|
Post by PostmasterGS on Nov 6, 2023 13:31:58 GMT
I use Clarity. I know a lot of people use lighter fluid as it's cheaper, but I can't stand the smell.
With German watermarks, which tend to be very prominent, I can also see them using my scanner in photo negative mode.
|
|
|
Post by PostmasterGS on Nov 4, 2023 21:11:34 GMT
Here's another rare one I recently added to the collection – a rare postcard traveling through 3 German colonies. This card was written by a crewman aboard the SMS Möwe I, a survey ship that spent years surveying and mapping the coast of Deutsch-Neuguinea (German New Guinea). He sent the card from Matupi, Deutsch-Neuguinea, where it was cancelled on 5 January 1900. The stamp is MiNr. 3. It was addressed to Architect Dr. Kell in Tsintau, Deutsch China (Tsingtau, in the German colony of Kiautschou in China). Dr. Kell was apparently also a former member of the crew. The text reads: The card transited through Singapore (26 January 1900), Hong Kong (2 February 1900), and Shanghai (9 February 1900) before arriving in Tsingtau. By the time it arrived, however, Dr. Kell had departed for the German colony of Deutsch-Südwestafrika (German Southwest Africa). Someone in Tsingtau was looking out for Dr. Kell, and paid to forward the card as registered mail. Additional postage of 25 Pf. (Vorläufer usage of German Offices in China MiNr. V 5 I) was attached, as was a registered label, and cancelled in Tsingtau on 14 February 1900. The card was re-addressed to "Damaraland, West Afrika", which was a term used to generally describe a portion of northwestern Deutsch-Südwestafrika (really shows how relatively few Germans were in the colony to be able to locate one person with that little information). The forwarder also included a note on the card: But again, by the time the card arrived in Deutsch-Südwestafrika, Dr. Kell was gone, having returned to Germany. And yet again, someone was looking out for him, forwarding the card as registered mail to Dresden. Additional postage of 25 Pf. (MiNr. 4 & 6) was attached, as was a registered label, and cancelled in Hasis, Deutsch-Südwestafrika, on 16 May 1900. This is also notable because the Hasis PO was only open for about 9 months. The forwarder also included a note on the card: The card finally arrived in Dresden on 27 June 1900, almost 6 months after it left Matupi. Mail sent between the colonies was relatively rare, particularly those items sent between colonies that were very distant from each other. This card is exceptionally rare in that it is a non-philatelic usage that transited 3 colonies on 3 continents.
|
|
|
Post by PostmasterGS on Oct 28, 2023 12:56:54 GMT
1875-1919 …. Dying at 44 doesn’t do much as an advert for an all coconut diet . More people die from being hit on the head by a falling coconut than eating them. As you might imagine, it's not good for you. He had constant health problems, the most recurring being skin ulcers and lesions, likely due to a combination of the tropical environment and lack of a proper diet. In 1904, he went to the hospital in Herbertshöhe (present-day Kokopo, 28 miles away across Blanche Bay), where he was found to be in alarmingly poor health – at a height of 5'5" (1.66 m), he weighed 86 lbs (39 kg). Toward the end of his life, he reportedly weighed only 66 lbs (30 kg). And one can only imagine what an all-coconut diet does to the digestive system.
