EXHIBITING

Regardless of my intentions to write more frequently in my blog, something more urgent always interferes.

I recently prepared a new five frame Exhibit. The idea for this exhibit came from the devasting earthquake which hit the Solomon Islands on April 2 of this year. I decided to prepare the exhibit and entered it just within the time limit for ORAPEX on May 4 and May 5.

The title is New Georgia Tok-tok. New Georgia is the group of islands in the Western privince which was hardest hit by the earthquake and tsunami; and tok-tok is Solomon pijin english meaning many people talking. I used a looser translation of tok-tok to define it as communication. The Exhibit then treated the postal history of the part of that Solomon Islands which was affected by the earthquake.

The two Post Offices in the pre-war period were Gizo and Shortland Islands (which is further to the west of New Georgia but also hard hit). In the post-war period can be added Munda as a Post Office. The postal agencies include the famous Barakoma airfield. Other postal agencies have been established on many of the islands.

A theme which I tried to get across was that just as written communication often took weeks to travel short distances in the twentieth century, so too in this century electronic communication about the hardest hit areas is very slowly coming in. The town of Gizo with modern facilities, a tourist trade, and significant European residents was immediately in the news. Small villages which were literally washed away with an undetermined number of deaths and injuries still have not been heard from.

In the weeks leading up to the Exhibit, I planned it in my head. In the days leading up to ORAPEX I started drafting the Exhibit. In the hours leading up to mounting the Exhibit in the frame I almost did without sleep but did the mount the Exhibit Saturday morning before returning to the store to begin packing for the show which opened at 10 o'clock that morning.

There were problems with my Exhibit that I was aware of; and others that I learned about because of a long discussion and critique with the Chief Judge Sam Chiu.

(During my exhibiting career I have sometimes had helpful advice about my exhibits which often related to story line and presentation. Every Judge has tried to be helpful but some have really not been able to help much. For example it was very frustrating for me to have one judge say there was nothing he could suggest to improve my Exhibit and yet award only 21 out of 35 points for importance which dropped the exhibit from a gold to a vermeil medal. What I have done after every time I have Exhibited is to re-do the whole Exhibit based on the Judge's comments I received. No Exhibit has been placed in consecutive judging situations without improving the material in the frames. These lead me to want to "hit the judges over the head" with descriptions on pages like "this is the only known example".)

That was a long aside. Most Judges have taken lots of time and I would especially mention Dave Piercey. However after ORAPEX I want to put Sam Chiu alone on a special pedestal. No Judge has ever been so focused on the whole exhibit or offered such useful comments on how to improve.

The upshot is that I am now planning to exhibit at the Royal in October with an eight frame exhibit on the same subject.

It is possible I will eventually master exhibiting; but the same cannot be said for computers. I assume this blog will NOT have a title (and you don't want to hear about how messed up the text became when I tried to italicize one phrase).

Ian Kimmerly

The Honda Fits

A new car.

After my comments about my old Ford Explorer several people have asked about my progress in getting a new vehicle. First I have to describe my past experience in car buying. My first two cars were each purchased for two hundred dollars from relatives; the next three cars were also used and purchased through Bob Provencher and each time I purchased the first "good deal" offered.

That's my experience ... now for my expertise. I had owned the last vehicle for almost ten years and driven it for more than 200,000 kilometres. It was and still is a Chevy Blazer. I don't know how often I called it a Ford Explorer and I have no idea what the difference is between the two cars. You can trust me to grade and expertise stamps; but now no one should trust ANYTHING I say about cars!

So I decided to look at a new car. I read Phil Edmonston on both new and used cars and I read a report from Slate magazine which was a consumer report on the least expensive new cars. The Slate magazine article had the Honda Fit as leading the pack by a long way. I could make this a long story about the pitfalls of my first car purchase. Suffice to say I now own a Honda Fit ... and I'll never forget and call it a Toyota.

WESTERN TRIP

I left on Wednesday March 14 and returned March 26. During that time I spent several days leisurely driving through mountains (delayed by a mudslide) and the foothills, and visiting relatives. The stamp events were the Great Western Stamp Show in Langley B.C. and the Edmonton Spring National. Both were great shows with wonderful people. Sales at the shows were strong especially from the "Michael Roberts" collection. Meeting new collectors and dealers and doing business with them was both enjoyable and in several cases the start of what will likely prove to be a long-term relationship.

