New stamps

Yippeee, my new stamps have arrived today. I've been waiting for this shipment for quite sometime. Some of the stamps are very difficult to get and I have to get it from a very specialized stamp dealer in Belgium.
One of the stamp that arrived today is the one on the left side. This one is part of the bigger group, but most of the time, this stamp is not included in the group. The main reason is because it was issued on separate occassion. The whole group was issued in 1949 which consist of a total 17 stamps. Later on another stamp was issued in the same pattern. This one was issued in 1949 as well, but at a later month.
However, the one on the left was not issued until 1952 and also at a much higher value as well. So most people or dealer when they are selling this group tend to "forget" about this particular stamp and just sell them as 17 stamps collection. The actual case in it should have been consisted of a total 19 stamps.

One of my problem with collection is the language limitation. I can only read English and unfortunately, if you want to have a good information, most of the time they are only available in their native origin.
So to get the best information about the German stamps, you should be able to read German, for French stamps then the language is French, etc.
Some of the basic term are understandable without having to learn the language, but the explanation are normally not easy to understand.

One of my most precious stamp collection

Finally, I found my blog again. When my computer crashed a few months ago, I lost almost all the data and somehow I could not find my blog because I could not even remember what is the username that I am using for this blog.
Today, my e-mail was hijack again by some idiot who thinks that they can sell more by using my connection. In the process of changing my password, I found this blog again. So here it is.....

My most precious stamps is not the most expensive stamps, but I like this one best.
One of the reason is because this is my first complete train stamps.

As you can see from the picture to the left side of this writing, the stamps is very beautiful. The stamps were issued by the Belgian Postal Office. It consist of 22 stamps (very obvious) and each stamp is designed with a single colour printing process.
The stamps themselves were issued in 1980.
There are a lot of other designs from these group of stamps.

My favourite stamps are the Railway stamps from Belgium. There is a lot of debate, whether the railway stamps of Belgium can be considered as stamps or is it just something they call cinderella.
Of course this will depend on who is making the judgement.
The country or postal office who is issuing the stamps will say that their stamps have all the philatelic requirement to be considered as a stamp. However, different postal office might have different view.
A good example of this will be the stamps which are issued by little bit of island in the middle of nowhere. Some of this island may have a population of less than 1,000 people, yet they issue a full fledge stamps. One of the more famous stamps issuer is an island called St. Lucia or the one they call Nevis or St. Vincent or island group of Wallis & Futuna or maybe Davaar Island ???
I bet you have no idea where are all these islands located in the world. They are located mostly in the Carribean Sea or in the Polynesian Islands. A group of small islands who used to be part of the British or maybe the French during the colonial times. By law, they are a separate entity with their own government. However, what they have done with the stamps is so outrageous that they are doing a lot of damage to the philatelic society. Can you image the postal office on this island is actually producing millions of stamps with all kind of pictures and they are being sold to every corner of the world. Unfortunately, the victim of this manipulation is not the philatelist, but some layman who has no idea of what they are doing and they were persuaded by some sleazy stamp seller to buy the worthless stamps from these islands.

Anyway, enough bitching.... my suggestion (again I may have said it somewhere before), do not invest in the stamps unless you really know what you are doing.

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.