|
|
|
Post by PostmasterGS on Oct 28, 2023 1:20:51 GMT
Received an unusual one today. Allow me to introduce you to August Engelhardt – author, nudist, sun-cultist, and cocoivore. August Engelhardt (standing) August Engelhardt was born in Nürnberg, Germany, on 27 November 1875. He studied the sciences, and took a keen interest in health and diet. In 1899, he joined an association for "wild living" in Germany, living in nature and practicing vegetarianism and nudism. This didn't last long, as the association ran into legal troubles related to the nudism. Engelhardt began looking for a more remote location in which he could live in any manner he chose, and in September 1902, he arrived in Deutsch-Neuguinea (German New Guinea). Being a wealthy man, he quickly purchased a 75-hectare coconut and banana plantation on Kabakon Island (now Kaka Kon Island). He was initially the only white man on the island – the other occupants were 40 Melanesians. He built a 3-room hut, gave up wearing all clothing, and began a vegetarian diet of mostly coconuts. He theorized that the sun was the giver of life, and that since the coconut grew nearest to the sun, it must be the perfect food – a view known as cocoivorism. After getting an ulcer on his leg, he began convinced that the other tropical fruits were the cause, and adopted a diet of only coconuts. Rather than live alone, he started sending out advertisements and pamphlets in an effort to attract more settlers to the island and to his way of life. Shown here is a postcard that was sent by Engelhardt as printed matter, likely accompanying some of these materials. The only message is a date, 1 October 1908, and his signature "E". The back of the postcard shows that it was custom printed with a two drawings, made by Engelhardt, of his hut and of himself. These cards are exceptionally rare these days. Dozens of settlers would come and go, with the height of the colony being 30 members in the first couple years. Over the next decade, the colony would wither until Engelhardt was again the lone member. When the Australians invaded at the outbreak of WWI, he was interned at Rabaul for 3 weeks before the Australians decided he was crazy and set him free. He returned to Kabakon, where he continued to live his solitary, sun-worshipping, coconut-eating, nudist lifestyle until he passed in early May 1919.
|
|
|
Post by PostmasterGS on Oct 25, 2023 13:00:12 GMT
Lose the "www" in the URL. The site's cert is apparently only issued for the non-www version.
|
|
|
Post by PostmasterGS on Oct 25, 2023 12:48:01 GMT
rod222 , As the others stated above, it means the stamp has an expert mark from Hans Bothe, who was an expert on Germany and the German Colonies for several decades beginning in the early 1960s.
If you or any of our fellow members want to know more on the "why"... In German philately, there are generally three methods by which an expert shows an item is authentic -- a photo certificate, a certificate without photo, and a mark on the stamp. Photo certificates traditionally were only for higher-end items, but as technology has advanced and it's much easier to scan stamps and generate certificates, they've become more common with lower-end items. The mark made directly on the stamp was always seen (in the pre-photo cert days) as the best way to ensure the opinion stayed with the stamp. As this has been an accepted practice for a long time, the mark doesn't detract from the value of the stamp in the German market (in fact, it increases the value significantly), and is not seen as a defect in the way it would be in many other collecting areas. These days, you do still see marks being applied, but usually only for the more common items. For example, there are Colonies stamps for which there are 6 shades of brown -- some very valuable and some not, and several difficult to tell apart. If I sent in a batch of these for en expert to examine, I'd likely get photo certs for the rarer ones and an expert mark for the more common shades. The expert mark can be just a name, indicating it's genuine, or a name and a catalog suffix (see below example), indicating it's genuine and it's a specific variety. Here's what one looks like with a mark from Michael Jäschke-Lantelme, who is currently a BPP expert for German Colonies. The "II b" indicates this is MiNr. 1 II b. They can also commonly be found on postcards (see Bothe BPP mark at lower right of rear). For BPP expert marks, there is a placement system. This placement system is designed to show if there's been later alteration of the stamp. For example, if an unoverprinted mint stamp is marked as genuine, then a forger later tries to apply a fake overprint or cancel, the placement of the expert mark will show that at the time it was certified, it was a mint unoverprinted stamp.
|
|
|
Post by PostmasterGS on Oct 24, 2023 1:36:26 GMT
rod222, Here’s a complete original Spirit of 42 “album” with all 48 for pretty cheap.
|
|
|
Post by PostmasterGS on Oct 24, 2023 0:46:50 GMT
|
|
|
Post by PostmasterGS on Oct 14, 2023 21:00:05 GMT
Postal stationery cutout from MiNr. P115.
|
|
|
Post by PostmasterGS on Oct 14, 2023 14:05:10 GMT
The top one is an order form for a Futterkalk mixture. Not sure what the best translation is (lime feed?), but it's a food additive for animal feed.
The card instructs the buyer to underline the quantity they want, to be sent cash-on-delivery by the cheapest means necessary to the buyers address written at bottom left. The seller will also include 1 pound of marjoram pulp (a taste additive) for 60 Pfg.
