Original Artist Drawing

On the left is one of the rarest item in philatelic world. It is the original artist drawing.
As I have said somewhere on my earlier posting; the stamps are produced through several different processes. One of the earlier process will be the artist drawing. There are various kind of artist drawing in the stamp world. One of them is the pencil drawing like the one on the left. The actual drawing itself is bigger than the normal stamp. Once the draft of the picture is approved, the next step would be to put colours on the drawing to make it more presentable. Normally there is only one artist drawing for each individual stamp, but there are cases where more than one artist drawings are being produced to give the project director more views of what can be expected from the stamp. I've seen some artist drawings which consist of several different kind of drawings on a certain subject in different views and colours. Ultimately the director will choose one drawing and it will go through the next steps.

Eventhough, original artist drawing is very rare, the value in monetary term is not always high. I think it depends on whether the actual stamps itself become a favourite or not in the market. I've never heard a famous original artist drawing that will draw high interest among the philatelists and most of the time, a beginner in stamp collection will not understand what original artist drawing is for. However, if you want to become a serious stamp collector, you should at least have one of this type of material in your collection.

Winter 2010

The last winter has been very mild. In the last 10 years of my experiences with the winter in Canada, 2010 winter was the worst. By the worst means no snow or very little snow. In a way, it is a blessing in disguise for me; I have a slight problem with my left arm and no snow means less thing to do using my arms. Some people are saying that we will have a rather bad summer as a consequence of the mild winter, not enough water will be one of the possible problem.

Water is always a problem. I just read the other day on one of the free paper in Toronto that Canadian are the worst on abusing fresh water. While on other parts of the world people are really having a problem with water shortage, Canadian are using the water to water the garden, grass and washing cars. Ironic, isn't it ?? But in my opinion, there is nothing we can do with the water shortage in some other part of the world. Water is not something that you bring easily to other place, specially in big numbers. Imagine if there is a shortage of fresh water in Africa; what can Canadian do to help them with the abundant water that we have here in Canada ? We can not ship our water to help them. We may be able to help them with other materials like food and clothing, but water ? No possible and it is an astronomical task to bring water across the continent if not impossible.

Stamps - Hand Painted Die Proof Stamps

The drawing on the left side is actually some kind of proof which was drawn by the artist who design the stamp. This stage of process is one of the critical stage, because instead of producing the samples by using the standard printing machine, the artist is producing "the issued stamp" by using his skill. He put the water-coloured on the print, which has the size of the original stamp.

By using hand drawn painting on the stamps, the designer can give a better understanding of what the stamp will look like once it is printed in the actual colour by using the normal printing.

Unfortunately not all the designer of the stamps are using this method nowadays, because the cost of doing a digital printing is so cheap and most of the design of the stamps are now done by using computer or photography. The art of miniature drawing and colouring may not be much of a help nowadays, but in the old days; they are very valuable.

This type of proof is very scarce and difficult to find. Most of them are coming out from the French related country. Either they used to be their colonies or they have some sort of relation with France in the past. Quite a few of them are in Africa. The most common of this type of proof are coming from Congo, Mali, Niger, Central Africa Repulic, Camerous and a few small islands in the middle of nowhere....

I've got quite a few of this type of proof myself. The only problem is that you have to be very careful with how you keep them. Indonesia is definitely not a good place to keep this kind of proof simply because of the high humidity. Most of these proof will go bad within a year or two after they are exposed to the Indonesian air. That could be one of the reason as well on why it is so difficult to find the proof of stamp in Indonesia.

Back to the Blog...

My last posting was almost a year ago. I was quite busy last year with building up my first home made building in the world, which means also in Canada. This is something that I will never do or will not be able to do in Indonesia. It was a interesting project and took me almost the whole summer and early fall last year.

