My Wife

This is me and Lily in our new home in Toronto about 2 years ago. As you can see from the background, the room below is still empty without any furniture.

We move to this new house after living in Canada for almost 5 years. A waste of time; we should have bought the house during the second year of our stay in Canada.

Anyway, it is too late to regret now and beside we already have the house and we like it. We have a very nice neighbour whom we owe a lot. Finding a house is easy, but the environment is not always easy and we are lucky that we have a nice neighbourhood.

Our neighbour on the left side of our house is an old Canadian who originally coming from NF and has been living on his house for the past 40 years. The right side neighbour is coming from Hongkong and has been living in that house for the past 2 years when we bought our house.

We have quite a good mix, with people from all over the world in our neighbourhood. Quite different from the place where we originally coming from.

What do you collect as a philatelist - part 2

As your philatelic collection grow, you will want to have more challenge. Collecting just stamps, FDC, minisheets, SS and all the other material will not be an interesting to do anymore.
In general philatelic is a hobby of collecting something that will never finish, it does not matter how much time you put or how much money you pour into your hobby, you will never get a complete issue of stamps in the world. As you progress with your collection, you will be interest to know more about the advance philatelic material.
I will try to explain as much as possible of what I understand and know about these advise material.

Proof
As we all know, a stamp is produced by using a printing technique. This means that there are several process that will be done before a stamp can be used. On every step of the progress, there is always a confirmation that the progress is acceptable. These confirmation are done by taking a sample of the output from that processes and use them to get the approval. Once the sample is approved, then they can go to the next step. All these are done from the first stage which is the artist drawing until the last printing process. There are various samples and people are collecting this as well because this is part of the history of a stamp.

The Artist Drawing
The first process of the stamp creation is selection of the drawing. These drawing could be the size of the small stamp already, but they also come in a much bigger size. Most of these drawing are hand-drawn by the artist themselves and coloured manually.

Die Proof
Once the drawing has been approved, the next step will be to produce the die for the printing. The printing company normally producing some sort of the printing proof of the die to request whether the picture is already as what owner requested. There are various kind of die proof. The old days, the die proof come in single colour and produced in various different colours. Some of these die proof are also signed by the artist who is drawing them. These die proof can be done on various kind of material and also different kind of combination to explore the possibilities.

Colour Proof & Progressive Colour Proof
The stamps in the modern time are produced by using mostly lithoprinting and recently offset printing has been used as well. The sample of these process are quite different from the one that was established during the old days. Today samples are issued in the form of coloured printing material. The print normally is not a finish print, but a step by step samples of the printing process. So the normal proof in existant today will be in the colour of Yellow, Cyan and Magenta, the combination of two colours and the complete colour minus black and finally the completed stamps without the perforation.

Chromalin Proof (CP)
The chromalin proof is a rather unique proof and very seldom used by the postal office. CP has the appearance of a complete and finished stamp, but it is made of some kind of plastic material. They are produced in the normal stamp size as well. In term of the clarity, the best proof would be the chromalin proof.

Some people called these proof by different name from above, but in reality they are the same. However, the important point is these material are not readily available to public to buy. In some countries, it is even impossible to acquiry their die proof for our collection, some other countries are abundant in the market. The Post Office normally do not sell the proof in their product range. They could be selling some other philatelic material which looks like proof, but it is not the proof that we are talking about.

Black Print
One of the more common material which mistakenly considered as a proof by some people is what they call Black Print. Black Print is a printed stamp in black colour and normally issued by the post office to commemorate a certain celebration. The drawing of the Black Print is the actual drawing of the stamp, but it has no postal value. The misunderstanding is coming from the fact this material is issued by the post office. However this is definitely not a proof as it is understood.

What do you collect as a philatelist - part 1

Is that a silly title ? Could be if you are an experienced philatelist, but for a layman; it is not always obvious. Some people have been known to collect garbage eventhough the intention originally was collecting something of value.

The Used Stamps or Cancelled Stamps.
First thing first. The most obvious thing to collect will be the stamps themselves. As a child usually people begin collecting stamps, most of them will be collecting used stamps from the envelopes. Okay, not so much nowadays with the e-mail as competitor, but people still use letter and the stamps are still being used.
There are various degree of stamps condition when people start to collect them. The cheapest one would be the used stamps which you get from the letter that come to your house.
These kind of stamps normally is called used or postally used stamps and they are always covered with the cancellation from the post office.
There are 2 different kind of cancelled stamps; the first one is cancelled by the post office because it has been used as a postage stamp and the second one is called CTO (short for Cancelled To Order). CTO means that the stamps have never been used as a postage stamps. Most CTO will still have the original gum in the back of their face. However, in term value, CTOs have the lowest value if not considered worthless.

