philatelia
Member
Stamping in Bermuda this week
Posts: 2,626
What I collect: Ireland, Japan, Scandy, USA, Venezuela, Vatican, Austria
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Post by philatelia on Dec 26, 2022 11:18:23 GMT
The United States Postal Service is selling imperf press sheets again so it's most likely legit. here's a pic from their website. The Yogi Berra imperf is sold out, but here is another ... 
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swvl
Member
Posts: 453
What I collect: FDCs, plus some US modern and new issues. Topical interests include music, art, literature, baseball, space...
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Post by swvl on Dec 26, 2022 14:34:36 GMT
The United States Postal Service is selling imperf press sheets again so it's most likely legit. Yes philatelia, that’s what I was thinking - seems more likely than someone trimming off the perfs from a stamp they were going to use for postage. Although I guess who knows how some people get their kicks. Fun to find in the mail either way!
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eggdog
Member
I want a new Harley!
Posts: 464
What I collect: It's complicated....
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Post by eggdog on Dec 27, 2022 2:42:53 GMT
Here are two event covers I made for the National Baseball Hall of Fame inductions last month. The first one is for David Ortiz, the newly inducted Red Sox designated hitter, whose talent and joie de vivre I have to admire even though he played for my hometown team's biggest rivals. The other is for Yankees legend Yogi Berra, who was inducted 50 years ago in 1972. And here I've been thinking all along, "Y'know, that swvl seems like a good guy." But now I learn that you support the wicked Pinstripes from the Bronx, and I do not know what to say about you and your kind. It is well known that the Yankees sacrifice kittens before every game - oh, yes, they do! - and still, they allow women and children into their park to watch the games, corrupting the heart and future of New York, rotting it out from within, even. Ohhh, the degradation of it all! Seriously, as a minor customer of a metals distribution center in New Jersey, I used to get comps to Yankee Stadium back in the 1980s and early 1990s. And when I say minor customer, I mean the comps were for minor games: Wednesday nights when the Mariners or some team that absolutely nobody in Eastern Daylight Time cared about were in town. And I have to say that sitting in the loge with ancient New Yorkers who could gas on all night about Elston Howard and Ross Moschitto 1 was an excellent experience. Certainly the Mets of the 1980s were far more depraved than the relatively benign Yankees of the Dennis Rasmussen/Wayne Tolleson era, as were Mets fans, flotsam and jetsam as they were in culture's soft underbelly 2. As much as I know the awful truth about baseball in the Bronx, I join all right-thinking Americans in finding it impossible to hate Yogi Berra. And that stamp is the best baseball stamp ever! It looks like a baseball card, but it doesn't - the design is brilliant that way. And it's the best, most positive portrait of Yogi Berra that I've ever seen. He looks like Mister Baseball, dashingly cheerful in the Tools of Ignorance 3. 1 Elston Howard was an excellent catcher. Ross Moschitto's career lasted about twenty minutes. True fans remember guys like Moschitto and should probably take up philately or otherwise reorient their remarkable capacity to store unremarkable knowledge. 2 I always liked National League fans who grew up with the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Mets in the 1980s attracted a lot of front-runners of the type who would never be heard from again once the team stopped winning, but when the team was good they'd sit around at the park, take off their T-shirts, drink 300 beers, and chant moronic and obscene slogans until they passed out or the Mets fell behind, whichever came first. 3 So-called because many baseball players couldn't understand why anybody would want to dress up like that on an already hot summer day, crouch for nine innings, and get hit by foul balls, baserunners trying to score, and clumsy umpires. Actually, catchers are often the most intelligent people on the field, and many of them go on to become managers and coaches.
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swvl
Member
Posts: 453
What I collect: FDCs, plus some US modern and new issues. Topical interests include music, art, literature, baseball, space...
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Post by swvl on Dec 27, 2022 3:11:46 GMT
Lies, I say! All lies! I... (getting to the second and third paragraphs of eggdog 's post)... OK. At least we agree on two things, if not more. 1) The Yogi Berra stamp is the best-designed USPS baseball stamp in decades. I'd put it up there with the great baseball stamps of the '80s, the classic Robinson, Ruth, Clemente, Gehrig quartet. 2) Elston Howard was an all-time great catcher. Before we get too far off-topic, here's a memorial cover prepared by Don Neal of 6º Cachets in 2020, on the anniversary of his first major-league game.  Ross Moschitto was a little before my time. But I might have been at some of those same late Eighties, early Nineties games with you. And to this day, among the real fans at the stadium is one of my favorite places to be. Can anyone tell I'm looking forward to baseball season coming back in... let me check my newly purchased 2023 calendar... just a few more months?
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swvl
Member
Posts: 453
What I collect: FDCs, plus some US modern and new issues. Topical interests include music, art, literature, baseball, space...
