A little stamp collecting weirdness

These are some slides from a recent mini-presentation I did in the member's evening for the British Thematic Association (the stamp collecting group I've been in for 13 years now).

Earlier this year we finally got round to properly sorting through the accumulation of stamp stuff that my Dad left behind when he passed away. In the boxes of stuff were some old, very tatty and disintegrating, stamp albums. Here are a couple of the album covers on my first slide from the presentation.

The albums were beyond saving, but some of the stamps in them were salvageable. Cathy embarked on a mission to save as many as she could. In the middle of this project, she handed me this page because she knew I would be intrigued by it.

Basically, pages in these albums would have the names of countries printed on the top, along with a couple of images of stamps from those countries. What Cathy had noticed was that the image of the stamp printed on the header was the same as the stamp mounted underneath. (In this case a low value stamp from Rhodesia & Nyasaland, which were British colonies in southern Africa.)

Soon, Cathy found lots more examples - as shown on this slide.

That might not be readable, so here are the headers and stamps...

The last stamp shown is the odd one out because it's from Bolivia, rather than being from another British Commonwealth country.

We also had a near miss with a half-cent stamp from St Christopher, Nevis & Anguilla mounted instead of the 1 cent stamp that's printed on the header.

And to finish, two more annoying pages. On the left is a page for San Marino where the stamp that matches the header is over halfway down the page. And on the right is a page for Poland where the printed stamp in the header is a Poland stamp that features the Statue of Liberty - which is one of the main themes that I collect, but alas, the stamp is not present on the page.

However, that Poland page has inspired me to keep an eye out for more of these old albums to see if I can find a page that has a stamp featuring the Statue of Liberty printed on the header and mounted on the page. I like a collecting challenge and this one might prove to be quite tricky!

Talking about stamps... and baseball cards... again

I sort of still collect stamps, although it's not something I'm doing as actively as in the past. Last year, the society I belong to, the British Thematic Association, started doing meetings on Zoom. I presented about my collection back in March 2021.

The Zoom meetings are recorded, so if you would like to hear me talking about my collection of stamps featuring the Statue of Liberty, you can watch it here:

Since then I was asked to present again (virtually) at the Newport Philatelic Society back in November, and in March I'm due to present to the Caledonian Philatelic Society based in Glasgow.

I haven't added anything really to my collection for ages, except for a few things I inherited from my dad's collection as Cathy and I have been sorting through it. My collecting focus has switched to baseball cards, specifically cards featuring Tony Gwynn, the all-time greatest player for the San Diego Padres. I closed out 2021 on 1,052 different cards featuring Tony. One week into 2022 and I had a nice mail day when two envelopes arrived containing 3 new cards for the collection.

The card on the handwritten note came from Nashville and is from a set released in 1999. The others were from a collector in the UK and were released last year. My blog about baseball cards is currently on a midwinter break, but these cards will be featured on there some time this year!

March 2021 End of Month Review

So, that's March done and dusted. We are one quarter the way through 2021, and definitely a year into the pandemic now. On that note, the big personal pandemic-related event for me in March was being invited to have a Covid vaccination (blogged about here).

March also marked the one year anniversary of my work team's hasty "temporary" departure from our office when we discovered the ward above us was where all the patients with Covid were being parked. In the past year my team has successfully transitioned to working from home and we even had a meet up on the Spring Equinox for a takeaway cup of coffee and socially distanced walk. 

There has been a slight loosening of the various Covid restrictions and that meant I was able to get a hiarcut for the first time since October! I needed it.

Lockdown hair!

For a couple of days before my trim I kept singing "Goodbye, Lockdown Hair!" to the tune of Candle in the Wind as I walked around the house. It amused me if nobody else. It was so nice to have a cold neck again after my trip to the barbers.

The 21st March was Census Day. One big change for me compared to ten years ago is that I said that I was a Welsh speaker. It's funny to think that potentially a researcher 100 years hence will read my records and see that I went from not being a Welsh speaker to becoming one. I don't get to use my Welsh as often as I really should if I want to maintain my fluency. I want to attend further classes, but I found the Zoom version of Welsh classes less enjoyable, so I'm waiting to see if it will be possible to continue in real life classrooms any time soon.  

