Fresh from a seller on Delcampe and fresh from my Epson Perfection V37 scanner, issued by Antigua & Barbuda in 2015. This double-country used to belong to an island chain in the Caribbean that in the olden days was called the Leeward Islands. That unity was dissolved in 1958. Antigua & Barbuda have many interesting issues of stamps on stamps that I will put on the podium later.
My main purpose today is to explain that I almost always prefer separate, single stamps to what is called souvenir sheets or miniature sheets (often abbreviated s/s or m/s). This example should show you why. In my opinion the stamps almost always look better separated. So I break up the sheets and tear out the stamps. Since these sheets are only made for collectors and sold to collectors, the stamps themselves may be worth next to nothing after separating them from the sheets they belong to. But since "I'm only in it for the beauty", I do that without regrets. Call me a stamp vandal! Vandalism for beauty!
In this case, "rare stamps" is the design topic on the sheets, so it's obvious that I can't expect to be able to include these stamps on the stamps in my collection. I haven't even tried. But a nice thing about sheets is that they often contain useful information, as the $10 does. If you look closely on the denomination on the two Canadian and the Belgian, they are crossed out with a printed slash stroke. I wondered why, but logic tells me that it can only have been done to prevent anyone presenting them as real stamps! A strange safeguard, but stranger things have happened. It may even be a rule imposed by UPU for stamps like these.
I will probably present many stamps separated from sheets in later posts at this blog, but not always the sheets themselves, as I do here.
Ingen kommentarer:
Legg inn en kommentar