Welcome to my page of stamps

 

Most boys from my generation started collecting stamps and many continued to do so. At that time people and companies communicated by letters and stamps to forward a letter did not cost a fortune. A small fee to get a letter from one place to another. The evidence for this still is the postal cancellation showing from where and when a consignment was sent. That´s why I collect used stamps only. Knowing that this little bit of paper has fullfilled its purpose. What´s the reason for collecting mint stamps other than pure financial interest? The hobby is collecting  stamps . Allthough I own a number of mint stamps in my collections I never have bought them myself.

Unfortunately the conditions changed drastically when stamps were cancelled by machines and even  more so  when e-mail became common further  reducing the number of stamps to be collected. Many countries tried to compensate the drop off by issuing more and expensive series and blocks. Let be that most stamps now are very beautifull pieces of art but collecting stamps was more fun at the time when you could cut them from your own correspondence, ask your neighbour not to destroy the envelope or take care of all envelopes in the company you worked for.

 

On your right  you can click on any wantlist you need to look upon. All except my want-lists of Europa-cept which still is too extensive to fit into this blog. Also there are links to other sites related to stamps

 

Below I show some items of my collections. Not due to any value or that they are hard to come by for any philatelist. I´m just a simple collector and some stamps I like better than other for no specific reason. The pictures I will change from time to time.

 

Mail forwarded by danish postman riding on horse

This phantastic painting by the baroque painter David Kloecker Ehrenstrahl is from 1695. Still more phantastic is the fact that the worldfamous engraver Czeslaw Slania put this bis painting liflike into the size of a stamp.

Czeskaw Slania was born in Katowice, Poland and worked for the Swedish Postal Service since 1956. His engravings also can be found on stamps from many other countries and above stamp is his number 1000. (swedish readers can read more in my blog here)

Below an envelope signed by Slania

Since I got this question several times from different collectors I here wish to make some explanations. The abreviaton is from the french word

Conférence Européenne des Administrations des Postes et des Télécommunications

I´m really happy not being forced to spell out this sentence every time I  speak of these stamps. The first stamps were issued in 1956 in only a few countries; Belgium, Germany, Italy, France, Luxemburg and the Netherlands. What attracted me at that time was the fact that  stamps from those countries, and later on also other european countries, all showed the same theme. The theme was changed every year and the number of countries participating was ever increasing. This made it exciting and worth wile to collect. The idea of common themes went on till 1973. I do not know why this common idea was abandoned since it originally must have been  a sign of european unity. The themes during these years are shown below

Nevertheless CEPT.stamps continued to come every year but each country now was free to design their own stamps around a given commen theme. See list  below

Now the pictures were all different and I lost interest in collecting them untill my retirement when I took up this collection again. In order to determine which stamps are Europa-cept you have to look for one or other logotype:

If you start collecting Europa-cept  you will have a life-long occupation.Not only you will have difficulties  obtaining all  existing stamps, there also will be a couple of hundred new stamps which are issued every year. Also from new member-countries. Below you find a list from which countries you can expect CEPT-stamps

Here some nice envelopes with cept-stamps

Many stamp collectors started their collections with pre-printed albums. You could buy them rather cheap at the start  but had to pay a lot later on when purchasing suplementary sheets every year. Once I got my first computor I started to experiment to make my own album sheets. That could´nt be too difficult I thought. And it wasn´t. Just drawing a number of squares and placing them where you wanted them to be. This can be done with any simple program in your computor. I still use Powerpoint.

This is just one example how a page could look like. Start up by creating a frame around the sheet and save the same to be used for all other pages in your album. You also can save some of the squares since many stamps from most countries appear in repeated   sizes. As a next step you can print a title for every series or single stamp and below in somewhat smaller letters a subtitle. Here the names of birds. This makes it easy  to place the right stamp into the right place  if you don´t want to print the catalogue number into each square. If you have a special story to tell about one or another stamp, why not put it down in writing. Historical events, anniversaries, famous pleople…. you name it. To give every page your personal touch depends on your own imagination and creativity. In case you have programs for treating fotos in your PC  you could preferably decorate some of your pages with pictures. Depends on how much ink you are prepared to use in your printer. Below some examples of my pages

At last a practical hint: number your pages starting with year followed by serial numbers. This helps a lot to locate any stamp later on amoung all your pages.

 

This want-list still is too extensive in order to be transferred to this page. When dealing with CEPT-stamps please always request my latest list by e-mail

                    arnewinderlich@tele2.se