One also has to assume that the printed matter card was designed to be sent postage due to the seller as well, as there's no place for postage (unless it's on the other side), and that would be consistent with the way the seller apparently handles shipment of goods (COD).
|
|
|
Post by PostmasterGS on Oct 12, 2023 22:25:05 GMT
Here’s a neat one from the collection. As usual, let’s start with some background. In 1883, the William Cramp & Sons shipyard in Philadelphia completed a new, 228-foot (69 m) steam-powered yacht for famous financier Jay Gould. The yacht was christened the Atalanta. AtalantaGould died in 1892, and in 1900, the yacht was sold to the Venezuelan Navy, who converted the ship into a gunboat and renamed her Restaurador (Restorer). In late 1902, a dispute arose between Venezuela and several European nations over debts owed by Venezuela and damages suffered by European citizens during the numerous revolutions in Venezuela during the 1890s. In an attempt to pressure Venezuela into paying, in December 1902, Great Britain, Italy, and Germany sent fleets to blockade Venezuela in what became known as the Venezuelan Crisis of 1902-1903.On 11 December 1902, the German light cruiser SMS Gazelle entered the harbor at Guanta and captured the Restaurador. Gazelle put a prize crew aboard to sail the ship to Trinidad, where from 13 December 1902 to 7 January 1903, it was prepared for use by the German navy as part of the blockading force. Restaurador in German service A crew was assembled from the other German ships until a dedicated crew could arrive. This dedicated crew arrived on the steamer Sibiria on 29 January 1903. The Sibiria also carried on board a German Marine-Schiffspost (Naval Ship Post) canceller, MSP No. 65 (MSP cancellers were often issued to civilian steamers when chartered to carry German military forces). When the crew manned the Restaurador, they brought the Sibiria's MSP canceller with them. Following a series of negotiations to resolve the crisis, the blockade was ended on 19 February 1903, and the Germans returned the Restaurador to the Venezuelan Navy on 23 February 1903. Thus, the MSP No. 65 canceller was only used aboard the Restaurador for a brief period, 29 January 1903 to 23 February 1903. After that date, the canceller was returned to the steamer Sibiria, which again used it on her return voyage to Germany. Show below is a postcard sent by a German sailor from the SMS Restaurador on 15 February 1903. There is no message on the reverse, so it was likely sent for philatelic reasons. Regardless, it's a rare usage from the short period in which the MSP canceller was on board.
|
|
|
Post by PostmasterGS on Jun 25, 2023 22:28:22 GMT
|
|
|
Post by PostmasterGS on Jun 25, 2023 19:00:39 GMT
Should have talked to me before buying that Michel e-book. As much as I like Michel having an online relational database – the one that's too expensive unless you use it a lot – their ebooks leave a lot to be desired. They're just online, page-flip versions of the PDFs. With Michel, if you want to duplicate on your iPad/computer what you would get with a hard-copy catalog, you have two options – buy a hard copy and scan it to PDF, or buy the PDF direct from Michel. Michel's PDFs are available on their website as MeinMICHEL - Ukraine is about €30 for a 128-page PDF. Delivered via a USB stick, which is annoying, but presumably because they embed a custom watermark on each page to ID the source if you should try distributing it.
|
|
|
Post by PostmasterGS on Jun 22, 2023 8:58:56 GMT
The one on the right, but increase the line spacing so that the descender letters don’t touch the ascenders from the line below. For example, the “p” of “Zaporozhian” and the “h” of “15th”, or the “y” of “Vyshnevetskyj” and the “f” in “of”.
|
|
|
Post by PostmasterGS on Jun 10, 2023 23:09:30 GMT
New version uploaded - v1.64. This is a bug fix version. Back in v1.54, I fixed the order in which single stamps extracted from a multi-stamp image were named, so that they were now numbered from top to bottom, left to right. In doing so, I introduced a bug that was causing the last image to be skipped in certain circumstances, depending in large part on how many stamps were in the last row in the image. This caused a mismatch in the image count, resulting in the error message that says the app was unable to process all the images, and resulting in an inability to complete the extraction process. This release hopefully fixes that bug. Thanks to cjoprey for pointing out the bug.
