Complicated Cartouche
Yesterday I spent some time on a manila stockpage of fresh mint Saudi Arabia. Most were from the 1960s and 1970s with the airmail sets and the definitive issues showing the Wadi Hanifa Dam and the Gas-Oil Separating Plant. If one has only a few of these the many listings (about 200 in Scott) can be daunting. The airmails have two designs and only six sets, and I soon was able to easily distinguish between the cartouche of King Saud and that of King Faisal. It was not too long before the airmails were identified, then graded and priced; and it turned out that a few had a high catalogue value (the best was $140 - but quite a number were over $10 - and the task of identification always seems to be more fun when there are pleasant surprises like these).
Then I turned to the regular definitives. First the two cartouche types were separated, then I decided to sort by denomination. The difference in colours could be striking. And I started to get excited. One seemed to be #323 with a catalogue value of a whopping $325. But wait a minute, the stamp clearly has a watermark (one of the tests with the airmails was checking for watermarks).
It soon became clear that the Scott listing for the 1960 set is missing the very important information that this set is on paper with watermark 361. Alas my $325 stamp has a catalogue value of only $2.10 (Scott #237). Catalogue editors get it "right" more often than 99 percent of the time and so it is fun to catch an error like this. Anyway a good deal of nice quality Saudi Arabia is now added to our inventory and now I can recognize the cartouches of the two kings.
A small collection of Turkey came in with a general estate. This is about 125 stamps on album pages and predates the much larger Turkey collection recently bought by us. These pages contain at least 4 stamps with an unusual postmark in blue of a circle enclosing a wavy line and an arabic character. I don't recall seeing it before. Some expert will likely tell me that it is quite common. In any event we will show you a sample; if anyone has any information, we'd like to know. Alternately buy the whole collection for $75 before we find out.
Today our interior doors were installed and we show you an image of the doors from the outside.
Then I turned to the regular definitives. First the two cartouche types were separated, then I decided to sort by denomination. The difference in colours could be striking. And I started to get excited. One seemed to be #323 with a catalogue value of a whopping $325. But wait a minute, the stamp clearly has a watermark (one of the tests with the airmails was checking for watermarks).
It soon became clear that the Scott listing for the 1960 set is missing the very important information that this set is on paper with watermark 361. Alas my $325 stamp has a catalogue value of only $2.10 (Scott #237). Catalogue editors get it "right" more often than 99 percent of the time and so it is fun to catch an error like this. Anyway a good deal of nice quality Saudi Arabia is now added to our inventory and now I can recognize the cartouches of the two kings.
A small collection of Turkey came in with a general estate. This is about 125 stamps on album pages and predates the much larger Turkey collection recently bought by us. These pages contain at least 4 stamps with an unusual postmark in blue of a circle enclosing a wavy line and an arabic character. I don't recall seeing it before. Some expert will likely tell me that it is quite common. In any event we will show you a sample; if anyone has any information, we'd like to know. Alternately buy the whole collection for $75 before we find out.
Today our interior doors were installed and we show you an image of the doors from the outside.
posted by Ian Kimmerly @ 3:43 PM
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