New Blog + Romanian Plate Flaws
Andy Djordjalian
First of all, you are all cordially invited to my new blog:
http://stampcol.blogspot.com/
Its first posting is about some Romanian plate varieties from WW2
times I found on some sheets I have here. Could someone with access to
Romanian philatelic literature please tell me if they were reported
before? I guess they were...
On the other hand, I would like to hear your opinion about these kinds
of varieties. Do you find them interesting or redeem them as no more
than pointless flyspecking? In my case, it puts a smile on my face
when a stamp that looks ordinary turned out to be not that ordinary,
but maybe it's just me being obsessive. :)
rodney
You may wish to kick tyres on this magnificent site..
http://www.romaniastamps.com/flaws/errst.htm
All philately is interesting, but we cannot all specialise ad infinitum.
You have to let it all hang out and advertise and show us what blows your
hair backwards.
So go ahead and post and let us have it, and let us appreciate your bent.
Be obsessive, goodness knows, there are people here that actually collect
Barwani and Bhor!
I'll have a look at your site, but I am not a "blog" fan generally.
Rodney
"Andy Djordjalian" <and...@indicart.com.ar> wrote in message
news:23c517ed-d6ab-4750...@n21g2000vba.googlegroups.com...
Andy Djordjalian
No matter how hard the wind tries, it can hardly blow my hair
backwards, as I shave it every few days. :) Nevertheless, I guess one
of the topics I would like to write about is blog-culture promotion.
It seems to me that many around may be sharing your non-fan-ness of
blogs... :) Although there are some good philatelic blogs, I find
comments on postings to be scarce, while these have few links to other
blogs or even to their previous articles. If I'm correct in that
appreciation, I wonder if there is an opportunity we're missing.
Thanks for your kind words. Ok, I'll keep it up with the obsession. :)
Actually, I think that's quite a topic, the psychology of collecting.
Why would someone be that proud about owning Mauritius #1? I would
hardly call it a work of art, while I doubt it has more historical
value than, say, Spain #1, right? So, if any of you guys owns one, why
not give it away? (To me?) :))
Andy
http://stampcol.blogspot.com
On May 13, 6:13 pm, "rodney" <pookiet...@iprimus.com.au> wrote:
> You may wish to kick tyres on this magnificent site..http://www.romaniastamps.com/flaws/errst.htm
rodney
Hi Andy,
I was going to say I found blogs to be a little narcissistic
but that is perhaps a little harsh.
Take the analogy of a corner store v the supermarket,
a corner store may be interesting, but the lure of a multi
faceted venue will always be more attractive.
More participation offers greater views and opinions.
Hence the newsgroup platform.
I found the more interesting to be the links to dedicated sites
with more in depth attention to specialisation, like the sites
of Mette Heindorff, Victor and Mr. Jay Carrigan.
For the sheer attractiveness, design, content and layout,
(seen through the eyes of a general collector) Mette Heindorf for me
was the benchmark, I found her pages thoroughly enjoyable,
and visited often.
A member that used to post here some time ago, Bob Ingraham
was also noteable, his pages were fantastic, and he could spin a great yarn.
"Andy Djordjalian" <and...@indicart.com.ar> wrote in message
news:c888593a-0e37-4e5e...@z5g2000vba.googlegroups.com...
Ryan Davenport
I'm a fan of plate varieties as well. But I must admit, I just
look for stuff I see listed in catalogues, I'm not to the point of
looking for new ones (yet, although a good blink comparator might change
my mind there). I am always happy when a purchase of another country's
catalogue turns up lots of variety listings, and always disappointed
when varieties aren't listed. For example, Canada's Unitrade catalogue
has lots of varieties in it, and Scott's US Specialized has almost none.
On that topic, does anybody know of literature for American plate
varieties? I have a copy of the Encyclopedia of Plate Varieties on US
Bureau-Printed Postage Stamps, but that's all I've found so far. I'm
not trying to plate the 1863 Black Jack or anything esoteric like that -
I'm just looking for constant plate flaws in the piles of common stamps
a normal collector will have.
