another impulse buy
Hello, I was in the CBD today and had time to visit my favourite stamp shop. Picked up a few Australia Airmail and aviation related stamps and this. I just couldn't resist.
My view is this is a very good format with well presented detail. I have noted from a very quick read through that more recent GB have increased in value - as I predicted would happen since so few are (correct me if I am wrong) used on mail.
Time will tell I guess. But a useful catalogue to have in my view
Enjoy your stamps.. Michael
posted by cddstamps @ 2:03 AM
2 Comments:
" .... I predicted would happen since so few are (correct me if I am wrong) used on mail. .... "
I have watched this trend for so many years now it seems sad to me that what was once the "King of Hobbies,the Hobby of Kings" barely limps on as the need and desire to use actual postage on mail dries up.
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I have not received a genuine envelope with an actual, written or typed, let's call it, chatty letter inside in months. Business mail has either printed indica or one of the several US discounted definitives to show the required pre-payment of postage. Philatelic mail still arrives from a swathe of stampers who dutifuly use nice stamps on envelopes which are essentially in return for nicely franked covers I mail to them. Seldom is real communication contained within.
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The commentary, when there is some in the first place, is limited to traditional courtesies, about the weather and perhaps how one is feeling, with no real expectation of a meaningful response.
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Mail from dealers or philatelic suppliers does often bear a group of attractive commemorative stamps, usually the product of discounted postage, from the bulk hoardings of speculators who were certain that the sheets, plate number blocks and unmounted mint original gum never hinged, sets and series they were accumulating would cover that round the world trip in the Royal Suite of the Queen Mary II.
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And then there is what we call "junk mail", advertisements and political calls for a contribution, a vote or a heart wrenching plea for a small (or large) donation to foster a worthy cause somewhere. Even many of these have slipped off into emails when our personal e-addresses get inserted onto some mass marketing list.
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But real communications, excepting bills, are absent.
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Being excessively wordy at times, and of an age when several of my most cherished friends and cousins avoid e-mails, as there seems to be an ongoing fear that one can catch the most horrible dibilitating social virus simply from touching a keyboard idlely whether the computer is on or not, I do tend to actually write letters that drift from the common to the innane thoughts that pass through my conscious. I send out several sometimes exceedingly long letters to those friends and especially the cousins with whom I spent my youth so many years ago. Knowing their age driven aversion to modern technology and fear of the aforementioned horrific "keyboard diseases" I seldom expect much of a note in return. All of our handwritinhgs have deteriorated with the ravages of age and in my case years of dissolute activities so I understan that problem. Often a phone call is the best response I get which I accept as a sign that our feelings are mutual, just stunted by the march of time.
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So as far as I can see the concept of a communication between friends and relatives, using a paper envelope that bears a postage stamp as proof that the delivery fee has been paid is dead, or so close to dead that the difference is moot.
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Communications, such as they are, do live on through the on-line social networks where often the comments that pass back and forth are unfortunately little more than a report that one party passed gas, or expects to in the immediate future.
Letters to friends are no more.
And stamps used as they were meant to, forgetaboutit !!!
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There are times when I feel as Horatius must have as he stood on the Sublicus Bridge wondering if I will be the last person to launch a missive with a message.
Continuation
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There are times when I feel as Horatius must have as he stood on the Sublicus Bridge wondering if I will be the last person to launch a missive with a message.
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How this will affect the hobby of stamp collecting in the future is the question. It seems to be deteriorating into the accumulation of contrived souvenirs available only by purchase from an often greedy postal agency and seldom seen in postally used condition, even less often with a demonstrably valid contemporaneous cancellation.
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Will philately become a custom similar to buying a cheap stamped metal souvenir of the Empire State Building, or the Tower Bridge from some sidewalk at a beach resort, a trinket made in a sweat shop in China 12,000 miles away with no actual connection to the actual monument being portrayed ?
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