth century, the collection will almost always be missing the highest value(s) in the set, especially when they catalogue for more than a few dollars. This was the case in a Netherlands collection I recently purchased from EPL Apfelbaum. It was actually quite strong in the early material and was probably better than 95% complete up until about 2005, but there were, inevitably a few empty spaces in the 1920's to 40's. One set that was not complete was the October 1940 overprints of the 3 cent green "gull" stamp, Scott design A24, and originally issued in 1925. The stamp was surcharged in values ranging from 2 1/2 cents up to 5 guilders. The collection was missing the three highest values,: 1, 2 1/2 , and 5 guilders, Scott 241-243. The three catalogue for a total of $112.50 in Scott and I was able to get just those three stamps from a dealer in Germany, and for a pretty good price.

Nice buy waddsbadds. These were a gap in my collection for decades. I bought them at an online auction, last year.

I recently became very interested in Perfins and bought a couple of small lots of them off of ebay. I love the idea of doing some detective work with each one to find out what entity it came from and I like that it gives some excitement back to some of the more common definitives.

Waddsbadds, there is so much history you have found with that cover you recently posted! Very cool, thank you for sharing.

This was not in my mailbox, but hand delivered by a FED EX driver for my signature, but perhaps that is close enough.

Abraham D. Hazen served two terms as the Third Assistant Postmaster General. His first term began with his appointment of 1 July 1877. He was appointed to that position by President Rutherford B Hayes.

He served until he was replaced by Henry R. Harris, who only served from 1 April 1887 until 18 Mar 1889. Hazen was appointed for a second term which began on 18 March 1889 until 19 May 1893. He was the only person who served in this office for two separate presidents.

This is his official Appointment or Commission document, dated October 23, 1887, which signed by President R. B Hayes, and Secretary of State, William M. Everts.

The actual document is 24" x 17", what is shown here is a segment cropped (to save image size) from the center of the document that is 14" x 11". The rest is blank space around the text.




While Postmaster Commission documents for Postmasters are relatively common, those for Postmaster Generals and their Assistants are not, as there were a very small number of positions to fill and appointment tended to last for longer periods of time. In 15 years of collecting these materials this only about the fifth example seem.

Mike

DesertDweller -- John Randall published a Catalog of United States Perfins in 1998 -- Published by the Perfins Club.

It's very thorough, comprising over 500 pages. You might look for it or write to The Perfins Club at 48 West Walnut St, Long Beach NY 11561

I received volumes 1A - 3B of the 2023 Scott Catalogs Friday. This is probably the most up to date world catalogs catalogs that I have ever owned. This will be some improvement over my 2010 set that I have been using, As a bonus, volumes 4A and 4B should arrive this week.

That's a great looking stamp DesertDweller you won at the auction!

Peter

In 2013, PostNL issued three permanent stamps depicting King Willem Alexander. The stamps have a year of printing printed in iridescent ink.

The retailers that sell stamps may not order them. So, I order them from the PostNL web shop. It, always, is a chore to find the set of stamps and sheetlets on the PostNL website. On Monday, I found them and ordered them. They are sent free of postage. So, I thought I might as well order two more sheetlets of five international stamps to use for letters I send friends.

I noticed PostNL issued new 'Dutch Icons' permanent stamps. The international rate stamps come in 'sheets' of five different stamps showing typical Dutch things. The previous stamps had been issued in 2014 and remained unchanged. I decided to order those. PostNL decided to send me the stamps in two instalments. Today, the 'Dutch Icons' stamps arrived.

The new stamps show a vase of tulips, a carrier pigeon carrying a letter (maybe this pigeon is sky high on pot), a raw brined herring, a lighthouse (how do ships find their way along foreign coasts in the dark?), and a pot of coffee with a caramel waffle.



These are the predecessors. Note the printers have not changed as can be seen by the cylinder numbers: Walsall became Cartor. Since these are gravure printed, the Cartor unit that printed the stamps is the one in Wolverhampton (formerly Walsall).

A sequel to my post above in which I added a few stamps missing from the Netherlands and colonies collection I purchased recently, and as I noted some of the long sets were missing, as is so often the case, some of the highest priced stamps. In this case it was Netherlands Antilles 142 and 143, the top two values from the 1936 Queen Wilhelmina set. Not too pricey, but the only two in the set that catalogue more than $10 each.

Wow Waddsbadds...those are beautiful stamps. I checked...missing from my collection also. Where did you acquire them?