Early this year, I was busy with my online game... ha...ha...ha.... The on-line game is actually quite addicting. The one I was playing involve a war with other player. The only thing bad about this online game is that you can boost up your ability by using money. So that take care of most of the fun, because if you want to spend money, then you can be a champion on this game. No trick and no challenge, just plain spending to get to the top. I, on the other hand do not like to pay (you can call me cheap player), but my logic is if you are playing a game and you spend money to get to your position, then anybody can do it. There is no challenge in the game.

Also another good thing about the winter this year is that we don't have that many snow in Canada. So far my driveway does give me too much work. Until today, I have done only 2 session of shoveling and I did it only because I don't feel good to have snow and no shovelling. Today is my second shovelling day. We have about 3 cms of snow which has come down since last night. I could have just leave it alone....

Rare Items from Pos Indonesia

As a stamps collector, one of the thing that I am constantly searching for stamps or philatelic materials that are available in limited quantity.
Of all the philatelic material that are produced by the Pos Indonesia, the uncut sheets are one of the rarest item in the market. In the normal situation, the uncut sheets were not available to the general public because for some unknown reason, Pos Indonesia never sells this item.
However, in the recent year, they start to sell this uncut sheets. I don't have the information when exactly they start to sell this uncut item, but I expect it didn't start until very recently. That is for the "legal" items.

However, when we are talking about the "illegal items", you can get almost all kinds of uncut Indonesian souvenir sheets from the market. They are not cheap, but it is possible to get them. A full uncut souvenir sheet would cost a minimum between U$ 500 to U$ 2,000 per item. There are various level of uncut available in the market. An uncut pair is being the lowest in price and the highest would be the full sheets which consist sometimes up to 10 souvenir sheets.

Another item which I have not seen in the market is the proof, i.e.: the print proof, the minister proof, artist proof and all kind of proofs from the Indonesian stamps. They should exist, but apparently nobody has stolen them for sales. Like the uncut souvenir sheets, the only way a proof is available for the market is if somebody stealing them from the Pos Indonesian Archive. Strangely enough, you have seen some of the other philatelic materials, but not the "proof". Is it possible that they do not exist ? Knowing the work of Indonesian Officials, it is quite possible that these proofs do not exist.

Chit-Chat About General Things

I missed the election vote process. Did I regret it ? I am not sure what should be the answer. Maybe in some way I regret the fact that some lowlife will be using my vote to their own advantage and try to do something with it, but on the other hand, what do I care ?
I have seen so many bad things happened in Indonesia in the past. The situation is not likely to improve in the next 10 years and by then I will be too old to do anything meaningful.
The presidential election will be around 2 months away from now. Who will win ? It is very likely that we will have or elected the same person again, i.e.: Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono or more widely known as SBY. He is not bad, although I would say that in the last period of his reign, he did not do very much and most of the time under the influence of his VP. Enough talk about the politic...

I left Jakarta to Toronto about 3 weeks ago, just in time for the friendlier weather. Although as usual, I still have the chance "to eat the snow", but this time there was no shoveling..... (this activities really hurt my back lately, a sign of becoming too old ???). However, no shoveling means that there is something else to do. With the end of winter, spring in coming and summer to follow; which means that we have to a lot of maintenance and repair on the house. This year we are planning to fix or to be more exact to replace our roof. This is something that never been done in Indonesia. You buy a house including the roof and you don't replace the roof of your house unless the typhoon hit your house and take away your roof. Unfortunately, that is not the case in Canada. Every once in a while, you have to replace your roof (unless you have a metal roof for your house, which they say will last a life time) because apparently the shingles that they use for your roof do not last a life time. Some may last for 5 years, other may last for 15 years, but always there is a time limit. This time our house has reached it's limit on the roof....

Another project that I was planning to finish or to start, whichever is last; will be our tool-shed or garden shed. It was a long time plan, but there is always something to do before we can start our toolshed. However, this year; my resolution is to have the toolshed build and hopefully in good working condition. I've tried to recruit some help, but it is very likely that the person will not be able to help me because he is too busy. Without his help, I doubt it very much that I can do a proper job. I simply do not have the knowledge and the skill to build something so big (at least this is measured from my skill level)...

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.