The New Stamps
If you have a little bit more money, then you can afford to buy the stamp from the post-office. The New Stamps is a stamp which has never been used as a postage stamp; they have an original undisturbed gum in the back and no cancellation on their face. They could be old stamp from 1890s, but if the 3 conditions above are met, then they will first be considered as new stamp.
This category is the second biggest category of philatelic material that are collected by the philatelist. They are easy to get (you only need to have some money) and relatively not very expensive as well. However, please bear in mind, there are some very expensive new stamps as well.
You can get the new stamps from the post office or from the stamp dealers.

First Day Cover (FDC)
First Day Cover or normally people call it FDC is a new unused envelope with a stamp attached to it and the stamp is cancelled with a special cancellation. The FDC is normally issued by the postal office to commemorate the issuance of a stamp. The cancellation on the FDC will be date when the stamp was first issued. So in general, if the post office is issuing 10 new stamps, it is very likely that they will issue 10 different FDC as well. Most of the time, the FDC never goes through the mailing system, so the stamps on the FDC is considered as CTO.

Souvenir Sheets (SS)
Souvenir Sheets is very similar to stamps. At the time of the issue, the value or the cost of purchasing the SS will be the same as the value declared on the face of the SS. Compare to the stamps, the SS normally have a much bigger size because other than its main design in the form of the stamp, an SS will have some background picture related to the stamp itself. For this reason, most of the SS will have a higher denomination than ordinary stamps.

Minisheets
Very similar to ordinary stamps, except the number of stamps on the sheets are much smaller. An ordinary sheet of stamp might consist of 100 stamps, whereas a minisheet might only have 10 stamps. The drawing on the minisheets normally the same as the ordinary stamp sheet.

Maxicard
Maxicard is a postcard with a picture of the stamp on the part that normally is used for writing. Most maxicard will be issued at the same time with the stamp. Postcard will be considered as a maxicard if they are issued by the post office and have the exact same picture as the issued stamps. Postcard which is issued by a private institution can not be considered as a maxicard even if they have the same kind of printing.

The above listing are all the philatelic materials which are generally found on the stamp dealer and being collected by general philatelist and will have some sort of value at a later date.
There are other material which are more specialized and being collected by advanced collector. In order to collect these other material, a good knowledge of philatelic material is required.

The Gift

The Gift is one of the song which recently become my favourite.
I am putting the word of this song so that you can read and understand them.

A poor orphan girl named Maria was walking to market one day
She stopped for to rest by the road side where a bird with a broken wing lay
A few moments passed till she saw it for it's feathers were covered with sand
Soon clean and wrap it was traveling in the warmth of Maria's small hand
She happily gave her last peso on a cage made of brushes and twine
She fed it loose corn from the market and watched it grow stronger with time

Now the Christmas eve service was coming and the chruch lighted with tinsel and light
An' all of the town folk brought presents to lay by the manger that night
There were diamonds and incents and perfumes in packages fit for a king
But for one ragged bird in small cage Maria had nothing to bring

She waited till just before midnight so no one could see her go in
Crying she knelt by the manger for her gift was unworthy of him
Then a voice spoke to her through the darkness
Maria what brings you to me
If the bird in the cage is your offering
Open the door let me see

Though she trembled she did as he asked her an' out of the cage the bird flew
Soaring up into the rafters on a wing that had heal good as new
Just as the midnight bells rang out and the little bird started to sing
A song that no words could recapture whose beauty was fit for a king
Now Maria felt blessed just to listen to that cascade a note sweet and long
As her offering was lifted to heaven by the very first nightingale song

If you are interested on this song and would like to have them, you can send e-mail to me and I will try to arrange it so that you can have it.
I have also included this song on my music player which you can try.

The Value of Your Stamps

There are few terms that you need to understand and know in term of stamp collecting. These terms refer to the condition of the stamps when you look at them
The condition of the stamps can be summarize into several categories, i.e.: Very Fine (VF), Fine (F) and Very Good (VG), Good (G), Acceptable (A). There are other terms that are used and those will depend on the area and the general agreement of the local custom. These term are generally used on the stamp catalog to give the value of a certain stamp.

