AMG albums, literature, & stamps

zepherusbane, I’m just getting started putting together a AMG collection and the Vallancey book, The A.M.G. Stamps of Germany, intrigues me. After it arrives, could you please post your impressions of it and maybe a scan of one or two pages? I’d just like to know if it will be worth the effort to track one down, as they don’t appear to be readily available.

I think this booklet is exactly what I had hoped it would be. Great reference. It starts with a narrative explaining what all was done for all the different printings and some of the politics around why things were as they were, then dives into specialist level details on all the printings. The booklet is 58 pages long and was published in 1958.

Here are some scans of a few of the pages, keep in mind the book has sections for all the printings (American, German, etc.), these are just samplings from the first couple sections.

The Bush album pages are fairly useful for outlining the various varieties, though the details are not always there. I know Zeph has already seen them. For those who might find it useful and haven't seen it yet, I only have a fraction of the entire album page set and they are posted in k's AMG Album.

The album pages were produced by Joseph Bush. Definitely in the 1980s, but I believe as early as the 1970s(?) and probably into the 1990s(?). Sadly, Joe went to the great stamp vault in the sky on 4Apr2001. I don't know who "owns" the rights to the pages, or if they are even still under copyright.

I don't have the entire set of album pages. I surmise sections were made over time. I only have a set of the earlier pages, and later on I was able to add a very small number of specialty pages. There were some heavy hitters bidding on those pages, so I was only able to acquire the low-hanging fruit. Although somehow I was able to score one of the better pages at a price that didn't break my 2025 stamp budget (which, alas, I have surpassed since then).

I think stampie78 probably has a greater number of the Bush pages than I do. I see page subsets up for auction a couple of times a year, so you do have to be looking for them. I don't think I've ever seen a complete set of pages at auction before. I sort of acquired the pages I had for the info -- filling some of those pages, not so easy.

I acquired my first subset of Bush pages unintentionally. It was in a lot of 6 binders, I was actually interested in the other binders and bid accordingly based on the description (no pics available at that time). I basically got that binder for ~$40 pro-rated. I never did finish cataloging those pages, but the catalog value should be $1000+ even with the mis-identified stamps. So I got a pretty good deal, even though I wasn't even looking at it. This is what happens when you don't document your collection!

The later pages I acquired on the 6th page of the AMG thread, were purchased later. That seller broke up a large collection of Bush pages and sold them by the page in stages over a period of a year. I missed the first stages. By the time I found out, there were a lot of other bidders and I didn't even come close on most of the pages. I picked up 5 pages, mostly relatively low-hanging fruit. One page with really good stuff (the page with the pairs), I was really fortunate as there was only one other bidder. I think most of the bidders had already tapped out from over-spending. Those later acquisitions catalog to almost $3K just for those 5 pages, although I did have to spend more than $40.

Took the words right out of my mouth. 
I have a Bush album from some years ago, which I got along with AMG approvals from Bush. I didn't know it might not be complete.

I don't know, as I have never seen the final entire set of pages. By the time I got my pages, he was already up in the great stamp vault in the sky.

I currently have 79 different stamp pages, not counting the title/divider pages. That's more than the album pages in the eBay listing coastwatcher showed -- so that album is definitely not complete. However, that listing does include the AMG catalog (which makes that album look a lot thicker than it really is).

As mentioned, the seller I purchased my most recent 5 pages was selling what they told me was a very large set in stages over a period of 1 year. The auction run I saw, I was going after about 2 dozen pages that I didn't have, for which I only scored 5. I didn't even bother bidding on the next auction run about a month later, and I did see old listings from the previous auction run. Based on items I missed at the last auction, I would say there are easily over 100 pages, possibly even 150+.

I am interested in knowing how many pages stampie78 and youpiao have. The Bush pages are numbered by section, although there does not appear to be any consistent "version" ID for corrections/updates. Later today, I will fish out my AMG pages and make a list of the page IDs I have in my thread. If anyone has any other pages, please post in that thread. Maybe we can create a master list of page IDs?

Here are somw differences I have noticed between my pages and the ebay pages:

1. Ebay has color maps and borders. Mine is strictly black and white.
2. Ebay has handwritten page numbers in the left margin. Mine are printed.
3. Almost all of my pages have what I presume to be revision dates in superscript next to the page numbers. Most are 2/96, along with 1/96, 3/96, and 4/96.
4. My NAP 1 page (Rev. 2/96) has only 4 stamps vs ebay's 5 (the extra stamp being a vermillion overprint). My page also has a note added at the bottom: After a printing run of 200,000 of the orange overprint on the 50c purple, the printer changed the overprint ink to a darker, more pronounced carmine-red color.
5. Still on page NAP 1, my page has captions above the stamp boxes, e.g. On 20c Red: Printing 360,000. Ebay has no such captions.
6. On page BARI 1 (mine is rev. 2/96), I have 4 stamps, with a box between the 2 lower stamps illustrating the watermark. Ebay has 5 stamps and no watermark illustration.
7. Still on BARI 1, on the unwatermarked stamps, ebay shows perf 10 3/4 x 10 3/4, 10 3/4 x 11 1/2, and 11 1/2 x 11 1/2. Mine gives 11x11 and 11 1/2 x 11 1/2.
For the watermarked stamps, ebay gives perf 10 3/4 x 11 1/2 and 11 1/2 x 11 1/2. Mine says 11 x 11 1/2 and 11 1/2 x 11 1/2.
8. All the text on the ebay pages is in ALL-CAPS. My pages have standard initial-caps.

Don't have time, right now, to go any further. Let me know if you think I should post scans of my pages, to compare notes.

I would guess that handbook was separately purchased, or at most possibly part of a package(?).

I'm not sure where my AMG album is, as it's been a couple of years since I last touched it. I'll look for it when I get home. But if it's in storage.