Bag of Stamps (part one)

August 23rd, 2020

While in a craft store looking for storage items, I came upon this:

150 stamps, 50 of which were guaranteed to be different dinosaur stamps! It was only $8 and I couldn’t resist the dino-temptation so it quickly became mine.

A quick comment on the packaging before I open it. It’s a plastic bag, drawstringed closed and heat-treated to stay closed. A most unusual way to sell stamps I though, and hardly tamper proof. It gave the whole package a distinct air of amateurism… but it was only $8 πŸ™‚

Here’s the contents: a yellowing envelope full of dinosaur stamps, and a jumble of other stamps folded up in a thin cardboard flyer advertising other products by the same company. Putting aside the dinovelope, I started by examining the ‘mixed’ stamps.

As can be seen here, every expense was spared keeping the stamps in pristine condition, and quite a few were folded like this one. I started separating them and sorting them.

As you saw the packaging says (in small print at the bottom) that some of the 100 ‘mixed’ stamps may be duplicates, and in truth I expected most of them to be. I was quite surprised as I sorted them all to find the number of duplicates to be small. I was also happy to see a lot of international stamps, and became quite distracted as I sorted, closely examining each stamp as I picked it out of the pile.

There’s all the ‘mixed’ stamps! In total, there are 121 unique stamps, and a further 29 doubles (of 18 stamps). So for starters the package contained not 100, but 150 stamps! (Can you see the doubles I missed in the above photo?)

Those are the largest and smallest stamps, with the Anguilla one being about 2 by 1.5 inches. I’m not sure this is remotely important, but I always note stamp size since I’m always thinking about sticking them on postcards πŸ™‚

Here I have separated out all the international stamps. There’s 30 in total with no duplicates, from the following 22 countries: Cuba, Sweden, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Romania, Poland, Luxembourg, Spain, The Netherlands, England, India, Hungary, Germany, North Korea, Austria, Russia, Tanzania, Anguilla, Laos, Rhodesia, Western Sahara and Manama.

A few of these raised an eyebrow, so I did some research and learned a few interesting facts!

Rhodesia, as you know, is no longer a country. So that’s a stamp (and in fact my only stamp from a no-longer-extant country. It’s in wretched condition, but it’s over 50 years old as well.

The DPRK stamp is from North Korea. This may seem unusual but North Korea issues an extraordinary amount of stamps: more even than South Korea! The stamps are mostly propaganda (including some infamous ones depicting war with the USA) but there are a lot of animal and topical stamps as well. The main reason is to make money selling them to stamp collectors.

The Manama and Western Sahara stamps are what are called ‘Cinderella’ stamps, which are those issued by non-postal authorities. Manama is part of UAE today, but in the 60s was little more than a desert oasis that issued ‘stamps’ to sell to collectors despite not even having a postal service. Western Sahara is the same, although they have some more claim to sovereignty since they are a disputed region of Morocco. But still, their stamps are not usable for postage. (The North Korea and Anguilla stamps are arguably Cinderellas as well.)

The things you learn from stamps!

The most common ‘theme’ was unsurprisingly US flags, since the USA always has one in circulation. I like the series at the bottom, which showcase famous sights with the flag. The 4c in the middle is very pretty!

Flags aside Christmas stamps were common, with eight in total from 3 countries. The UK one – though folded and damaged – was printed with flashy gold ink and is very pretty.

America issues a lot of attractive stamps today, but looking at this group it’s clearly been the case for a long time. The wireframe science stamp is a favourite, and I’d love to put those Frankenstein stamps on some postcards!

This guy stood out for obvious reasons. So many words and it doesn’t even mention the cost of the stamp itself! It’s a 4c stamp issued in 1991 when postage increase from 21c to 25c. Ugly as hell, but curious (since 4c stamps existed then and still do today).

Now I’m sure most of these stamps are common trash to a serious collector, but for someone with no ‘collection’ (such as myself) it’s a good selection and absolutely worth $8 in my opinion. Based on the mixed stamps alone, I was happy with his stamp bag.

But what about the 50 unique dinosaur stamps? Alas this entry has been too long already; let’s save the contents of that enticing yellow dinovelope for next weekend! (And no, I haven’t opened it yet so I’m waiting too!)

See you then πŸ™‚

Day Trip

August 18th, 2020

Today we drove 90 minutes north…

To visit Bigfoot

Although just a metal statue, he was pretty impressive…

But the souvenir shop behind him didn’t sell anything good…

After a brief stop in Vermont we then drove over near Lake George and visited souvenir shops…

And some more souvenir shops…

And even bought a souvenir or two…

And then stopped for groceries on the way home…

And ultimately, many hours later, found probably the strangest thing we’d seen all day just down the street from our home…

It was a good day πŸ™‚

Postcard Sorting

August 16th, 2020

About a year ago I started thinking seriously of sorting my postcards. I’d been storing them completely unsorted in a plastic tub, and while I wanted a better solution I had a feeling the job would be a difficult one.

Then in January while in Oz/Japan I bought some postcard storage albums. Interestingly none of these were intended for my own use (they were gifts) but when I used one to sort some of mums postcards I became impressed by how great it was to have them all viewable at a glance, and knew them I’d certainly get around to it sooner or later.