|
|
|
Post by PostmasterGS on May 25, 2023 21:55:28 GMT
It's likely genuine. The expert's mark is correct for this type (inverted, diagonal, from the lower right corner – meaning an overprinted, rouletted, used stamp), and the CV is €70, so that starting price is pretty normal.
|
|
|
Post by PostmasterGS on May 9, 2023 12:34:07 GMT
Germany immediately post-WWII. It's the reason my collection stops with the end of WWII. Germany to May 1945 is easy, and East/West Germany from Sep/Oct 1949 are easy. 1945-1949 were the wild, wild west.
Immediately after the war ended, there was officially recognized provisional postage -- a mixed bag of locally-produced (at a city/town level) overprints, locally-printed postage, provisional handstamps, etc. There was also unofficial provisional postage which is catalogued by Michel.
Once the Allies started printing postage, there was a desperate need for speed, with postage being printed in multiple locations by multiple occupiers, with poor quality control. Some of the Allied Occupation sets take a dozen pages in Michel just to list the paper, gum, watermark, color varieties, etc., of a single set.
|
|
|
Post by PostmasterGS on May 8, 2023 14:33:27 GMT
Is anyone here in Germany and willing to help forward a small package?
I recently purchased an eBay lot that will only ship to Germany. I normally use a forwarding service, but they're unable to receive the package due to the shipping requirements imposed by eBay, and they didn't tell me this until after I bought it.
So now I'm stuck. I need someone who is willing to receive the package (it's a cover, so will be small) and forward it to me in the US. I will cover all costs.
Thanks in advance.
|
|
|
Post by PostmasterGS on May 6, 2023 12:46:48 GMT
...you have to be so accurate when mounting them, and nobody is! I respectfully disagree.
|
|
|
Post by PostmasterGS on May 5, 2023 2:56:54 GMT
Here's a rare one that arrived today. As usual, let's set the scene first. During the German colonial period (1880s to 1914), mail to and from German New Guinea was relatively infrequent. All mail was transported via steamer, with some being routed through steamer lines traveling all the way to Germany, and some being routed through German connections in China to the Russian Trans-Siberian Railroad. Upon the outbreak of WWI in July 1914, all of these routes became unavailable. Traffic through Russia was no longer an option, and British control of the seas killed the sea routes. The only options left were individual steamers either attempting to make the perilous run to Germany, or in most cases, making for the nearest neutral port where the German steamers could seek refuge and forward the mail through neutral routes. On 12 August 1914, an Australian naval force from the HMAS Warrego came ashore at Rabaul and Herbertshöhe and destroyed the telephones in both post offices. They remained until September, but then left on another assignment, giving the Germans at Rabaul and Herbertshöhe a chance to assemble accumulated mail for a mail run. Mail accumulated during August-September 1914 at Rabaul and Herbertshöhe was placed aboard the steamer Kalili, a private steamer of the Kalili Company, which was to make a run for the Netherlands East Indies. This would be the last mail run from Rabaul or Herbertshöhe prior to occupation. As there was now a war on, all mail had to be censored. This was done by one of three officers, Herr Toelke, Herr Weber, or Dr. Bredemann. The censor markings are either manuscript markings or a rubber handstamp stating: These censor marks are typically dated 7 or 8 September 1914. The Kalili left on 10 September 1914, just one day before Australian forces returned for good. Kalili made an unannounced/unscheduled stop at Maron on 14-15 September 1914 to pickup additional mail from that post office, then made for Makassar, Netherlands East Indies, arriving on 1 October 1914. From there, the mail was transported through neutral channels to Germany, arriving in Frankfurt on 15 November 1914. This piece was cancelled in Herbertshöhe on 8 September 1914, and received a handstamped censor mark from Dr. Bredemann the same day. As it was a cover, it had to be opened for inspection. It was re-sealed with blue circular Rabaul Official Seal labels.
