What Was In Your Mailbox Today??

Latest issue of American Philatelist. Now if I can avoid having the dog eat it again, I'll be good.

Well, keep your homework away from the magazine.

Dutch child welfare stamps (1933 and 1932)from stamp rolls. These had syncopated perforations.

Received this set of Cyrenaica airmails which, because of the lettering style of the overprints, fits nicely in my Art Deco collection. One interesting aspect of this set is that the four values all use the 5 lire stamp from the 1932 set but each is a different color from each other and from the original un-overprinted stamp.

On 1 November, Stanley Gibbons Auctions sold "The Cyriax Collection of Great Britain." I entered the winning bid for a Penny Black. On 10 November, I received a request from PostNL's customs-clearance department to pay 9% import duty on the item, plus € 12 service fee. I paid it the very same day. On 16 November, PostNL informed me they had received the item from their own customs clearance office.

On 17 November, the track-and-trace app informed me the mail had been sorted, sent out on delivery, and dropped in my mailbox within 2:30 hours. This is a highly suspect timeline. PostNL also has an app that shows the mail they will deliver. The app shows a picture of the mail item with expected date of delivery. Originally, it showed 17 November. Yesterday, however, it showed 21 November as expected delivery date, disproving the information shown in the track-and-trace app. The picture showed a white envelope with a combined address and customs-declaration label at the front.

Upon returning home from holiday, I did not encounter the mail item. I contacted PostNL. Of course, they told me the item had been delivered on 17 November. When I returned home in the late afternoon, I found a large envelope rammed into my mailbox. The package did not fit the aperture and brute force was used to stuff it into my mailbox. It took me a few minutes to dislodge it. This was a brown envelope with an address label at the front and a customs-declaration label at the back.

You, already, may have guessed: it was the missing auction lot. Apparently, some incompetent postal worker just pushed a couple of buttons showing the item as delivered and threw the item into the return postbag for the UK. Either Stanley Gibbons, or Royal Mail repackaged it and sent it back again.



As for the lot: it is a Penny Black from plate 6, lettered 'AC', i.e., from the top row of the sheet. What is interesting about the stamp is the cancellation. The stamp was cancelled by a 'Maltese Cross' in ruby ink. This ink colour has been identified as unique to Aberdeen, Scotland.

On 3 September (2023), I ordered some stamps and stamp books from Rushstamps in the UK. They did not arrive and I assumed they had been lost in the mail. To my surprise, they arrived today. Both the customs form attached to the cover and CDSs tell me the order was not despatched until 1 December (2023).

RUSHstamps indeed!

1923? That's got to be a record. #128514;

I have been explaining some friends across the world about stamps from the early 1900s. I forgot to come back to today.
Corrected that.

Nice looking stamp.

Today my birthday present from my son & daughter arrived, a stamp I have admired for a good while but always thought it a little pricey.
The French airmail collection is gathering pace now!
Regards
DavidR

Beautiful! What nice children you have!

I agree on both counts! Thanks Nicholas!

Arrived this week, and, technically not in the mailbox since it was delivered by UPS, but, another nice collection from the sometimes maligned, and sometimes praised EPL Apfelbaum of Jenkintown, Pennsylvania. Personally I've had nothing but great service from them and every collection I've bought from them has been a winner. This one was no exception, a one volume (in a Minkus album) collection of Sweden. I had purchased another Sweden collection from them earlier this year, but the first one was pretty sparse up until about 1930, and this new one has all but a handful of the early issues. The collection is pretty complete until about 1990. This newer one also has a few extra goodies that the earlier one doesn't have: a lot of complete booklet panes, some test booklets from 1967, unlisted in both Scott and Facit, a very nice proof stamp signed by Ceslaw Slania, and a page of about 30 local stamps, also unlisted by both Scott and Facit. The collection includes dozens of items cataloguing $20 or more, and some much higher than that. As a lot of people know, who deal with Apfelbaum, their prices go up and down like a yoyo, so if you want something, you wait till the price goes down to a level you're willing to pay, and hope that no one else grabs it first. I paid what I thought was a very reasonable price, when it was 50% off, and if you take into account what you would have to pay just for a decent comprehensive single country album if you had to pay today's prices, I think I got a really good deal. At some point I may decide to combine the two collections into one and somehow dispose of the inevitable duplicates.
By, the way, David R, I love that French airmail stamp, I think it's one of the most beautiful stamps of the pre-1940 period. Scott lists a variant with the "red network inverted", but doesn't tell you how to tell the difference between it and the normal one

A Christmas card from our postal carrier.

Yesterday I got an envelope containing ten used telephone cards and similar prepaid cards that I bought from a Delcampe seller. It took over two months to make the trip from Greece to California, but it finally arrived. Here's one that's relevant to this forum, a sexy 2001 telephone card from Luxembourg, promoting postal stationery.