Zoom is a fact of pandemic life, though. I've been a member of the British Thematic Association, which is for all 'thematic' stamp collectors, for several years now. I've helped them start running Zoom presentations for people to talk about their collections over the past few months. In March I was the presenter, talking about my collection of stamps featuring the Statue of Liberty. 

My presentation included the two postcards pictured above, which had a personal connection. Cathy sent one of them to me, which was part of the impetus that got me focused on collecting the Statue of Liberty on stamps. I enjoyed presenting, but there was a bittersweet aspect to it when I dug out my collection and found some notes that my dad had written to me about some of the stamps.

The notes from Dad were poignant as we also saw the two year anniversary of his sudden passing. It was also the one year anniversary of my friend Ben's death, who died a year to the day after Dad. (This photo of me and Ben was taken on Shrewsbury Town's first trip to Wembley in 2018 - a very wet day and a defeat in the Associate Members Cup final.)

On the one year anniversary of Ben's death a lovely online memorial service was held. We were sent an order of service beforehand and it included a fragment of poetry that Ben really loved. It feels like a fitting way to end this monthly report.

Noticeboard - I will be talking about my stamp collection on 18 March

On 18th March I will be doing a Zoom presentation for the British Thematic Association about my collection of stamps featuring the Statue of Liberty. It's open to anyone who would like to join in. Details here

From the presentation

It's seven years since I last did a presentation about my collection. I found the little thank you notices from the philatelic societies in with my stamps when I took them out to scan some stamps for this presentation. It was a bittersweet trawl through my collection as I found stuff my late Dad gave me, complete with little notes of where he had acquired the items. 

My collection started around about the time Cathy visited New York in 2005. A couple of years later I got to visit as well. Here is a vintage photo of us on a very chilly day on Liberty Island in April 2007.

That was some time ago now. I'd really like to go back to New York.

SPOILER

I'll also be mentioning my great-great-uncle who emigrated to America. I blogged about him last year - you can read about him here.

Christmas Eve Eve

Does anyone else call today Christmas Eve Eve? Or is that just in our house (where the twenty-seventh is also called Boxing Day Boxing Day)?

Five things that make our Christmas a bit different to most other people's.
1) Our Santa Mr Potato Head
2) Christmas tree decorations of a) The Statue of Liberty, b) Mr Men and animals from Timbuktoo, c) Seseme Street characters, d) a giraffe saying 'Greetings from Africa', e) a crocodile delivering presents, f) M&Ms dressed as Star Wars characters
3) A Playmobil set of the three wise men
4) Plans to drive around the country seeing family on Christmas Day
5) Choc chip brioches for Christmas Day breakfast

Quality time with my spouse

A week after arriving back from New York, Cath and I went to a stamp fair where I tried to fill in some of the gaps in my Statue of Liberty collection. I found both stamps I was looking for, a large stamp sheet that included Lady Liberty on a stamp and on the sheet itself and several commemorative covers etc.

And I also found a tenner that someone had carelessly dropped, so that effectively paid for the stuff I bought. Woo hoo.

Into the holiday proper

Dear all back at the office... missing me yet?

Can't say I'm missing work. Not after the excitement yesterday of visiting Central Park, the zoo, Grand Central Station, California Pizza Kitchen, World of Disney, and the Empire State Building. But today is the first work day I'm off, so it calls for something special.

How about a trip to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island? Yeah, that'll do...

Bargain hunting

Up in Shrubbery today visiting the folks, all of whom have got stuff to do. Never mind - gives us a chance to pop into the town and visit my favourite charity shop: Save the Children on Wyle Cop. Why do I like going there? Cheap packets of stamps!

I bought 5 bags of odds and sods at 30p each and got some very interesting little gems out of them, including some Transvaal, which I've started collecting, some from Tanganyika and a short run from Zanzibar. Plus a French stamp featuring the Statue of Liberty, which'll go in my Lady Liberty thematic collection.