|
|
|
Post by PostmasterGS on May 5, 2023 0:19:34 GMT
Scott/Prinz Split Back in Black
Black because they look best. Split back because I'm OCD about centering within the mount, and top loading mounts allow the stamps to move within the mount too much. Scott/Prinz because Showgard are thinner and not as black.
|
|
|
Post by PostmasterGS on Apr 29, 2023 21:32:29 GMT
Are you aware of the StampsX postmark database? It's in German, but it already has about 850 Belgian cancels in it.
|
|
|
Post by PostmasterGS on Apr 16, 2023 12:31:48 GMT
Are you happy with it? Does it make .epubs? If so, how long would it take to make a 200-page .epub (I know that would depend lots on the type of book, but I'm just looking for a ballpark here)? I've never tried to make epubs, and I think it may depend on which software you get. Plustek currently ships the OpticBooks with one of two software suits -- BookMaker or eBookScan. I think eBookScan supports epubs. I'm not sure about BookMaker. Scan speed depends on B&W vs. grayscale vs. color, the size of the pages, and the resolution. In general, about 4-6 seconds per page for B&W, 6-8 seconds per page for Color. It takes longer to flip the pages and replace the book on the scanner than it does to scan the pages. You could probably do 200 pages in an hour or two.
|
|
|
Post by PostmasterGS on Apr 15, 2023 14:50:29 GMT
I would really like to test one of these devices. I bought a CZUR book scanner several years ago. Worst tech investment I've ever made. It might have worked good for magazines, pamphlets, or other things that can lay perfectly flat, but for books with any curvature to the pages, it was hot garbage. The software to flatten the pages didn't work anywhere as good in practice as it did in their videos. For book scanning, I finally settled on a Plustek OpticBook (non-destructive) and a Fujitsu/Ricoh ScanSnap (destructive).
|
|
|
Post by PostmasterGS on Apr 10, 2023 12:51:01 GMT
When I first started scanning my stamps about 20+ years ago, I scanned my stamps as JPGs at 300 dpi. Then, when I started building my website, I discovered that wasn't good enough, so I scanned master copies of everything as PNGs at 600 dpi, but converting the copies for the website to JPG for better loading. Last year, I decided to re-do all my album pages, which presented my with an opportunity -- since I was going to have all my stamps off the pages, I could re-scan them as 1,200 dpi TIFs, though still converting to JPGs for those that go on the website. So right now, some of the stamps on my website are 1,200 dpi JPGs, and others are 600 dpi JPGs. The JPGs are saved using Photoshop, using a JPG quality setting of 80 out of 100. This results in a slight loss of quality, but it allows me to keep the file sizes manageable for such large resolution images. Here's a demonstration of the difference in the JPGs. I can't post the TIFs because ProBoards doesn't support them. Resolutions and file sizes are noted, and I host my own images, so there's no additional downscaling at the hosting level. 1,200 dpi JPG — 1832 x 1258 — 303 KB 600 dpi JPG — 916 x 629 — 152 KB 300 dpi JPG — 458 x 315 — 66 KB
|
|
|
Post by PostmasterGS on Mar 21, 2023 3:39:32 GMT
300.
|
|
|
Post by PostmasterGS on Mar 20, 2023 21:42:05 GMT
I give my stuff away for free because I can't guarantee the level of support I'll be able to provide between work, my own collecting priorities, etc. There will always be complaints, but at least I don't feel obligated to address them when the product is free.
|
|
|
Post by PostmasterGS on Mar 4, 2023 18:56:24 GMT
hrdoktorx is correct. From Michel's English-language Germany Specialized:
|
|
|
Post by PostmasterGS on Mar 2, 2023 2:49:26 GMT
Andy Pastuszak , You might call your nearest Lindenmeyer Munroe and see if they can find it. They really went out of their way to help me. Looks like there are a couple near you. EDIT to add: And the price they gave me was considerably cheaper than I could find online. I was getting my paper on Amazon for about $20 a ream. At Lindemneyer, it was <$12.
|
|
|
Post by PostmasterGS on Mar 1, 2023 20:24:16 GMT
They are, but when you figure in the long term costs, it's probably cheaper than inkjet. I replaced the toner once in the 13 years I had my last laserjet.
|
|