Ryan
rodney
"Ryan Davenport"
> I'm a fan of plate varieties as well. But I must admit, I just look
> for stuff I see listed in catalogues, I'm not to the point of looking for
> new ones
Last year I bought a part collection of Switzerland, from a guy who bought a
lot
from a London Gibbons auction, he bought it for one stamp.
He showed me a colour brochure from a Swiss company, very similar
to your common K-Mart junk mail catalogue, and it was eye boggling,
every variety of Swiss fly speck one could imagine.
Perhaps that is the way of the future, outside of the published catalogues.
Victor Manta
news:23c517ed-d6ab-4750...@n21g2000vba.googlegroups.com...
I liked a lot your new blog. Even if "flyspecking", how you name it, is per
se an interesting subject (and sufficient for any stamp collector as a
motivation), you have extended the range of the article when speaking about
the sometimes tragic history of the presented stamps and you have pointing
us to some relevant links. The Scott and Michel numbers are surely an
important help for the readers.
Despite other opinions in this thread, that engage as always only their
authors, I find that the blog form is very appropriate for what you just
started. Not many people are aware that a blog is actually a kind of a
Document Management System (DMS), which makes it useful for so many
purposes.
Thanks a lot for the link to my site. I have already published on the Links
page of my Romania by Stamps site a link to your Romanian stamps page.
Because I learned privately that you have also other Romanian stamps, I hope
that you will find in the future other interesting subjects that are related
to them and that you will publish new pages about them on your blog. Have
fun!
--
Victor Manta, PWO, AIJP
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Romania by Stamps: http://marci-postale.com/
Philatelic Webmasters Organization: http://pwmo.org/
Art on Stamps: http://artonstamps.org/
Communism on Stamps: http://reds-on.postalstamps.biz/
Spanish North Africa: http://www.sna-on.postalstamps.biz/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Asia-translation
complete with scans. As he had one or two items I didn't, I wrote
rude comments about them to the blog, and questioned their
authenticity. Noone else had contributed last time I looked.
But that shouldn't discourage the dedicated flyspecker from posting
his (or her) findings. Even if the work has been done already, it may
be locked away in yellowing paper copies of journals most of us could
never access anyway, or it may be in languages we can't readily read.
Go for it, I say. There's safety in numbers for us ratbags.
(And never to let a good chance to plug the Indian States pass,
there's good, cheap virgin territory in the low values of the recess
printed 1931 definitives of Hyderabad for the demon flyspecker.)
Tony of the Antipodes
rodney
"Asia-translation"
>As he had one or two items I didn't, I wrote rude comments about them
That I don't believe, a finer gentleman.............
> But that shouldn't discourage the dedicated flyspecker from posting
> his (or her) findings.
Agreed, but why not employ the Newsgroup platform? people like Google
will have your work around long after the blog has died.
Perhaps one day someone will organise a receptacle like Exponet
to hold individual's work of specialisation.
Joshua McGee
> Perhaps that is the way of the future, outside of the published catalogues.
I think, rather, that "published catalogues" are exactly what are
going to become obsolete. I am frequently frustrated by the
specialized catalogues -- $120 new?! And that's if they're not out-of-
print -- add a nought to that if they are.
I envision a unified structure for such catalogues -- an XML schema or
something. There would be a website with a list of countries or
regions, with a "+" sign next to each, and one could keep "drilling
down": a general U.S. catalogue, a specialized U.S. catalogue, a
specialized Classic Era U.S. catalogue, a 19th century U.S. catalogue,
a Washington-Franklins specialized catalogue, then a study of plate
flaws on one stamp, or cancellations on one stamp, or whatever. When
you've reached the level of specificity you wish, you could buy access
to that node, for a comparatively small amount of money -- and that
money would go, say, 80/20 to the author-publisher and the directory
maintainer. Or it could be wiki-style and community-maintained -- in
which case access would be free.