Purchases were substantial including a Newfoundland collection, Cinderellas in quantity, and I was the major buyer at the Edmonton Stamp Club's auction with total purchases of just under $10,000, as well as other miscellaneous.

During the trip between Vancouver and Edmonton I stopped off to examine a substantial British Commonwealth collection. I have dealt with the owner before this and we agreed that I would take the collection to carefully examine it and find all the value. As a result in about a month I will be able to make an offer and if the offer is accepted (which is likely) we will have available a lovely fresh collection which has substantial quantities of Queen Victoria multiples, King George V issues reasonably complete, and some degree of specialization. It's a wonderful and valuable collection.

I will have more to say on my purchases (and much sooner than my last blog posting).

SOFTWARE UPGRADES

My lack of blog postings since late January have been partly that business has been so busy but mainly that the Blogger software was "upgraded." In all the years I've struggled so that computers don't simply freeze on me, I've learned that upgrade should be a four letter word standing for frustration and lost productivity. I simply could not get the upgrade to work. Kate struggled (and one blog was lost somewhere in cyberspace) and so did Matt - and he has solved most of the "upgrade"'s frustrations. Interestingly these do not include boldface except for the first time it is tried so "a new car" might now appear as bold five times and might be in italics. If so I have no intention of trying to correct it.

I fully understand why some people hate Microsoft. Me, I'm going back to stamps.

Superb Sarawak

To me there is always a special appeal to a block of stamps which features an error or variety in one of the stamps. One friend who exhibits internationally says "you need the "big chunks" to impress the Judges."

In 1892 there was a shortage of one cent stamps in Sarawak and the three cent stamps were overprinted to meet the demand. A recent weekly feature showed this lovely marginal block of six fresh never hinged stamps. The middle stamp in the right column has no period after cent; and Stanley Gibbons lists this variety in single hinged condition at 200 Pounds (about $450 CDN). We offered this Exhibition quality block at CDN $275. Even though it hasn't sold, I keep thinking that maybe the price is too low and our customers don't appreciate the scarcity. It often happens that when a dealer raises the price of something it then sells quickly.

FRUIT STAMPS

Often dealers will write about some exciting new purchase. One reason is that being able to offer something exciting to one's customers is often newsworthy. The great majority of collections I see have nothing or very little that even starts to get the heart beating. Recently I did an appraisal of a fairly large collection. The closet in the study had a built in bookcase which showed shelf after shelf of binders. One large binder was labelled "Fruit Stamps."

I had never seen a fruit topical collection which was this large. Perhaps it would prove to be quite an advanced collection, I thought. I had started with several of the Schaubek albums on the shelf above when the widow asked if I purchased fruit stamps. "Certainly," I replied, "We make an offer on everything."

So, I pulled out the thick binder. Hundreds of loose-leaf pages were filled with the sticky labels attached by produce stores to bananas, apples, and other fruit!

Not everything is exciting. Most is mundane. And sometimes the "fruit stamps" have no interest whatsoever.

Montreal Madness

Friday was a long and cold day.

It started with a dental appointment then a drive to Montreal. I went to look at a large collection. It was quite unlike most collections I usually see.

First a few words about my vehicle - 13 years old nearly 300,000 kilometres - the engine and running parts should be good for some time to come. My Ford Explorer has never complained about weight and its capacity is 43 Archive boxes. I've learned how to pack so as to maximize the available space. Nevertheless I was concerned that I would not have enough room for the collection. Also this was likely to be the last major haul for the Ford because rust on the car and also on me (a painful hip because of the position of my right leg when driving) necessitate a new vehicle.

To get back to the stamps. I spent several hours going through what was (for the most part) very nice quality stamps contained in about 200 volumes and miscellaneous boxes. One group of four "red boxes" contained thousands of lovely fresh French Colonies stamps and varieties with a retail value of more than $20,000. What was unusual is that the value of the Canada, USA, Great Britain, France, Benelux, Scandanavia combined was perhaps one percent of the total value of the collection. The value of Germany, Italy, Spain, the rest of Europe, and most of Africa except French Colonies would be measured in the single digits as a percent of the total value.

How can it be, you might ask, that one can buy a vast accumulation of fresh, mostly modern, mostly never hinged collections without these countries. The answer: Latin America, the Caribbean, Central America, Indonesia and several Asian countries. Best is a collection of Colombia in five volumes.

