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Australian Stamps

Monday, January 4th, 2021

It’s time for another selection of stamps from the order I made a couple of months back. This time, let’s look through a pack of 200 Australian Stamps.

That’s all of them, with the exception of a tiny amount of repeats. They span about 60 years from 1949 to about 2008. Here’s the oldest one, which was also the only pre-decimal stamp in the pack:

You can see in the first pic that Australia has a standard stamp size (that continues today) in which the vast majority of stamps are printed. The second photo shows the smaller size, with some smaller (older) stamps at the bottom. Australia does of course print stamps in other shapes and sizes than these, but they are usually higher denomination or for specific commemorative purposes.

Looking at this specific selection it’s clear there are a few recurring themes. One is sports, and the above photo shows many of those in the pack. I was surprised by the absence of cricket stamps, but a quick glance online shows they have existed and were simply not in my selection. There were several Olympic themed stamps in my pack as well.

Vehicles were another theme, and I recall collecting some of the plane ones in my youth. The car series is quite handsome!

There were several train stamps as well, from at least four different series over a couple of decades. Obviously a popular topic of Australia Post.

Christmas stamps were extremely common, and this picture isn’t even all of them. Over 10% of the 200 were Christmas stamps, and they’re such a tradition in Australia that they even print Christmas stamp stamps, like this one:

There were actually two different stamps commemorating Christmas stamps!

This got me thinking “How did this company get these Australian stamps?” I bought the packs from a stamp dealer in Canada and I assume his various country selections originated from the countries themselves? Are there companies in Australia that collect used stamps (from envelopes possibly?) to sell to dealers overseas? If so, this could explain the frequency of Christmas stamps since I would expect most Australians are likely to send Christmas cards than use the postage in the rest of the year?

The most common topic – and this has always seemed to be the case – is of course Australian wildlife. Check your postcards I’ve sent you from Oz over the years and you’ll likely see animal stamps on them, including perhaps some of those shown above!

A few other stamps caught my eye, such as these two from series about children’s novels:

Or this example of a stamp about stamps (sort of):

There were many other interesting ones but this post is already too long. As with the previous packs I had a lot of fun sorting these and looking up details on many of them.

I still have more packs to go through as well. What will the next one be? Check back in a month or so and find out 🙂

Posted in Australia, Collecting, Stamps | Comments Closed

My Collection: PlayStation 2

Friday, January 1st, 2021

The PlayStation 2 (PS2) was Sony’s second game console, and was a dramatic upgrade to the original PlayStation. Released in the USA in late October 2000, I got my first PS2 a few weeks later from Working Designs, since I was then writing content for their website.

It was an extremely successful console – to date the most successful (although it will almost certainly be surpassed by the Switch) – selling over 150 million units in over 12 years of life. It has a massive game library and many extremely successful franchises that continue to this day began on the PS2. Historically, this will always be remembered as one of the most important game consoles in history.

Even though it’s still relatively young, some elements of the console feel archaic today, such as the use of dedicated memory cards for storage, the wired controllers and the lack of any built-in internet support. It did however play DVDs, and for many homes was their first DVD player, which was one reason for its great success.

Over its lifetime I bought well over 150 PS2 games, but I traded many in and my remaining collection (115 games) is shown above. Unsurprisingly this is mostly RPGs (since I was reviewing all of them in those days), and virtually every game you can see was beaten to completion.

The graphics hold up reasonably well these days: certainly much better than the original PlayStation. This was also the era in which cutscenes really took off since loading time and video quality had improved significantly over the previous generation. Playing the games now isn’t too great though since the (first generation) Dual Shock analogue controllers feel slow and stiff, and the memory stick system is clumsy.

The PS2 was also regionless, and this was the era in which I started semi-regular trips to Japan. That said I only bought two PS2 games while I was there, both of which I beat completely despite having not being able to read the text!

As I said there’s a plethora of incredible games on the system, including the mighty Final Fantasy XII, the Ratchet & Clank games, the first Monster Hunter and many others. But for me the Naval Ops series will always be remembered fondly. These are action games in which you develop and fight warships in combat. It starts off realistic enough, but by the end you have star destroyer sized submarines with wave guns and laser cannons. They’re all fantastic!

For an extremely popular system with so many great games there’s relatively few ‘holy grails’ on the system as far as collecting is worth, and the vast majority of games these days can be bought for less than when they first came out. The two shown above are probably the rarest in my collection, each worth over $100, which is modest compared to games on other systems.