But in flyspecking, there are still amazing amounts of unexplored
areas. I was thinking about buying a collection of Western Australia
relief-printed swans. I contacted the foremost expert in the field to
see where I could find plating diagrams. They apparently DON'T
EXIST. The explanation given was that there are too few multiples in
existence to make such a study feasible. While I expect that is true
in any given collection, I expect that, worldwide, there are indeed
sufficient multiples to do this, just no one has access to all of
them. But if 2,000 collectors worldwide were to pool their scans,
we'd be getting somewhere.
The areas of unexplored territory are frequently even more
surprising. I have been accumulating Deutches Reich #48 for
postmarks. I contacted a specialized society to get a master list of
postmarks in use during the period. Apparently THIS DOESN'T EXIST
EITHER. So I thought, I have several hundred, maybe I'll put together
a list and send it out for review and additions.
--
Joshua H. McGee
Sierra Madre, Los Angeles, California, USA
Member: APS, ATA, ISWSC, MBPC
Trade?: http://www.mcgees.org/stamp-offers/
Andy Djordjalian
words, I surely will go on. Thanks, really.
Rodney, I think blogs stand in between newsgroups and sites, as long
as they are connected and commented. That way, each network of
postings becomes like a specialized site that is being built with
teamwork and little by little, with a presentation that, although not
as good as a normal site allows, is better than a newsgroup thread. At
least that is the idealized notion I have.
Victor, I'm so glad you liked the site, yours is great, thanks for the
link. One of the postings I'm considering, is about my family's
history when they left Romania after the communists took power, which
includes an anecdote related to philately, and perhaps would suit the
1945 Apărarea Patriotică series, of which I have nice specimens to
scan. I don't think my writing will properly honor the story and the
remarkable series (although the topic is tragic for us, probably), but
I will do my best. :)
Speaking of scans... What do you think should be the resolution of
scan images? Higher resolutions allow for better appreciation of the
stamps but, given today's technology, I'm kind of worried that they
may help forgers (at least the amateurish ones)...
By the way, I'm Andrés (a guy). I always forget that my nickname
applies to women too :))
Andy
http://stampcol.blogspot.com/
Andy Djordjalian
companies would become information providers for subscription services
more than book publishers. It could also open new markets, for people
who wouldn't pay for a set of catalogs but would use the service on a
one-time basis. I wonder if such a service would take part in the
future of philately...
Andy
http://stampcol.blogspot.com
On May 15, 1:10 pm, Joshua McGee <joshuamc...@gmail.com> wrote:
rodney
"Andy Djordjalian"
>that is being built with teamwork and little by little,
Yes, and what do we see on most blogs?
that teamwork thing, protected by
"copyright. no part off this page may be used.....blah blah"
The site is built on borrowed information and rarely shared gratuitously
Andy Djordjalian
> Yes, and what do we see on most blogs?
> that teamwork thing, protected by
> "copyright. no part off this page may be used.....blah blah"
>
> The site is built on borrowed information and rarely shared gratuitously
What I meant is that, if each entry is connected to other ones,
visitors can jump from entry to entry, across different blogs, so
their user experience results from the work of many bloggers and those
who wrote comments. These are normally short so it's no big deal that
they lose ownership. If people want to write something more
substancious, they can publish somewhere else and link to the entry,
keeping control of their material, if possible.
By the way, blog software usually have the option to generate
automatic trackbacks, which are comments indicating that other blog
entries are linking to the one in question. They make connecting
entries easier, but I don't see them being used around very much, they
are probably opted out (which is the default option, I think).
But thanks for pointing out these issues to have in consideration.
rodney
"Andy Djordjalian"
> But thanks for pointing out these issues to have in consideration.
Likewise, Andy.
Rodney.
Rein
I do not have much faith in catalogue publishers to give us more details
of the stamps that can be found in the Post Office leaflets... Or rather
none at all.
