The Polska Polka

Chris's letters arrive as regularly as clockwork via a synchronistic mechanism. It has happened before that no sooner have I sent a catch-up email to him that his letter arrives the very next day, or in this case just a few hours after I click the send button. Is the Concord still in operation then?

In his exchange letters Chris always protects the stamps with postcards. One of them seems to include the route of how to get to his holiday cabin on the side of a lake. Yes, but let's look at what you sent me.

A bunch of stamps from all over the world - from the African, South American and also European small-sized countries is what Chris usually encloses. About half of the stamps that he sent me this time come from Israel, a country that I don't actively collect but won't say no to.

A good number of them have perforated attachments which look interesting. One in the middle seems to be a stamp featuring Bobby Fisher, the chess player, but that can't be so. The man is known to have had some strong anti-Semitic views.

Happy collecting! part 2

John Gerbes from Australia was quick off the mark to send me another bunch of world stamps. He had no chance to include Papua New Guinea, USA and NZ stamps. Next time, he promises. John has stamps from all over: Holland, Spain, Switzerland, Denmark etc.

John always writes a good letter/email. He wrote that he was grateful for the last write-up. You don't mind your stamps posing in some felt slippers, do you John? My friend told me that he'd included a few part sets (from Austria).

As usual, included were a number of stamps still on paper. Some of them I left attached, so as to keep some good postmarks.


I picked out the purple-lavender-indigo issues just to make a nice photo. Yes, John, "Happy Collecting" to you too!

10,000 years' worth of Persian stamps

This version?

. . . or this?

I'm not sure which of the two photographs of the glassine packet I prefer. (The first was taken with a flash and the second wasn't.) But I do know that I greatly enjoyed Dean Brown's latest stamp exchange by mail all the way from Arizona
.

Dean had emailed to say that he was putting together a selection of Persian stamps for me, but I hadn't expected anything as grand as this! Over 100 stamps (not all of them pictured here), and all about 100 years old. By my calculation, that makes it about ten thousands years' worth of Persian stamps that I add to my world-wide collection in one fell swoop.


In my return envelope I included more Japanese cartoon stamps for Dean's daughters, and also a few New Zealand stamps for Dean's friend, Clive, in Malta, from his wish list. Sometimes wishes come true.