As the PlayStation has evolved through the generations (now up to the PlayStation 5) the differences between successive iterations has become less and less. I feel the PS1-to-PS2 jump was the biggest, and for that reason remember this console more fondly than any other PlayStation. That said I’m not overly nostalgic about it (or it’s games) like I am handheld or Nintendo systems.

It was fun getting it out and firing up the games for a spin, but I think if the day arrives I decide to sell more of my collection it’s likely my PS2 games will be on the list.

Posted in Blog, Collecting, Games, History, Otaku, Retro, Tech | Comments Closed

Mushroom Stamps

Sunday, December 6th, 2020

I had fun with those Dinosaur stamps a few months back, and decided to dip my toes back into the world of ‘topical collecting’. So I made an order at a stamp shop for a few inexpensive packets of stamps in various categories, and over the next few months I’ll go through them here on the blog.

Let’s start right now with… mushroom stamps!

100 stamps cost me about $5. I chose mushrooms because they were cheap and I was amused that they existed as a category (“Why mushrooms?”). It wasn’t clear if the packet was 100 unique stamps or whether there would be doubles. Let’s see:

There were no doubles! In total there were 104 unique stamps from 14 countries: Mongolia, Afghanistan, Benin, Paraguay, Romania, Burkana Faso, North Korea, São Tomé and Principe, Kampuchea (Cambodia), Guyana, Guinea, Nicaragua, Hungary and the Soviet Union (Russia). The country from which I had the most was North Korea, with 12 stamps.

The stamps spanned 28 years from 1968 to 2006. The above example is one of the two oldest stamps and is North Korean. It’s also one of only a small handful that have been actually used, since (as with the dinosaur stamps) almost all of these are CTO stamps made for collectors and machine canceled. Most are therefore still gummed.

There’s a bewildering variety! The above (from Mongolia in 1985) are diagonally printed and very large and some of the prettiest in the packet.

Quite a few were still attached, like these Romanian ones from 1985. Most were illustrations, but there were some photographic stamps as well.

My favourites are probably the stamps from Hungary. Not only do they feature lovely line art, but they are actually textured and the ink seems slightly iridescent. This series contains stamps in two sizes as well, and these bigger ones must have looked lovely on a letter back in 1984!

Incidentally just because these are (mostly) CTO stamps doesn’t mean they weren’t also used for mail. Researching these stamps I found examples of some of them that had gone through the post, so unlike most of the dinosaur stamps it’s likely some of these were used by postal customers when they were released.

So why so many mushroom stamps?!? I’ve learned this is one of the most popular categories for topical stamps, and a catalogue printed only few months ago lists 6144 unique mushroom stamps! So my 104 is only 1.7% of those that exist. It’s a good thing I hate mushrooms else I may be tempted to chase them all 🙂

And so they’ve gone into my album, which still has lots of space left to fill. It’s a good thing I have several packets left to open…

Posted in Collecting, Otaku, Stamps | 1 Comment »

2020 in Games

Thursday, December 3rd, 2020

It’s not finished yet but what a year 2020 has been! KLS and I have been staying (and working) from home for nine months now and will continue to for at least six months more. Lots of time for indoor hobbies then, like playing games! Well yes and no. Yes since we didn’t travel and rarely go out. No since we’re still very busy working, in my case more so than usual since teaching online is so much work!

I also had an event this year involving my left eye (which I never blogged about…) that unfortunately changed the way I can play games. I’ve worked it out now, but it led to a bit of a hiccup in my hobby for many weeks as I was adapting to the symptoms.

But my favourite hobby continues, and as always I bought and played games in 2020. I know there’s a month-ish left to go in the year, but with Christmas on the horizon I doubt I’ll buy any more games so now is as good a time as any to make the annual post.

In total, I purchased 50 games in 2020. This is a slight drop from previous years, but is in-line with my average over the past decade or so of buying a game a week. Of the 50 games purchased this year, a third of them were bought in a five day period in Japan in January, and none were bought between the release of Animal Crossing (on March 20) and mid June. Here’s the breakdown of titles bought by system:

As you can see the Switch has the majority (26 of them) and aside from the PS4 the remainder of the systems I bought games for is very retro! You’ll see the 3DS and Vita are gone (for good?): as I predicted they both retired in 2019. Every non Switch/PS4 game was bought in Japan, and most were Wizardry games 🙂

Here’s the breakdown in terms of dollars spent:

Of course it’s mostly Switch, but mostly due to the amount of games rather than the price. As with recent years I rarely buy games at full price, and am instead content to wait six months or so until they drop to about half the original cost. I made an exception in 2020 for Animal Crossing, but the best deals I got in 2020 were $1 for a brand new PS4 game (Journey To The Savage Planet) which was mispriced at Walmart, and $0.58 for a Switch digital game (Doom 64) since I used credit I’d earned buying other games. Notably one of the most expensive games I every bought was in 2020 as well – a used GBA game (Steel Empire) for $78. It was worth it 🙂

Incidentally this has very much been the year of the Switch. The system has come into it’s own in a big way, and many great games have been released for it (and are still to come). New versions of the Playstation and XBox have recently been released, but for me right now the focus is very much still on the Switch. I more than doubled my Switch collection in 2020, and it’s now 1 game shy of becoming the Nintendo console for which I own the most games. (The same is true for PS4, which at 114 total games is one game shy of surpassing my PS2 collection.)

As for the best games I played this year? Well the winner is surely Xenoblade Chronicles for Switch, but it’s the same game that came out almost a decade ago that I gave my game-of-the-year award to then, so I’ll let it go this time. I played a lot of other great games this year, here are three of the best:

Animal Crossing New Horizons (Switch)

This became a phenomenon when it was released. A game about escapism and happiness was tailor-made for an epidemic, and led to Switch shortages that even continue now many months later. You’ve probably heard about it – it’s already one of the best selling games of all time – and the hype is real. It’s loads of fun, with massive amounts of customization, and can eat up your time before you know. I played it religiously for several months and then stepped away. I’m not done for good; I just needed a break so I could play other games!

God Of War (PS4)

This one came out a while back but I only bought it at the tail end of 2019 and played it this summer. It’s a relaunch of a game series from the PS2 era and it’s astonishingly good. In fact it’s probably the best action game I’ve ever played and excels in every area: story, graphics, gameplay and design. I loved it so much I got the platinum trophy, which I rarely care about these days. It’s dirt cheap now so if you haven’t played it, you should.

Ring Fit Adventure (Switch)

This is a fitness game using a circular device into which you place the Switch controllers. You play through a surprisingly complex RPG (with stats, items, equipment, techniques etc) which is fully controlled by yoga and exercise moves. Do a series of squats to defeat the enemy! Run on the spot to get to the boss! Tighten your abs to defend! It sounds gimmicky but feels very natural when you’re playing and is loads of fun. This one was almost impossible to find for many months (we got lucky in the summer) since I assume every Switch owner bought this as well, but I’ve been playing it since I got it and dutifully ‘do my Ring Fit’ every day now. Is it making me fitter? I can’t say, but I’m happy It’s giving me exercise as we move into a freezing winter.

Before I end this years summary, a brief shoutout to Puzzle & Dragons. Yes I’m still religiously playing my little ‘phone game’, and have now surpassed eight years without a single missed logon day. I’m well, well, well into the endgame but it’s still fun and still – in my opinion – unsurpassed in it’s corner of the market. Try it if you haven’t yet!

Posted in Collecting, Games, Miscellaneous, Otaku | Comments Closed

Selling Cards Again

Saturday, November 14th, 2020

Sort of a sequel post this time. After making unexpected money selling the Pokémon cards a few weeks ago, I decided to do the same with some of my Magic The Gathering cards. Specifically I thought it was time to sell any doubles I never used, as well as anything that had ‘value’ since all they were doing was sitting in a box.

If I could get a few hundred out of selling some extra magic cards, why not do it?

So I spent several hours sorting through my collection and extracting the cards that I doubted I would ever play. The vast majority of there had never seen play, so parting with them was easy. (I did a pass of the few decks I don’t intend ever breaking down first, to make sure the above weren’t useful in the decks.)

I priced the cards on the website I was selling as I went along, and didn’t bother selling anything that I would get less than $0.50 for. As I continued I became astonished by how much I could sell certain cards for, like the land in the above picture which I’ve owned for over a decade and never once put in a deck.

I ended up packing up about 140 cards and sending them off to one of the internets foremost MTG sites to sell them. The exact amount I would be paid would depend on card condition, but 99% of the cards were unplayed so I wasn’t worried about them ripping me off.

This cheque arrived yesterday:

An average payment of over $7 per card! Not bad for items that were literally in a box unused, especially when I was initially optimistic about getting about $250! This represents many years of my average magic spending, so given I still have the bulk of my cards (admittedly not valuable ones) you can almost say the collection has paid for itself 🙂

Posted in Collecting, Miscellaneous, MTG | Comments Closed

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