Blogs or forums are a great opportunity to give away in-depth information
and I do mean "give away" as it is for free and in order to use it for
copy-righted catalogues and the like you need to understand the matter
which is what catalogue publishers usually do not do nor bother to do so.
Have a look at the pages Tony Rubiera and I are performing, writing
somehow a sepcialized catalogue of modern Argentinean stamps anew....
http://www.stampboards.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=6550&p=487555#p487555
"Fly-specks" is just a derogative term used by dinosaur philatelists who
love to "plate" their mid 19-century stamps and collect one gold medal
after another travelling the world from one International Stamp
Exhibition to the next...
I would use good scans and not bother about forgerers as what I said about
catalogue publishers goes for them as well...
groetjes, Rein
Op Fri, 15 May 2009 22:43:19 +0200 schreef Andy Djordjalian
<and...@indicart.com.ar>:
> Joshua, I find that idea quite intriguing. It would mean catalog
> companies would become information providers for subscription services
> more than book publishers. It could also open new markets, for people
> who wouldn't pay for a set of catalogs but would use the service on a
> one-time basis. I wonder if such a service would take part in the
> future of philately...
>
> Andy
> http://stampcol.blogspot.com
>
>
> On May 15, 1:10ï¿œpm, Joshua McGee <joshuamc...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On May 14, 7:32ï¿œpm, "rodney" <pookiet...@NOSPAMiprimus.com.au> wrote:
>>
>> > Perhaps that is the way of the future, outside of the published
>> catalogues.
>>
>> I think, rather, that "published catalogues" are exactly what are
>> going to become obsolete. ï¿œI am frequently frustrated by the
>> specialized catalogues -- $120 new?! ï¿œAnd that's if they're not out-of-
>> print -- add a nought to that if they are.
>>
>> I envision a unified structure for such catalogues -- an XML schema or
>> something. ï¿œThere would be a website with a list of countries or
>> regions, with a "+" sign next to each, and one could keep "drilling
>> down": a general U.S. catalogue, a specialized U.S. catalogue, a
>> specialized Classic Era U.S. catalogue, a 19th century U.S. catalogue,
>> a Washington-Franklins specialized catalogue, then a study of plate
>> flaws on one stamp, or cancellations on one stamp, or whatever. ï¿œWhen
>> you've reached the level of specificity you wish, you could buy access
>> to that node, for a comparatively small amount of money -- and that
>> money would go, say, 80/20 to the author-publisher and the directory
>> maintainer. ï¿œOr it could be wiki-style and community-maintained -- in
>> which case access would be free.
>>
>> But in flyspecking, there are still amazing amounts of unexplored
>> areas. ï¿œI was thinking about buying a collection of Western Australia
>> relief-printed swans. ï¿œI contacted the foremost expert in the field to
>> see where I could find plating diagrams. ï¿œThey apparently DON'T
>> EXIST. ï¿œThe explanation given was that there are too few multiples in
>> existence to make such a study feasible. ï¿œWhile I expect that is true
>> in any given collection, I expect that, worldwide, there are indeed
>> sufficient multiples to do this, just no one has access to all of
>> them. ï¿œBut if 2,000 collectors worldwide were to pool their scans,
>> we'd be getting somewhere.
>>
>> The areas of unexplored territory are frequently even more
>> surprising. ï¿œI have been accumulating Deutches Reich #48 for
>> postmarks. ï¿œI contacted a specialized society to get a master list of
>> postmarks in use during the period. ï¿œApparently THIS DOESN'T EXIST
>> EITHER. ï¿œSo I thought, I have several hundred, maybe I'll put together
>> a list and send it out for review and additions.
>>
>> --
>> Joshua H. McGee
>> Sierra Madre, Los Angeles, California, USA
>> Member: APS, ATA, ISWSC, MBPC
>> Trade?: ï¿œhttp://www.mcgees.org/stamp-offers/
>
--
Gemaakt met Opera's revolutionaire e-mailprogramma:
http://www.opera.com/mail/