Improving your stamp collection. How best to do this.

One obvious way is to buy the stamp or stamps you need. But how do you decide who to buy from in this internet world where you have such an amazing choice of sellers.

What must seem like zillions of sellers across the various auction sites and various philatelic portals. Take Hipstamp, where cddstamps has our shop: there are 931 sellers. Now ok, not everyone will have what you need but you are presented with a vast choice.

Take as a random choice, and this really was a random stamp I thought of, Ceylon SG 395, SC#287 the 1r George VI from the 1938-44 Definitive issue. From two quick searches I found over 100 listings for this stamp. How do you possibly choose which one to buy. In fact, do you even bother to look at 100 listings and whittle them down to a few to chose from? I doubt it.

All this to say we at cddstamps have just passed 12,000 customer feedbacks in our Hipstamp store and yes, positive feedbacks. And you know what? We are pretty proud of that.

When looking for a stamp you can select by price, by the quality you want, from Mint to Used for example, by the listing description detail, the listing image details (and at cddstamps we usually show an image of the reverse on higher catalogued stamps), and seller reputation.

We hope you will give cddstamps a chance. We feel confident you will appreciate the listing details we provide – especially where it is needed on those stamps that are not simply, let’s call them the basic stamps, but, for example, where there are perforation differences and shade differences.

We look forward to welcoming new customers as we always do welcome our returning customers, have a great philatelic month of May.

You can read more at our website at cddstamps.com or copy this link to get straight into our store https://www.hipstamp.com/store/cddstamps

Best wishes Michael

cddstamps

Today is May 1st so I thought it timely to say welcome to May.

It is actually an ancient European Spring Festival celebration so if you want you can go and dance around the May pole and not feel ridiculous.

But that has nothing to do with stamps. So I will just stay with philatelic themes.

First, on May 1st 1840 the Penny Black became available for sale, to be used from 6th May.

Jumping fast forward 178 years, on May 1st 2018 the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum opened an exhibition titled Postmen of the Skies. This celebrated 100 years of Airmail service. If you have not been it is still open but only for another 29 days. It closes on 29th May 2019. There was of course a special issue stamp. The United States Postal Service commemorated the beginning of airmail services by dedicating two United States Air Mail Forever stamps. The first, depicted in blue, commemorates the pilots who first flew the mail in the early years of aviation. I have added another recent issue which I think is far more attractive.

And finally, perhaps best known, is that 1st May is known as May Day. It is also known as Labour Day or International Workers’ Day and is a national holiday in more than 80 countries and celebrated unofficially in many others. Many stamps probably come to mind. I have chosen this one from Russia for us to see.

The date was chosen in 1904 at the Sixth Conference of the Second International by a pan-national organization of socialist and communist political parties to commemorate the Haymarket Affair although the day was first proposed back in the 1880s and I think celebrated from about 1886. It called on "all Social Democratic Party organisations and trade unions of all countries to demonstrate energetically on the First of May for the legal establishment of the 8 hour day for the class demands of the proletariat and for universal peace” Well we got the 8 hour day. Still working on the peace bit.

Oh, and if you are in the USA or Canada, yes I know they have Labour Day on the first Monday of September.

And, if you really want to be entertained, try reading more about May 1st, especially the history behind the ancient spring festival, absolutely fascinating history. So many “events” are actually celebrated on May 1st. Perhaps it has something to do with the ancient spring festival karma!

Enjoy and learn from your philately. Michael cddstamps.com please visit our store here and see if we can help you fill a few gaps in your collection.