Fast forward through the pandemic, and a couple of weeks ago I helped JAF sort her postcards into a binder using postcard sleeves. They looked wonderful and at that moment I knew I’d found my solution. Within a week I’d bought binders and ordered sleeves enough for over 1000 cards, and these past few days I sorted and sleeved them all.

I’ve kept every single card ever received, with the earliest being from SMC back in mid 1994. They’re now all sorted chronologically (as best I can) by sender and for the ones sent by me I’ve sorted by country as well.

This process has allowed me to catalogue the collection. In total I’ve got over 850 postcards, about 530 of which I’d sent myself (or KLS did), and about 330 of which was sent to us by someone else – probably one of you!

Unsurprisingly the most cards are from Oz: over 300 in total (220 of which I sent myself). These past few years I’ve sent KLS at least one per day during my trips and I’m sure I’ll continue to do this whenever I can visit again. With so much from one country you may expect repetition but there’s surprisingly few cards represented more than once.

From within the USA there’s cards from many states with the most represented (outside of NY) being CA, FL and HA. There’s lots of cards from Japan, the UK and Ireland and a handful from countries including France, Germany, Canada, Spain, Italy, New Zealand, Korea, China and other exotic locales. (Incidentally I’m not including Postcrossing cards in any of this; I’ve got over 220 but they’re still loose in a box!)

These cards are overloaded with memories. When I first started sending postcards to myself (over a decade ago) I didn’t write much – the goal was the card, not the message. But these days I write a lot and over time the cards have become ‘trip diaries’. Reading them brings back all the memories from the various vacations we’ve taken over the years.

That’s an example card from 2017, written in a Kyoto hotel room after a day trip to Nara to see the deer. I was well into using stickers on cards and the simple description of our day contains details that would have certainly been lost had I not written them down.

There’s an example of a card I sent from Scotland. The card itself is amazing – metallic and shiny – but the message on the back is sublime in its mundanity, and when we read it today we had a good chuckle remembering the (true) event. I daresay there’s no chance we would have remembered this had I not written it on the card in that Inverness B&B! (Incidentally I bought two packs of candy and got a second sticker that I put on another card. Who did I send that to?)

When I travel alone the messages (sent to KLS) are more introspective and I have noticed I have a tendency to dedicate entire cards to moments, as you can see in the example above (and yes, that’s a Ganesh watercolour I painted). I never run out of stuff to write, and in fact last Oz trip I sent an average of two cards a day. Sometimes when unusual or notable things happen I make a note on my phone so I remember to write it on a postcard πŸ™‚

Here’s a similar example from my last stay in Japan:

Each of these cards is a little time capsule and having them all easily readable like they are now is something I should have done years ago. If you’ve got your own collection (and I know many of you do) then I suggest getting them out of a shoebox and sleeving them yourself. Yes it’s a little bit of an investment up front (the supplies cost me under $100) but it’s absolutely worth it!

Oh and send me some postcards! I’ve received almost none in 2020 due to you-know-what but just because you’re at home doesn’t mean you can’t send me a funny/interesting message on a card. I’ve still got empty sleeves: give me some cards to fill them!

My Mindflayer

August 10th, 2020

After great success several years ago, I thought it was time again for some fantasy miniature painting. So I bought myself – for only $5 – this dude:

It’s a 2 inch tall plastic model (by Reaper Miniatures) called D’Khul Bathalian. But if you’ve played D&D you’ll recognize this as a Mindflayer, an iconic evil octopoid-humanoid. As you can see the figure is astonishingly detailed for its size, and when painted professionally it looks mighty good as these examples show:

Obviously I wanted to paint mine to look as good as these, and reflecting back on my efforts from last time I considered any flaw in the final work due exclusively to my choice of paints. This time, rather than using free paint that came with a children’s magazine, I would invest in high quality tools. And so I did:

I purchased this set of premium acrylics for only $9, which I thought quite reasonable considering it came with three brushes! I’d never used acrylics before, but was sure I’d have no trouble due to my overall better-than-average artistic skills.

The figures don’t need primer, so you can just slap on apply the paint with little setup. Everyone knows mindflayers are purple so the first choice of colors was easy and shortly after I begun I knew a masterpiece was being made.

That’s a shot of my palette upon completion. I chose dark colors to evoke the evil of The Underdark and the bright whites and yellows were used for overbrushing (for detail) and the magic effects of the staff. I blended red and black to create a clotted-blood colour for his robe and the blue was used extremely sparingly (a few atoms only) to detail his medallion. In short my design was eclipsed only by my effort, and both resulted in a final work I’m immensely proud of:

Thoughts?

August Fireworks

August 2nd, 2020

We went to Rochester for a couple of days to visit J & J. We played some games and I probably sent you a silly postcard!

Last night we had a cookout and let off the remainder of the fireworks I bought two months ago. Here’s some photos…

That last one is a magnesium-based flashing device which shines brighter than the sun. I couldn’t even look at it since it hurt my eye…

Fireworks are always fun! I’m already looking forward to next year πŸ™‚