Argentina - Ministerials

I have finally managed to organize a few pages with my Argentina Ministerials collection and upload them to blogger.
They are here: Argentina Ministerials

They are listed by department and then by date and the series includes a "summary of missing" page which I have placed immediately following the intro. As time goes by it is becoming more and more difficult finding these stamps and any assistance filling gaps would be immensely appreciated. I have lots of stuff for trading although not in a very organized way; thousands of loose stamps in a shoebox. I would also be willing to pay postage even if for just one stamp.

Thanks in advance to one and all.

Nice Work Tony, the chances of my having a rarity would be quite rare..but its nice to view your presentations !!

You know, Phil, it's been close to three years since I last added a ministerial to my collection. Just can't find them any more. A local dealer - a Jimmy MacIntosh - used to keep a lookout for me during his travels but ever since he passed away some ten years ago I have only got my hands on three or four at most.

A friend from Córdoba brought them up in a conversation a couple of months ago and I decided to dust them off and make something of them. Now we'll sit back and see what comes up. I shall be spending a week in Montreal starting Wednesday and will visit local stamp shops if I can squeeze some time off. It seems at times that I had more time on my hands when I was still working than since I've been retired.

Tony, I know what you mean..i am "retired" and there is something going on everyday...i see the ministerials everywhere..but of course they are the "usual suspects" !

:(
blogger site down.

Would like to see how members collect / mount these items.

Rod, I purchase a stockcard or so of them when I can...am stockpiling them in stockbooks...but it seems to be the same old stamps !!

I am about to mount mine Phil,
but was unsure how to go about it,
I'll follow Gibbons and mount Ministry, then stamp examples
across the page.
Mine are a tawdry lot, I think they reserved the poorly
printed / perforated for the ministries.

Hi

If anyone wishes files I have cross reference tables for these issues (created for the store):

Scott - Stanley Gibbons
Stanley Gibbons - Scott
Scott - Michel
Michel - Scott
Scott - Minkus (not sure if I have
Minkus - Scott (verified these two

E-Mail me at jerrybemail-stamps "at" yahoo "dot" com.
Please put SCF - Argentina Tables in subject so I do not delete your e-mail as spam.

Jerry B

What I did was for each type from each Ministery I set up a grid for all the variations I expected to find- and then tried to find them. E.g. this is 1923/4 type of Justice and Education (the 1 peso is on the next page 'cos it's too big to fit):



Note that I have never found the Serif overprint on the Stop in Value Tablet stamp; indeed I've never found it for ANY of the Ministeries, and if I were setting them up again I would leave that column out, since I don't believe it exists.

On the other hand you will see at the bottom that I have foud an example of the MJI overprint on the half cent. I haven't yet found it for any other Ministery, but if I were starting again I would put that row in for all of them.

By contrast here's the 1913/5 Housing grid:



Here I tried to be too clever by half and set up a different grid for each Ministery based on having a proper marked space only for what watermarks I believed, based on catalogue, actually existed. Well, either the catalogue is wrong or I copied it badly as you see from the 12c Honeycomb which doesn't have a proper house to live in (so much for the Ministery of Housing) If I were starting again, I would make a single grid for all Ministeries and put a ? or something similar in the ones I doubted the existence of. I would also now list two types of honeycomb - Rough/German and Precise/Italian (see the Joe Hahn Blog).

Finding the watermarks is the biggest problem. The early ones are not easy to disinguish (especially multiplple sun from rough honeycomb). Dealers are not keen to spend time working them out and listing them since:
a)it's a lot of work for little reward - there is no real premium for most of the watermarks
b) I suspect they don't want to risk making a mistake, contracting the Curse of ebay, and having a long dispute with some pedantic RSole who wants to start WW3 over being sent the wrong watermark on a 20p stamp. In Britain we have the phrase Health and Safety Gone Mad. So as far as the Internet is concerned you tend to end up buying cheap job lots and hoping.

I see, thanks, that gives me some fat to chew,
I have an aversion to gaps, it irritates me
so I'll probably follow your grid pattern, but across the page
using each basic stamp as the template.
I don't mind them being out of order horiz, as I can pencil underneath.

I can, and have done before, just plopped them into polypropolene
and slip them into the page cover sheet, whilst I muck around
with my digital image page, then, when it looks passable,
delve into the hinges.

Are the difficult ones well known do you think?
I am thinking anyone who sells auction lots would pick over first.
I shouldn't think these are a mainstream item though.

Tony - can you check your hyperlink to Argentina Ministerials? Since philb congratulates you on your presentation it must have been working at some point but all I get is an error message saying the page cannot be found.

Hello one and all. I have been following this thread and have not replied so far because I wanted to put what information I have in some semblance of order before posting. So here goes:

1. I have spent the past 18 months looking for good homes for my collections. They have now all been adopted except for my Sudan Camel Postman, my Argentine Ministerials, my Portugal and Colonies Ceres, my Turkish 19th cent., and my Indian States which I have decided to keep and are now in a trunk in storage.

2. After a long time without any show of interest I removed my blogs from Blogger. I made copies of everything but I cannot find neither the html nor the txt files I downloaded from Blogger before shutting it down. If I find them, I shall set up the Blogger account anew.

3. I vaguely recall that my greatest difficulty was finding Department of Finance (Ministerio de Hacienda) copies with rounded-corner dots; I think I only have three or four of those - I don't even remember if they are not the same stamp. I was told by a contact in Córdoba that there are some rounded-corners in the Department of Public Works (Ministerio de Obras Públicas) overprints also but I have never seen any.

4. I collected these stamps first by department and then by date of issue of the stamp with reference to the first day of use as a departmental overprint when available.

5. Another contact of mine in BsAs also collects (collected?) these stamps and went so far as to take into account the positioning of the overprint. To me that sounds too much like work, I'm afraid.

Hope this helps.

I also collate mine by department and date of issue..basic to be sure ..note: its amazing how the price can vary on these stamps...if someone on the net is selling just ministerials they may ask 10 dollars for a small stockcard...but if they are mixed in a lot of 100 or so...the way I usually purchase them...i can get them for 2 or 3 dollars !!

Kind of makes you wonder about the accuracy of catalog values...the Scott catalog has the Vast majority of ministerials at the bare minimum value !!

Man: I'd like a bottle of milk.
Shop keeper: That will be £2 please.
Man: That's ridiculous. The shop over the road only charges £1.
Shop keeper: Why don't you buy it there, then?
Man: I was going to. But he hasn't any in stock.
Shop keeper: When I haven't got any in stock, I only charge 75p.

It's much the same with stamps.

Just popped in to see if the 1923 / 1924 Ministry of War
(with/without stop lithographs) were unusual.

I see all minimal value so I'll pop out again.