Weekly review

Last week, I published that I had updated 122 listings. That wasn't exactly correct. I fould I'd put up two listings that were still in the "working" stage - China (ROC) and St. Lucia. I hope to have both revised and corrected in a couple of weeks.

I've bought something like 85 POUNDS of stamps in the last three years. I've also spent much of that time doing other things than working on my stamp collection. Now I'm trying to play catch-up. I'm working on China this week (part of the review process I should have done BEFORE posting the listing). I hope to do France, and to update all the "F" and "G" countries next week, or the week after.

I'm also finding more and more to be frustrated with re Scott's stamp catalogs. The people that edit and publish these catalogs need to listen to the collecting community and start making long-overdue corrections. I'd also like to find if there's a consensus in the collecting community about the listing of "dated" definitives - something more than just mentioning that they exist. I've found the information in Scott's to be confusing and frequently wrong about several groups of these. If anyone at Scott's or Amos Press reads this, I'd highly recommend setting up one group just to listen to collectors' complaints, recommendations, suggestions, and corrections. It would do wonders to increase the usefulness of your current product.

I haven't had the opportunity to go through all the Nigerian defintives I have from the 1973-80 set in three variations, but I have learned a few things. There's only one set that's watermarked, and the watermark is fairly easy to see against a dark background. The other two sets can best be determined by checking the imprint. The lithographed stamps have a sharp, clear imprint; the photogravure issues have a blotchy and blurred appearance. I've also found that there are quite a number of other color variations than those mentioned by Scott, and in many values where there's no indicator of any color variants. The 50k with black background (#305) really stands out and is easy to recognize when compared to the 50k with dark brown background (#305a, 305b). With the 20k, the fluid in the bottles is purplish in the first issue (#301), either purplish or almost black in the second issue (#301a), and greenish with a pink cast in the third issue (#301b). There are other variants I haven't had time to verify yet among other stamps in the issue.