It's hard!

I always thought working for a stamp dealer would be a lot of fun. I was right, but it does have its drawbacks. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't see a dozen items I need for my collection. Sometimes it's difficult not to drool worse than Pavlov's dogs!

Last week it was French Colonies. This week it's early Australian Kangaroos. What will it be next week? There's no telling. At least with my working, I'm earning enough money to actually buy stamps again. I went nine months without buying anything, and felt utterly deprived.

Today I picked up a bag of Ireland on paper. About three-fourths of it are parts of the "Bird" issue of definitives from 1997, and the re-issues in Euro denominations. There are actually several issues of this group: the standard Irish coinage issue, the mixed coinage (Irish pounds/Euros), and the Euro issue. There are also several varieties of die cut self-adhesives in all three sets, plus several "N" - nondenominated - issues, both perforated and die cut self-adhesive. There's also a perforation variety: either perf 15x14, or perf 14 (primarily used for booklets). The die-cut self adhesive stamps also seem to have been issued in two or three different varieties. Altogether there are at least 75 different, and probably more.

In the article before this one, I wrote that I was "getting out the soaking tray". I had sorted down about a third of a two-pound mix I'd bought to be soaked off paper. There was considerable Channel Islands in the mix, as well as a good assortment of stamps from all over. I put the last group out to dry earlier this evening, before I sat down to write this entry. I've been very pleased with what I've found so far, including two strips of five each of Tunisian commemoratives, the first-ever copies of the Italian "Castles" coil stamps, some Japanese coils, a few Thailand, some high-denomination Indonesian commemoratives, some Malta, South Africa, Switzerland, Canada, and Luxembourg, and just a lot of miscellaneous stamps I now need to sort down and catalogue.

One interesting find was that several of the Channel Islands issues that were issued as die-cut self-adhesive sets were re-issued. The Guernsey "Flowers" were re-issued in booklets with the date "1997", and a straight edge on one side. The Jersey "Days gone By" issue, Scott #854-57, was issued dated 1998, 1999, 2000,and 2001. I recently discovered it's been re-issued dated 2003. The Jersey "Birds" set is dated, and so is the "products of Jersey" set. There are a half-dozen stamps from other countries I'm checking out to see if they have more than one date of issue.

I'll probably start soaking the Ireland tomorrow. I'll have enough soaked off in a week or so to provide a brief report on all the varieties I've found. I did the same thing with a couple of sets of South Africa, and came up with more than 20 varieties Scott hadn't listed in my (admittedly antiquated, for stamp cagalogues) 2003 set.

The next few weeks are going to be very busy for me, but I'll try to write more often than once every ten days! It would help if some people would leave comments...