A philatelic moment...

[alexpgp]

In looking at my late mother's papers, I am chagrined at finding so many envelopes with missing stamps. Back in the day, however, the drill for young collectors involved clipping stamps from envelopes, soaking them in water, and then drying the separated and gum-free stamps between sheets of blotting paper under heavy books.

I did find one envelope, however, that escaped my notice back in the day. It was a letter from my mother's French pen pal. The stamps on it are fairly ordinary, but just for laughs, I decided to check them against the catalog.

Three of the stamps, copies of a 1932 issue with a face value of 50 centimes depicting a woman representing Peace, are indeed completely ordinary, though they are worth slightly more canceled (€0.3, according to the Yves catalog) than unused and hinged. On an envelope, the stamp is worth slightly more, about €1.

The fourth stamp, with a face value of 25 centimes, was first issued in 1927, and depicts a woman sowing. Starting around 1929, however, a variety of the stamp appeared, and this is the stamp on the envelope.

The "normal" stamp is worth €0.2 used; the variety, €27 used, and €50 on an envelope. That's a pretty impressive multiplier.

Now for the bad news: Most stamps are "actually" worth 10-20% of catalog value, so we're talking the price of a cup of Starbucks coffee. Moreover, the stamps on the envelope are not in pristine condition - they're okay, just not pristine - which drops the price by half or more, so we may not be talking even that cup. In addition, the number of collectors who specialize in envelopes (called "covers" by the cognoscenti) is pretty small, according to Feht, so finding someone who might be interested is a fairly long shot. At this point, one might as well pay for the coffee with cash.

Still, it did make my heart go pitter-pat, for just a second.

Cheers...

Comments

[furzicle.livejournal.com]

O's grandparents emigrated from Germany to Brazil way back in 1910 or so. Of course at that time, especially across such great distances, Omi (the grandmother) kept up with her German family by way of letters and postcards. We have a huge stack of a couple hundred such pieces of correspondence. Unfortunately, O, like you, did the soak and remove routine back in the day. So few of the letters have stamps. But just think about it! All written back and forth between Germany and Brazil through the WWII years.