Kollectomania - Collectors Blog

Speedy G.B. Christmas Stamp Identifier

rfarrow — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:57:56 +0000

Do you sort British commemorative stamps to put into an album or stock book?

How long does it take searching through hundreds of pictures in a stamp catalogue to find to which year a particular stamp or set belongs?

The British Christmas stamps are the worst with 212 stamps making 44 sets from 1966 to 2009. Just look at these two Christmas stamps, can you tell which years they come from?

Kollectomania have developed a method of quickly and simply identifying any British Christmas stamp or set. This is available for you to download free.

These stamps and most other Great Britain stamps can be viewed or purchased at www.kollectomania.co.uk

The site has a selection of stamped and pre-stamp postal history as well as a large range of high quality mint and fine used postage stamps from the 1840 penny black to modern commemorative issues. You can also find first day covers, stamp booklets, booklet panes, cylinder blocks, printing errors and a number of unusual stamp related items.

Official tax stamp for illegal goods

rfarrow — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 23:08:19 +0000

About twenty american states sell official tax stamps that drug dealers must, by law, attach to packages of drugs that it is illegal to posess.

In Nebraska dealers must purchase drug tax stamps from the Department of Revenue as soon as they aquire illegal drugs. The cost of the stamps is $100 an ounce for marijuana and $150 per gram for other substances. Purchase of the tax stamps does not give the drug dealers imunity from prosecution. Dealers that are arrested for posession of illegal drugs that do not have tax stamps may also be liable to prosecution for tax evasion.

Not surprisingly, very few of these stamps are ever purchased, except by collectors.

Shown below are the tax stamps from North Carolina and Alabama.

Advert from The London Gazette, October 1684

rfarrow — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 22:37:10 +0000

Shown below is another classified advert from the London Gazette of 30th October, 1684. This is a one page newspaper, printed both sides, consisting mostly of world news which is usually several weeks old and a number of classified adverts. Remember to read the tall ‘f’ as an ’s’. The numbers followed by ‘ l.’ are pounds. e.g. 5 l. is £5.

Many old newspapers and other paper ephemera can be viewed or purchased here

Advert from The London Gazette, October 1684

rfarrow — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 21:22:51 +0000

Shown below is an interesting classified advert from the London Gazette of 30th October, 1684. This is a one page newspaper, printed both sides, consisting mostly of world news which is usually several weeks old and a number of classified adverts. Remember to read the tall ‘f’ as an ’s’. The numbers followed by ‘ l.’ are pounds. e.g. 5 l. is £5.

Many old newspapers and other ephemera can be viewed or purchased here.

Collectors stories 2

rfarrow — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:21:18 +0000

The sports card dealer and NWA Wrestling announcer Don West, famed for his role as host of “Shop At Home,” was arrested on numerous occasions in the mid-1990s for selling counterfeit basketball, Tiger Woods, and other sports cards. His finest moment, however, came when he was caught selling Dale Earnhardt autographs… dated after the legendary auto racer’s death in February 2001.

News from The London Gazette, October 1684

rfarrow — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:33:54 +0000

Here is an interesting extract of news from the London Gazette of 30th October 1684. This is a one page newspaper, printed both sides, consisting mostly of world news which is usually several weeks old and a number of classified adverts. Remember to read the tall ‘f’ as an ’s’.

Many old newspapers and other ephemera can be viewed or purchased here.

Collectors stories 1

rfarrow — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 11:46:59 +0000

In 1962 the United States post office issued a stamp to honour the U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold. During the printing process one sheet got turned around so that the yellow printing was inverted. A stamp collector, Leonard Sherman, spotted the error at his local Post Office and bought the whole sheet for $2, expecting to make a lot of money from it. When the Postmaster General heard about it he ordered another forty million stamps to be printed with the error so that the original sheet was worth no more than the correctly printed stamps.

Smuggler’s coin

rfarrow — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 23:34:27 +0000

During the reign of King George III the first ever copper pennies and twopences were minted. Previously they had been made of silver. These new coins were known as “cartwheels” because they were so large. The twopence (2d) was 41mm in diameter and about 6mm thick and so smugglers found them ideal to hollow out. They would probably get a watchmaker to machine out two coins, so they had an obverse and reverse (heads and tails), which would either have a thread cut into them so the two pieces could be screwed together or they would be made as a snap fit. In either case this left an almost imperceptible join that would not be noticed by customs officers. These hollow coins were used well into the nineteenth century probably to smuggle gold coins or diamonds. The coin shown here had a thin piece of felt fixed inside. Presumably there would also have been felt in the other piece so that the contents did not rattle. These smugglers coins rarely come up for sale but we do occasionally have them in the coin department of Kollectomania.

The A-Team, big screen film

rfarrow — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 22:55:12 +0000

It is reported that Tony and Ridley Scott are proposing to produce a film based on the popular 1980’s TV series of the A-Team. The film is planned for release in June 2010 and will feature the four war veterans, John “Hannibal” Smith, Templeton “Faceman” Peck, “Howling Mad”Murdock and “BA” Baracus. The producers are in talks with various actors including Liam Neeson and Bradley Cooper. The film should have lots of fast action, shooting, explosions and laughs.

In the Toys section of our Kollectomania site we have one scarce set of 6″ A-Team action figures with weapons and accessories. Take a look here.

New Batman action figures cancelled?

rfarrow — Tue, 26 May 2009 23:25:57 +0000

Is Mattel about to cancel the production of the forthcoming Dark Knight action figures? It appears that there may have been too many Batman figures produced after the film so retailers have been left with much unsold stock. It seems that many stockists have been cancelling future orders for the figures and some suppliers have been advised by the manufacturers that they won’t get any further shipments of The Dark Knight Movie Masters wave 5.