In addition to this massive group there was a major collection of fish and marine life. Wow, this collection really impressed me. It must be very nearly complete for all sets of the world up to a value of about $500; and apparently the only hinged stamps are few pre-World War II issues which the collector never found in never hinged condition. It took about 30 years to assemble. We can probably help fill almost any want list in this topic (it includes shells - and has many non-Scott listed varieties).

I did the arithmetic and made my best offer. It was accepted... and now to continue the loading story...

Usually I like to pack albums into boxes for transporting. It turned out to be fortuitous that there were no boxes. No matter how carefully one packs boxes there is always wasted space. if I had used boxes there would not have been room for everything. Instead each volume was carefully arranged in the back cargo area so as not to waste ANY space. This winter the weather has been kind for the most part - but Friday it was about MINUS 25 degrees. Eventually it was all packed and I headed back to Ottawa.

We're going to have fun with this impressive collection. We hope our customers appreciate it as much as we do.

Why the title of Montreal Madness. Part of the collection includes cartons of commercial covers and cartons of stamps which are loose, or on album pages etc. We have been packing these in cartons and boxes priced from about $25 and up. Each has a label reading MONTREAL MADNESS. Currently we have fifteen of these lots. I will try to double that quantity before I leave today.

Ian Kimmerly

Missing Year of the Pig

The lunar New Year of the Pig has produced some excitement for us.

Below is the pane of 25 stamps. Five stamps in the right hand column are partially showing the grey rainbow foiling. The missing silver rainbow foil is a more subtle difference. It can be seen on the non-error stamps most easily in the lowest Chrysanthemum flower on the pig's belly and especially on top of the gray colour which outlines the pig. (Click on the stamp to see a larger scan.) The silver foil is used to highlight or to give a "rainbow" effect to the outline of the pig. The remaining twenty are mostly or completely missing the silver rainbow foil. In printing terms this is an enhancement.


Most importantly all of the stamps are missing the gold foil. In the one pane there is a striking and unusual error of two missing enhancements to the stamp image! This is very likely the first time a double enhancement has been missing from a Canadian stamp.


Thus we have two different missing colour varieties on one pane of stamps.

Our price for any single is $995 with any multiples, including imprint blocks (or strips of five) pro-rata.

It's been a busy week and I'll try to catch up with some of the new additions later in this week.

Ian Kimmerly

Fancy Cancels

Here we show two lovely stamps with fancy coloured postmarks. First up is a ten pence Cartier (Scott #7) on piece with a light red "tombstone" postmark reading PKT PAID/ LIVERPOOL/ JY 6/ 1856. The stamp is cut close and just into the design at left which results in a resanable price of $900.
Second is a seven and a halfpenny with four margins but a corner crease. It is graced by a bright red BY CANADIAN/ PACKET postmark and; unfortunately, sold almost immediately.

Our BIG news is that we have picked up enough cartons to nearly fill a cube van (10 feet by seven feet by three to four feet high - in today's measurements at least 18 cubic metres) of commercial covers. Or think of it as about 200 cartons. They are mostly from the last 25 years; a good percentage are registered (including many AR); and a good percentage are foreign. We are selling them on behalf of the estate. Come in early for first chance at what is literally hundreds of thousands of covers.
... as we said BIG news. We have a work space in our ground floor dedicated to these.

Ian Kimmerly

German Booklets

Our post-Christmas sale kept everyone busy and now after a few days of catching up on sleep, phone calls, and emails, things are closer to normal. On Monday I looked at a huge collection in Montreal and prospects look good that I will be able to buy it. Today I purchased collections of classic Bulagaria, Austria, and Montenegro. The latter has over 120 stamps, is reasonably complete and has a catalogue value of approx. $250. In the firs (1874) issue it has #2 and #3 unused and #5 with o.g. the overall condition is fresh and fine or better. Price $150.


A collection purchased during the sale is of German booklets. We show a small sample. The current catalogue value of these was 13,330 euros (Canadian $20,261). We will sell out of the collection at a rate of $1/euro for small purchases or $.80/euro for larger purchases. Lot price was $7950, but we have sold approx. 500 euros for approx. $400 and will reduce the lot price by the amount sold.

Kate and Karen have been organizing boxes of mint stamps. One glassine marked $2.85 contained all but two values of the wildlife set from Burundi which now boasts a catalogue value in excess of $1000. That discovery will, hopefully, soon be good for the bank account but another discovery of a claret-coloured diamond shaped stamp from the "Canton de Geneve/Lettre de Voiture" was, to me, more exciting.

Ian Kimmerly