Uto memories

The three of us visited Japan recently. I stayed for the month of September, and Mami and Sachi stayed on for October as well. There is plenty that I could write about our experience, but I'll confine myself to the topic of stamps.

My sister-in-law, Rumi, had collected a number of recent Japanese stamps for me and kept them safe in an attractive container. It didn't take me too long to work out how to take off the lid.

I hadn't brought my collection with me, so I wasn't sure just which of them I already had, but many of them looked new to me. After admiring them for a while I set to work.

A nice tepid bath is always the first step. 

 

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.

Japholic for sure

Vaclav must have an unlimited supply of stamps from Japan (from the Czech Republic!). I'm not complaining. By now I'm a confirmed Japholic.

Japanese stamps are truly artistic. I've tried to do this lot justice by photographic them in an interesting way. Just take care though. If you do a Google image search using the term Japholic I've discovered that you may get more than you bargained for!

 

Onto a good thing

A few weeks back,  I was contacted by a John Gerbes from Australia.  He collects NZ stamps, and has a "fair few gaps" from 1995. That makes two of us! He offered me Australian, USA or WW stamps in return, and suggested that, if the exchanges become regular, that we'll be "onto a good thing". I'm all for that, John! We've agreed not to work from lists - life's too short for that. I asked for a handful of world-wide to start the ball kicking, and here they come . . .

John sent a few extra in case a few bad ones got through, or a duplicate. He also asked if I could find him the frog stamp from the 2007 native wildlife set. No problem.

 
It was nice to receive a right royal random mixture. About a third of them were still on paper, which makes the hobby seem a genuine one. If you collect only through paying for complete sets, where's the fun in that I ask you?

Oranje without oranges

One of my paternal great great uncles is said never to have eaten an orange "because they come from Spain" a country against which the Netherlands fought a war back in the fifteenth century or thereabouts. I, on the other hand, in spite of their victory over Holland in the final of the 2010 Soccer World Cup, bear the Spanish no such animosity. But it was with a certain amount of poignancy that I received my first letter from the home country after that loss.

Kees Prooij sent me a second selection of Dutch stamps - 150 this time. I've reciprocated with another batch of NZ stamps.

A few of the enclosed stamps featured 'voetball', so I arranged the entire selection according to colour on a field of organge (an old Vita Rich tee-shirt). They look like a winning team, don't they?