three stamps tonight

Hello, Last night I wrote about stamp quality, and of course my eBay and Stampoffer listings. I put a few more lots on Stampoffers today - hope you have a look at them - check user cddstamps at http://www.stampoffers.com/

Ok for the stamps. First the rather poor copy of the 1980 12p Runner (SG 1134) I showed last night. Here is what it should look like. This from a few I have sorted while here in Seoul. Big difference eh!! And in my view not a stamp one would try and sell as single. Postage would cost more than the catalogue value :-)

Now to another view of quality. I had a comment about perforations. Well here are two stamps one with good perfs and another with very short, actually non existent perfs on one margin. Would you throw away the one with no perfs. Well no actually you wouldn't. Why? Well because it is SG 542 watermark inverted. And often these inverted watermarks have very short perfs. It is not an award winning copy by any means but since it is an inverted watermark copy it is worth keeping for your collection. Well that is my view. Catalogue value is not high but it is still nice to have a copy even as a space filler, until you can find a better full perf copy.

So my message on this is, check watermarks, and shades and varieties even, before throwing away what could be a useful addition to your collection. As for the SG 1134 Runner stamp. Well there were no varieties for this, other than a copy with the Queens head missing. Now that would be worth keeping in any condition :-)

Enjoy your stamps, Michael