Sweden : Stamps

just to compliment kasvik on the posting of the tiny Gysinge yellow 35 ore stamp in the Postmark Calendar section.   Maybe there was something about Swedish p.o. workers then that seems to have produced more than the average of good almost SON cancels;-).        I suspect that this colour - sort of yellow/amber is a difficult shade to photograph and reproduce accurately  -  IMHO, in the attached picture mine has also come out too amberish, and not sufficiently in the direction of yellow.
I collect any stamps usually pre 1960, and certainly any of this age, and recently had a couple of pages of Sweden turn up in an old album - so attached picture shows just a few with a date range of 1898 - 1928, though don't see me getting round to knowing much more than the fact that SVERIGE mean Sweden;-)
I think all of the yellow group are not only difficult to photograph, but lack contrast to a degree than makes them difficult to read  -  of all the colours this really is the pits to decipher - it would have helped had designers used another contrasting colour to aid legibility.   

I think the red stripe over that35 øre comes from the scanner. Look at the whole image, more red/pink stripes there.

hi - thanks for spotting that kasvik, and tobben63 us correct - it's a scanning error from the camera - in fact I'd not spotted that when taking the pictures, it looks to become more highlighted as the image is magnified. Apologies for a duff picture.

Water soluble cancels - hmmmm I distinctly remember postal administrations working hard to make it difficult for crooks to wash off cancels. Here in the USA they even shut down several charities that collected stamps from mail. The Lutheran churches were an example. Awfully nice of Sweden’s postal agent to assist scofflaws in their thievery. Sheesh!

I am SO GLAD that I made the decision to not make any effort to keep up with all of the modern issues from my countries. If I receive a few in the mail or they turn up in other serendipitous ways that’s just hunky dorey, but I don’t actually open my pocketbook for them. If I wait long enough, eventually I’ll find them in a collection at a fraction of the original face value. If I could go back and give my younger self advice, “don’t buy new issues” would be near the top of the list.

a booklet I found this morning whilst rummaging through old purchases - it looks to date to May 1979.                               Lovely pix of the Gota Kanal which runs from Gothenburg to Soderkoping - better than a few boring heads.   In common with other European canals the Gota was built in the early C19 centrury as the needs of the industrial revolution forced a requirement for better infrastructure for movement and distribution of manufactured goods.     Apparently, it has a wonderful stepped drop en route although that image doesn't appear in the stamp selection.        Profuse apologies for the absence of the umlauts - the two dots over vowels  -  I did try but kept losing my words entirely, so gave up.   

By the way, I've tried looking for the thread re the selvedge discussion, but no luck  -  will some kind person remind me please or provide a link  -  thanks ever so. :-)

The work on the Gota canal was overseen and largely designed by Scottish Architect/engineer Thomas Telford at the invitation of the king of Sweden.

Telford designed many canals all over England in the pre - railway canal building boom. He also was responsible for the great Caledonian Canal through the Highlands of Scotland.