Fun With Germany Kiloware

If you have purchased any Germany kiloware in the last decade, you will have more duplicates of certain stamps than you could ever use. Some large format, self-adhesive stamps are made in astounding numbers. One such stamp is the "Roter Sand" lighthouse coil of 2005. This stamp was issued in the amount of 505.5437 million.

I was looking through these "Roter Sand" duplicates a few weeks ago and found a few interesting printing varieties. I guess when half a billion of something is printed, some plate and ink problems are going to happen. One of the stamps has tiny blue specks covering the entire surface. These specks don't show up that well on the pic. Another has tiny black specks covering the entire stamp. The third has red orange bands on the lighthouse and a different blue for the sky, probably because the red color was too thin, or it was running out.

Here they are.

Last year I soaked around 10-15 pounds of German kiloware over the course of the year. I think I literally have close to 1000 of the Roter Sand Lighthouse stamps. "More than I will ever use" is right. There are a few others that I have several hundred of, and many that I have well over 100 of. Only reason I soaked them all off was because they're easier to store that way, tied neatly into bundles of 100. I'm not a flyspecker, though, so they'll probably sit there like that until I die or get around to trying to sell them for whatever I can get for them.