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Post by swvl on Feb 7, 2023 0:53:20 GMT
Look what showed up in my mailbox today!  Okay, get ready for a quick yarn… Back in April 2022, I saw that the Smithsonian’s Postal Museum was offering a pictorial postmark to celebrate its big exhibit on baseball and philately. As you can guess, this idea was right up my alley, so I dashed off a very quick sketch on a cover and dropped it in the mail to the prescribed address. Nearly a year went by with no response. Eventually I figured this cover had been lost and stopped looking for it. No sweat, that’s always part of the bargain when you send off a postmark request. But then.... voila! The pictorial postmark reads April 6, 2022, but there’s a spray cancel on the back recording the real date it re-entered the mailstream: Feb. 2, 2023. I will always be curious about where it was sitting for the ten months in between. (The stamp, of course, shows Yogi Berra. The cachet is my attempt at drawing wily Yankees southpaw Nestor Cortes Jr. in the act of striking out some schmo who wasn’t ready for his singular style on the mound.)
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daveg28
Member
Posts: 949
What I collect: U.S., Canada, Great Britain & Commonwealth, France (esp. 1950-80), DDR, USSR
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Post by daveg28 on Feb 7, 2023 13:30:54 GMT
While I was emailing daveg28 I knew there was another Baseball cover I could include , If I could Find it ………………………...and find it I have! sooner than expected, my filing system still works sometimes.  The plus is it is Dave's Home town, TOLEDO OHIO !! Maybe Dave is in the crowd here somewhere?  mailing tomorrow Dave . A little update to this postcard. They are tearing down this old ballpark this summer (It actually started out a a horse race track). I was able to obtain a set of 3 seats from it. I plan to build a base for them, and set it by our backyard firepit.
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swvl
Member
Posts: 453
What I collect: FDCs, plus some US modern and new issues. Topical interests include music, art, literature, baseball, space...
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Post by swvl on Apr 8, 2023 23:18:46 GMT
Baseball season is back underway, and frequent readers of my posts can guess how happy I am. I made this event cover last week to commemorate Opening Day, mailing it from the small post office around the corner from Yankee Stadium — this time getting a postmark that shows where it was mailed! 
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swvl
Member
Posts: 453
What I collect: FDCs, plus some US modern and new issues. Topical interests include music, art, literature, baseball, space...
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Post by swvl on Apr 22, 2023 21:23:50 GMT
I've mentioned before my fondness for the four baseball stamps issued by USPS in the 1980s. Here are all four united on one combo FDC for the last of the four (Lou Gehrig, the Iron Horse, #4, issued in Cooperstown in the summer of 1989). 
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swvl
Member
Posts: 453
What I collect: FDCs, plus some US modern and new issues. Topical interests include music, art, literature, baseball, space...
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Post by swvl on May 28, 2023 1:15:26 GMT
Here’s a nice recent addition to my collection of baseball covers: An unofficial-location FDC for the 1982 Jackie Robinson commemorative (Scott 2016), one of my favorite stamps, postmarked at the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers instead of the official first-day location in Cooperstown. The cachet reproduces a newspaper advertisement that ran on October 10, 1956, the day of the decisive Game 7 in that year’s World Series. The Dodgers and the Yankees were tied at three games apiece; the kid in the ad prays for just one more win for her beloved Dodgers. In fact, the Yankees would clobber them 9-0 that afternoon and collect another ring, which is sad for Dodgers fans but just fine by me. Also of note, and probably the reason for the cachet: This was the last game that Robinson played in before his retirement.  It’s a really nice FDC, with an interesting stuffer (below). I’ll be on the lookout for any of the other covers serviced by this cachetmaker. 
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swvl
Member
Posts: 453
What I collect: FDCs, plus some US modern and new issues. Topical interests include music, art, literature, baseball, space...
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Post by swvl on Aug 1, 2023 2:05:33 GMT
Sharing a few covers for Scott 2417, the 25-cent Lou Gehrig stamp issued in 1989. There were tons of widely varied cachets produced for this issue, following the example of the similarly popular Babe Ruth stamp from a few years earlier. This one is printed on oversized cardstock — about 5.25 x 8 inches. I didn’t realize how large it was when I was bidding online! I guess it’s kind of a quasi-maxicard.  This one is printed on a more reasonably sized 3.75 x 6.5 card. The cachet, showing Gehrig in an emotional moment from his famous “Luckiest Man” speech, is simple but effective.  The photocopied graphic on this one is low-res, but I like it. It’s a fun cachet that breaks the “fourth wall,” as it were, with Gehrig’s fly ball traveling all the way to the other side of the cover. Look out, it's gone!  All of the previous three covers were postmarked on this stamp’s first day of issue, June 10, 1989, at Cooperstown, New York, home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. This last one was postmarked the following day at the post office just around the corner from Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, ZIP Code 10451. It’s a nice pictorial cancel, too! 
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swvl
Member
Posts: 453
What I collect: FDCs, plus some US modern and new issues. Topical interests include music, art, literature, baseball, space...
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Post by swvl on Aug 9, 2023 0:35:13 GMT
My latest cover featuring Scott 5608, Yogi Berra, is this one that I made for the National Baseball Hall of Fame's annual Induction Day pictorial postmark. I chose to honor Fred McGriff, one of the great players of the late Eighties and Nineties, who was inducted to the Hall last month. I made the cachet by jotting down some of his key accomplishments and affixing a baseball card showing him in 1989, the year he led the American League in home runs. 
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Ryan
Member
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Posts: 2,628
What I collect: If I have a catalogue for it, I collect it. And I have many, many catalogues ....
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Post by Ryan on Aug 9, 2023 7:49:55 GMT
Come on USPS! Where is the Van Lingle Mungo stamp?
Ryan
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