Basically there are 5 parameter that will be used to give a judgement of the stamps condition.
Gum Condition.
How well the condition of the gum on the back of the stamps. The early issue stamps are using material that is easily damaged by air humidity. Also the method of displaying the stamps in the past are not always in the best interest to keep the gum part undisturbed, therefore damaged gum are quite normal to find in the old stamps.
Colour
The colour condition of the stamps itself should be good. A lot of the older stamps are printed by using inks that will bleed in time. They are mostly printed in single colour as well. The modern stamps are printed using full coloured printing machine and more resilient inks.
Centering
The location of the designed picture should be centered. Also the distant to all side of the stamps should roughly be equal.
Paper/Material Used
The paper or material used for producing the stamps should be free of defect. Defects means that the paper is not perfect and it is very subjective appraisal.
Cancellation
As a general rule, a cancelled stamps worth less and less attractive compare to the un-cancelled stamps. However, there are some cancellation which are in demand because they happened only once in a lifetime. For example a cancellation of the millenium will be in demand, specially when they are done from a rather special place as well.

The combination of the all the above parameter will generally be used to assess the value of a certain stamps. However, it does not mean that all the stamps that fall out of the above categories are bad stamps. Infact, there have been a lot of cases that a certain stamps with a misprint or printed with the wrong colour or printed on the wrong paper or produced with different original gum command a higher price in the market. The word to remember about the philatelic material is scarce. The more scarce the item, the higher the prices (provided that the scarce component are legitimate component). Creating your own scarce stamp will not increase the value of your collection.

They are people who specialize in collecting these "error or mistakenly printed" stamps. There is no limit as to the type of errors. The most commons error will be the printing error. The printing error could come in the form of shifted colour, inverted picture, wrong colour, double printing and a few other mistakes.
And then of course the perforation part of the stamps. Some printing company forgets to perforate the stamps. There are some imperforated stamps issued by the postal department, but these are specially imperforated stamps which are normally issued to commemorate something. The "forget to perforate stamps" normally only happen during the process of finishing the stamps and certainly not on purpose.

Most of these "error stamps" are more expensive than the normal stamps. There is no open market value like the ordinary stamps. Some of these "unique stamps" are mentioned in the normal catalog, but in general they are not even mentioned because not everybody know about it.

Stamp Collecting

One of my hobby to past the time is stamp collecting.
Actually it was not really my hobby to begin with, but I fall in love with those square paper with tiny pictures of all kind of things.
I start to collect stamps about 10 years ago, when the Indonesian economic crisis is hitting our business community very badly. Strangely enough, at the same, the economic crisis was actually creating an opportunity for people with the hobby of collecting. All kind of collecting hobby actually, be it stamps, painting or old stuffs.
Stamp collecting hobby or more widely known as philathelic hobby was booming at that time. People are buying stamps, a lot of new collectors appeared and buying stamps like crazy. I was one of them.

Fortunately I came to my senses and start to see the real picture behind the stamp collecting or philately. Philately is a hobby and at the same time it is also an investment. Due to the nature of the material, it is a longterm investment. When people are collecting stamps, most of the time they are doing it for the material gain. The problem is that most of these people are doing it without really understanding the nature of the small square paper and how their value is growing with time.
I've seen during the first 2 years of my hobby people who are trying to ride the booming market by selling their so called "collection". Most of these are worthless, simply because they do not maintain and take case of their collection. Another matter is they have no idea what they are collecting were just garbage.
There are certain rules that you have to follow if you want your collection worth something in the future. If you go against these rules, most likely you will be collecting garbage only.

The following are some of the guide lines that can be used to collect stamps and hopefully one day it will worth something.

1. The value of the stamps that you collect will go up based on the number of the stamps available in the market. Very seldom the price is going up because of the age of the stamps. A stamp issued in 1998 will be more expensive than the one issue in 1920 if there are lot of 1920 stamps and the 1998 issue was very scarce. So if you want to collect, go for the scarce items/stamps.
2. The condition of the stamps will dictate the value. The better the condition, the higher the value. A single unused stamp with the original gum still undisturbed will be have a higher value compare to the one which has been cancelled. There are occassion where the cancelled stamp is more valuable compare to the brand new one, but this is a rather special case.
3. Do not collect indiscriminately. If you want to collect stamps, try to go with a theme. You can collect stamps based on the country, the period, the picture on the stamps, the application or any specific subject. The important thing is to realize that your collection will never be complete, regardless whatever you are doing and how much money you spend to buy the stamps.
4. Keep the collection in a well ventilated (preferably dry environment) so that it doesn't get damaged. For your information, stamps are very prone to humidity. A high humidity will damage the stamps if they are exposed to it over a long period of time. A careful consideration of where you will keep your collection is very important. You don't want to start collecting all the valuable stamps only to find out later that all your collections are worthless due to prolong humidity exposure.

The above rules are just some of the basic rules that you need to follow if you want to embark on stamp collection or philately. Once you enter the philatelic world, then you will know more about it and able to just for yourself on how to go about doing it.