PROLOGUE

As at least a dozen or so of you out there know, my previous attempt to set up and maintain a philatelic website failed utterly some years ago. I felt I had the stock, but web-space was limited and this meant relying mostly on composing price lists. Having done this for a living for a dozen years, it just wasn't going to be fun. Pictures were more exciting and I managed to throw a number of interesting items (I thought) on a couple of pages and left everything else “under construction.”

Within weeks, I had sold just about everything I had scanned for the site, and I was still convinced that only price lists would allow me to be thorough-so I did nothing. My server sold out, the search engines kept on bringing me up on a site that had no redirect. I know very little about really traveling the communications super-highway. I quit. I put up another site with a new carrier and dedicated to personal poetry and opinions.

Nothing is really different now, except that I have the space for lots and lots of pictures. I guess I probably I will be identifying the stuff and pricing it. I appreciate (and need) money as much as the next guy, but you know what? Pricing is boring too. If you see something you like and it is unpriced, forgive me, just make me an offer. Try not to be ridiculous, I actually know what quite a bit of the stuff is worth. Even if you don't become a customer, it's nice to hear from you-especially if I can learn something from it.

Those that know me personally will certainly tell you that I am opinionated. Part of this may be due to old age (I finally got there), and the rest probably because I have spent almost half a century learning what I could about stamps, so if I don't think I know something by now I've really wasted a lot of time, haven't I? I declined membership in the ASDA in 1959 at the age of 18 and never changed my mind. I never joined the APS and was only briefly a member of the American Classics Society, which was the polite thing to do since one of its prominent members was helping me get my Scott 164 recognized. Why am I not a joiner? Membership implies neither knowledge, nor personal integrity. Add a couple of initials after your name, put them on your letterhead and checks, and you can still deal trash or write some rubber for years until you are literally run out of town on a rail. There are some social advantages of course, but you know what? Too often this type of socializing either takes time away from hands-on learning or gets you into a dead-end rut with boring specialists and their exhibits. Enough of that. One more comment on boring and one on my pet peeve and you've gone the course with me.

Certain stamps absolutely bore me. The US Zeppelins are a prime example. Every idiot who starts buying and saving stamps (temporarily) at the post office eventually learns about them and talks about owning them someday. Now, I'll take a set if you want to give me one, just so I can try to sell it right away. But in the entire half century I have been collecting/ dealing, whatever, there has NEVER been a time when a dealer who was not on his way out of town on a rail (and a few that were), could not pick up the phone and have some other dealer send him one or more sets on consignment-hoping of course to be able to get rid of them. That is not exciting. The last thing about them that did excite me, was observing some beautifully absurd ribbed re-gum jobs years ago when the Germans were showing off their technique. And, you guessed it, German post-horns bore me also.

And finally, at last, my biggest peeve. It is self-proclaimed, or somewhat accepted experts who find it impossible to say, “I don't know.” I'll illustrate this with a couple of examples and we'll call it quits.

Over thirty years ago I came across a couple of candidate Cilicia Scott C1-2's. I brought them up the coast and showed them to a regional expert who ran an auction house. After looking at them, he stated. “These forgeries are different from my forgeries.” I asked him if he could show me a genuine example of either stamp. He could not. He never had one. All he knew was that all HIS copies were forgeries, and mine had to be also though they were “different!”

Lastly, there was a well-known Eastern dealer who insisted that ribbed paper on the 24-cent US banknote was not all that uncommon, that he had some back at the store, and that furthermore a true Continental candidate should be a light reddish-purple shade. Of course he never produced any of “his” ribbed paper copies, but that gentleman may have set me back five or ten years. He didn't “know.” So say so, or shut up!

Now I will shut up.

P.S. I would like to hear from someone who can convincingly tell me the difference between the Epirus Scott 1-4 (Chimarra) originals, the reprints made from the original rubber stamps, and the forgeries.