Some Random Stamps ...

I have lots and lots of stamps just stuffed into black vario pages ... one of my favorite things to do is to take a couple of those pages, scan them, and then spend sometime researching and identifying each stamp (or set of stamps). I then either print pages to mount the stamps (1953-present) or use my Minkus Global for those older than 1953. It's a way of "working the stamps" and gaining ground on the building hoard ... err collection.

Here's a page I was playing with today ...

I usually identify the easy stamps first ... so 

1) the two stamp set from "Foroyar" ...  from wikipedia ...

The Faroe Islands are an archipelago between the Norwegian Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, approximately halfway between Norway and Iceland, 320 kilometres (200 mi) north-northwest of Great Britain. The area is approximately 1,400 km² (540 sq mi) with a 2015 population of 48,700. The islands are an autonomous country within the Danish kingdom.

These two stamps are the 2009 "Europa" set showing Saturn and Jupiter. Brilliant stamps!

2) three stamps from Macao (Macao was a Portuguese colony until 1999 and lies across the Pearl River delta from Hong Kong. It is currently part of the People's Republic of China); a set that I purchased some time ago mainly for the stamp commemorating the 1958 Brussels World's fair and the 1962 stamp depicting the effort to eradicate Malaria. The other (middle) stamp was a bonus ... 

and mounted

         

3) Liechtenstein Weapons issue 1980; I bought this for the crossbow stamp.

4) another easy find ... Mexico 1975 Airmail stamp commemorating Economic Rights and Duties ... kind of a blah stamp really

5) Now it starts to get interesting (although the stamps aren't necessarily as attractive). I had to google Off.Sak to determine that these were Norway stamps. Norway Official Stamps to be exact. I have lots of these sitting around ... there were four on this page ... so here they are

• #O24 1937-38 -- 10o Green
• #O81 1960 (or maybe #O110 1982) -- 2kr Gray Green (the 1982 stamp should be a darker green)
• #O88 1968 -- 65o Red
• #O106 1980 -- 1.25k Red

             

 

             

6) Australia before it was Australia was composed of six different states. In 1901 these states formed the Commonwealth of Australia (the states still exist but now with a centralized gov't much like the US). What's cool is that those different states all issued stamps up til 1901 ...  one of those states was Victoria and I happened to have a Victoria stamp on this vario! This particular stamp was issued in 1886 and is Victoria #162. A handsome stamp indeed!

7) common beat up France stamp. Went on a bit of a wild goose chase at first when trying to identify .. looking for the colony Finistere ... turns out that it's the western-most most region of France (included a map from Wikipedia) and the Pointe du Raz is the western-most tip of land. Cool. Oh yeah ... found the stamp under France printed in 1946. H Cheffer is a well known (at least in circles of people who care about stamps and engravers) engraver of French stamps. I might do an article on stamp engravers at some point ...