Most Memorable Acquisition

I (obviously) agree with that. Typical of the cancellations on the special printings.

Eligies, I also won the Pickett Error Lottery. I remember that one of the rules was only one entry per person per address. So I had several co-workers send in entries for me and one of those co-workers won for me. I received my error pane without the special "blue envelope." A letter accompanied it saying I would receive the blue envelope shortly. I never received it of course. Today there is a premium paid for an example with the blue envelope. I have the letter mounted next to the pane in my US album!

Ah, moral justice for cheating!

Although after 46 years of stamp, postmark and cinderella collecting it's hard to point "a most memorable acquisition" I can remember two:

.- A 1763 Barcelona pre-stamp folded letter. The oldest that I've.
.- A very nice Black Penny (still, my only one!). That, thanks to our fellow Londonbus, I was able to buy for a very fair price. Thank you, Mike!

I believe my most memorable was at age 11 when I purchased 200 different from French Colonies. Suddenly I was looking at stamps from places I had never heard off at that time, like Reunion, Guadeloupe, Martinique, St Pierre & Miquelon. My father found his old Atlas and sat down with me to find those mysterious places. I will never forget that feeling of enthusiasm and happiness of getting so many stamps from unheard of places. I had no stamp catalog but to me those stamps were gold.

Some 30 years later I purchased the Victoria £5 orange (UK), and filled a hole in my album that I had always considered impossible to fill. That off course was a satisfying moment to, but still not as memorable as boyhood memories with 'worthless' stamps. So my experience is that memorable does not necessarily involve high value stamps.

Hi all, I bought from a stamp show an 1862 bank check, it was in one of those plastic sleeves. Dealers was in a hurry to go, so I bought it. Later on found 5 bank checks different banks but all dated during the Oct-25 Dec 1862 period (U. S. Revenue Stamps).

I've seen similar bank checks on ebay selling for a lot more recently.

Stampmaster

As for my first "impressive" stamp.......Penny One black given by my father for Xmas at age 13

Blaamand I would like to see a scan of your Victoria 5 pound orage (UK)...I feel lazy today and do not wanat to hit the Catalogue !

I was 12, walked into Sooner Stamps in Tulsa, OK and fell in love with the 4c Trans-Mississippi "Indian Hunting Buffalo" stamp. It was my first non-post office purchase and I felt like a REAL collector then. Completed the set 22 years later as a gift from my wife for our 10th wedding anniversary.

@Arrows2Atoms - nice story. And what an amazing Wedding present! I would never in my wildest dream get any stamps from my wife at all. Please share with us the 'secret' of your marriage - we would all love to get such presents

@Rene - What a cool and loving father!!


Ha ha, I know the feeling! Here's the '£5 orange', quite an iconic stamp to.

After high school I put away my worldwide collection and went off to college. After a few years of college ,I got a job at the Chicago Board of Trade in the commodity business . I started trading the markets and became a member and traded on the floor . As a trader money came fast and went fast , the world and what went on in our daily lives didn't matter ,you loose all sense with how people led their lives . The only thing that matter was to trade and being on the floor . All sense of cars ,girls , clothes is secondary ,all you think about is where is the market going .
One day while walking past the post office there was a sign in the window about the COMPEX stamp show starting on Friday at one of the downtown hotels . Friday came around and I went upstairs to the firm that cleared my trades, I asked for a few thousand dollars for pocket money from my trading account .
Went to the show to see what was going on ,found lots of nice stamps and the stamp dealers never saw a young guy with so much money to spend on "what ever" look nice ,I really like that and it gave me something to think about other than the previous days high or low of the daily price range or movement ,I was hooked .

Thanks Cursus for your memories of the Penny Black. I hope you enjoy it for many years.

I have 3 special acquisitions that I cannot choose between and as 2 of them have SCF connections...........

First was a gift from SCF member Stampstudy of a 00p Machin (yellow) which at the time were banned on ebay and other sites and a controversial item. Not so much today of course. I will treasure it always.

The second item was a small group of 1923 Exhibition labels which were purchased from SCF member filipo after a discussion thread here around 5 years ago (some may remember it).They included types that are rare and were from special printings made for KGV during that Exhibition. One of the labels was unlisted and is thus far the only copy known to me.

The third one is a reproduction of the GB 1929 £1 PUC stamp (Block of 4), a special printing from an old wooden Itaglio Press during a demonstration at the Guildhall in London for the 'London 2010, Festival of Stamps'. They were not for sale but later 50 were offered on a first-cum-first-served basis of one per customer. I got lucky.
I have never seen any offered for sale anywhere nor am I likely to. During discussions at the Stafford Stamp Fair in June 2011 I was offered some nice sums of money for my copy. I refused !

Londonbus1

I have several memorable acquisitions, but one that particularly stands out is this postcard written in Esperanto:




I used to go to WESTPEX with my favorite uncle every year, and I found this when we were there in 1996. Zeppelin+Germania+Esperanto was irresistible to me, but since I was an impoverished grad student at the time, it was a bit too rich for my blood. So my uncle bought it for me, and it became the cornerstone of my topical collection on Esperanto and other artificial international languages, which is the main focus of my philatelic activity nowadays.

For me, it was definitely the Zepps. That acquisition finished off my MNH airmails.

Jack Kelley

This was my first purchase on E-bay. It was in the early days, probably late 1996. There was no picture, and the item title just said Israel cover. The description mentioned 8 stamps on the front, and labels on the back, and the date. I took a chance, submitting my $5 minimum bid. I was the only bidder. I sent my check (no PayPal in those days), and waited. Turned out to be a FDC for the UPU booklet, catalog value of $250.




Another memorable purchase was one I made a few years earlier, also online, although from someone on rec.collecting.stamps (does that still exist?) I don't recall the exact description, but it was a large lot of Israel material, and included some of the early Israel booklets, although exploded and mounted as if for an exhibit. I paid about $50 for the lot, and the booklets catalog value was about $1000.

For me, it was the 1992 USA Winter Olympic strip of stamps. I got them as a kid and they were the stamps that got me interested in stamp collecting as a kid and which ultimately led me to re-finding the hobby in my mid 20's. Those were the catalyst if you will for my enjoyment of the hobby.