Post by mourningdoves on Apr 5, 2020 22:42:36 GMT -5
Did some more cleanout today, and I worked on Belgium. The two overlapped.
I worked on part of a definitive series: Scott 108-115, with King Albert I, who really liked to be on stamps. The rest of the series (116-122) are nice pictorials.
The note in Scott said that of those 8 Alberts, three have two printing types, two have three types, and one has four types. (Try saying that without reading it off the screen!) Scott goes on to tell us that the differences are all in the upper left corner, but declined to tell us what those differences might be. They aren't in the 1840-1940 Specialized, either, and I've never been able to get my paws on a COB catalogue.
My close-range eyesight isn't the best, especially when I don't know what I'm looking for, so the only thing I could do was scan whatever copies I had of each denomination at 600 dpi and enlarge the .jpg in a viewer (Windows Photo works just fine for that, so does IrfanView):
I think I found something. See those horizontal lines in the corner? In one type, they go all the way down to where that floral leaf bumps into the border. In the other, the last couple of (very short) lines are left out. That's most visible in row 2, stamp 3. Also, up at the top and to the right of that floral leaf or whatever it is, you might see two spheres and a sort of triangular or arrow-shaped object. Depending on whether those lines to the left stop or keep going, that arrow-shaped object is a bit different.
I did three denominations and then switched over to the King Baudouin series from the 1950s and 1960s. It has relatively few varieties; the most fun about the series is that some of the denominations were printed in immense quantities, and the printers worked the plates into the ground, so you can get some unusual effects as the King sort of fades into a mist. Some of them are spooky, really. So I'm gonna make a page of them.
In the process, I threw out at least fifty Baudouin stamps. Some had blotchy postmarks. Some had creases - and on this paper, you can never uncrease a stamp. Some had scratches on the surface, which is another common mishap on this series. The paper is spongy or something, it doesn't have a nice feel to it. It's kind of ironic that a nation that puts a lot of effort into most of its stamps did such a cheapo job on this series and the lions that were around for the same time period - like the ones that most Belgians actually used. I didn't like tossing them, but what can you do? You can't even give them away, except for a couple of values that I don't have either.
I worked on part of a definitive series: Scott 108-115, with King Albert I, who really liked to be on stamps. The rest of the series (116-122) are nice pictorials.
The note in Scott said that of those 8 Alberts, three have two printing types, two have three types, and one has four types. (Try saying that without reading it off the screen!) Scott goes on to tell us that the differences are all in the upper left corner, but declined to tell us what those differences might be. They aren't in the 1840-1940 Specialized, either, and I've never been able to get my paws on a COB catalogue.
My close-range eyesight isn't the best, especially when I don't know what I'm looking for, so the only thing I could do was scan whatever copies I had of each denomination at 600 dpi and enlarge the .jpg in a viewer (Windows Photo works just fine for that, so does IrfanView):
I think I found something. See those horizontal lines in the corner? In one type, they go all the way down to where that floral leaf bumps into the border. In the other, the last couple of (very short) lines are left out. That's most visible in row 2, stamp 3. Also, up at the top and to the right of that floral leaf or whatever it is, you might see two spheres and a sort of triangular or arrow-shaped object. Depending on whether those lines to the left stop or keep going, that arrow-shaped object is a bit different.
I did three denominations and then switched over to the King Baudouin series from the 1950s and 1960s. It has relatively few varieties; the most fun about the series is that some of the denominations were printed in immense quantities, and the printers worked the plates into the ground, so you can get some unusual effects as the King sort of fades into a mist. Some of them are spooky, really. So I'm gonna make a page of them.
In the process, I threw out at least fifty Baudouin stamps. Some had blotchy postmarks. Some had creases - and on this paper, you can never uncrease a stamp. Some had scratches on the surface, which is another common mishap on this series. The paper is spongy or something, it doesn't have a nice feel to it. It's kind of ironic that a nation that puts a lot of effort into most of its stamps did such a cheapo job on this series and the lions that were around for the same time period - like the ones that most Belgians actually used. I didn't like tossing them, but what can you do? You can't even give them away, except for a couple of values that I don't have either.