Piece De Resistance On Steiner Pages .

I know what kind of persistence and tenacity it takes to put together sets like these. Quite a different vibe than Big Blue collecting.

floortrader, I'm absolutely drooling over these Russia offices... what an excellent collection you've assembled.

I've read some of the other posts in this thread and wanted to ask a clarifying question: how do you decide which material to go after for these? Do you acquire a mostly-complete set and then go after the remaining holes left to fill?

Floortrader- I'm also curious as to how often you see complete sets you want in material issued before say 1940?

Thanks -Shermae and Xavierstripe for the kind words .

I buy stamps at public auctions ,I try to break down my buying into half for country collections {last week I purchased a Ubangi-Shari collection } then the other half I wait for a large auction where I purchase a dealer/junk lot to play with and break down .My interest right now is to purchase material that rarely comes up for auction or countries that are difficult to find .

Sometimes I luck out and sometimes I get stepped on . I was telling Michael Rogers in Florida that a TIBET collection was at a West Coast firm and opening bid was $1500.00 and I plan to bid up to $4,000 to get it ,it was real nice . The lot went for $80,000 final bid and I asked him what happen ? He laughed and said he bid the lot up to $20,000 and he couldn't believe it but understood another lot like that comes around only once in 10 years .

SHERMAE ---- At public auction your going to pay up to get early complete sets , It depends on which countries ,like Germany ,Iceland and France it is a small fraction of catalog but British and French Colonies they go for a bigger percentage of catalog .I purchase the Russian when they were not as popular as they are now .

Still in awe over here! How many of those Russian stamps are/can even be together in a collection? Whish I was as organized too! Inspiring!

Recognising that I only follow a handful of GB auctions, my experience has been that, if you want complete early sets of, say, French Colonies, you have to look at a country collection of the Oubangi-Chari type that Flootrader picked up. I don't see much in the way of early French area sets broken out here.

Here are a couple of useful tips for determining if the commonly faked Offices in China overprints are real:

Here is the first thing to check- Look at the serif on the top of the 'K'

Notice that the right side is shorter than the left side.

Most forgeries will get this wrong and the serif will be even on both sides.



This is a simple way of checking for faked diagonally printed Offices overprints in general. On all genuine stamps from Scott numbers 1-47, the angle of inclination (of the overprint) is approximately 57-58 degrees whereas the angle of the forgeries varies between 38 and 53 degrees. (usually an angle around 50o being the most common).

Thanks Rogdcam ---It sounds like now I got to make a reference page on the different forgeries because you said there are different angles made by the forgers . Here are the easies to spot that I have . Will continue to search for the different angles of the over print . Thanks again .


The two on the left are real and the two on the right are forgeries .

Rog- in your image the right side of the "K" appears taller and the left side shorter. Am I looking at it the wrong way?

Hi Shermae - You are correct. The "tell" that I am talking about is the serif at the top of the left vertical element of the "K".