The Rarest of the Rare

 

Still happy to look at people's collections though, you never know... 

Alan often emails me when he has seen a particular stamp come up for sale, but we can't always remember whether it should be the 'unknown' sport or the standard version and usually by the time one of us has gone back through stuff to find out, the auction has ended.  We really should be more interested I suppose 

 

All this new fangled stuff about SH numbers makes the task so time-consuming and complicated, I can't imagine what new potential collectors think when they see a stamp being listed - is it helpful or offputting to see such anal devotion to what started out as a bit of fun.  I remember when the collection first started and Terry would say in interviews that our cindys had opened up stamp collecting to a generation who had either given up stamp collecting, or had never started, considering it old-fashioned and crusty. By emulating the SH-dedicated real stamp world of SH, isn't there a risk that we are repeating the dangers of making the hobby look too elitist, and so established that starting a collection in year seven, when those SH numbers are already so long, is already too high a mountain to climb?  Shouldn't there still be an element of FUN?

 

Anyway - much easier to cut and paste someone else's listing without having to visit the new, slavishly-adhered to, underworld of dexter and sinister - so have lots of pdfs of well described stamps, variants even I don't remember; and stamp artwork that has leaked from the shop, apparently as a one-off, that I have copies of.  Should come in handy one day.