“Stanley Gibbons London missed out on registering www.gibbons.com and www.stanleygibbons.com  They instead got www.stangib.com which is fairly OK, but they should sack their webmaster.  Even so, if you just e-mail: sales@stangib.com it bounces back “unknown”!  You need to use this impossible to type out mess: sales@stangiblondon.demon.co.uk  Type that 3 times, and see if YOU get it correct!  

ASDA New York were also too late.  APTA in Australia was also too late.  Other entities registered ASDA.com and APTA.com so they forever have no access to those short catchy names.  The PTS London should have had www.PTS.com registered years back, but obviously did not, as that name also is taken. The PTS is still catching up - there is not even an e-mail contact listed in the current PTS directory for themselves!”

So I wrote about this very matter here well over 20 years back, in the 1990s, and had repeatedly then badgered the PTS to secure the simple PTS.com name, and was ignored, so they got the current lame www.thepts.net   Many UK stamp businesses I was quite sure then all used goose quill pens, and bottles of Quink Ink on a sloping ledger book, to create their monthly accounts.  Some still do I suspect! 

Gibbons later needed to later buy back their own domain name at some silly price.  Even 10-15 years back most UK dealers did not even own quality scanners, or have a clue how to furnish a clear scan of a scarce stamp even if you ask for one.  Again, some do not NOW!  Things are changing for the better, thank goodness.

Anyway, having a 37 year old, tech savvy, with real world Business acumen Millennial, heading up the PTS has seen a lot of positive changes.  They have been nudged firmly into 2020 very noticeably, with a Facebook page, and blogs and Forum, and other such modern things and devices, that many collectors and dealers actually use often.

Philately is gaining popularity among Millennials, many of whom see the creative pursuit as an escape from their screen-based lives.  Suzanne Rae said in the article - “Philately is tangible: it’s relaxing and unplugged.  It’s also very Instagrammable.  Twitter and Instagram enable young collectors to find people just like them, and see that it’s not only a geeky old man’s pursuit.”

tinyurl.com/StampYoungies has a detailed discussion of the new wave of Millennials entering the stamp collecting hobby, with many specific examples of those collectors given.  Not every 75 year old in a brown cardigan will agree with, or even understand the paragraph above, but it is the emerging stamp world in 2020.

Wikipedia uses this definition - "Millennials are also known as Generation Y (or simply Gen Y)  Researchers and popular media use the early 1980s as starting birth years and the mid-1990s to early 2000s as ending birth years, with 1981 to 1996 a widely accepted defining range for the Generation Y."

The subject of the recent widely reported "Guardian" newspaper article is Suzanne Rae, 37, who for 18 months has been Chairman of the Philatelic Traders Society London (PTS).  They are now 91 years old, and run the vastly successful STAMPEX mega shows in the UK twice a year etc.  The black and white shield PTS member logo shown nearby, is synonymous with philately and Trust.

I've been a member of the PTS London for probably more years than Suzanne has been alive, and the Chairmen were always men, and pretty elderly men at that - like me!Nothing wrong with that at all - it was just how things were always done in the stamp business, in those decades.

Anyway at age 37, Suzanne certainly fits the strict definition of the "Millennial" above, and she once worked for ExxonMobil Oil and with Deutsche Bank etc, and does not come from a lifetime stamp dealing career background, as most did in the past, who ended up as PTS Chairmen. 

Suzanne has a University Degree with Honours, studying Economics and Business Management, and has an interesting and varied career background before starting her own stamp business in very recent years - www.artstamped.com and has been Chairman of the PTS London for about 18 months now. 

Art Stamped is an unusual philatelic site, very different from the rank and file old fashioned stamp dealer sites (like mine), that offers straight forward Kangaroo stamps and 1d Black offerings etc.  A lot of material offered there are montages and objects made from, or covered with, postage stamps etc.  Several are shown nearby.

One interesting item I saw on her site, were real cricket balls, covered in genuine GB 1860s Penny Red postage stamps, for a dinner at Lords Cricket Ground.  Even the original stitched seams were visible.  All of these balls were auctioned off on the evening, to attendees.

As I often type - “the last word in Philately will NEVER be written!”   Exciting new discoveries keep turning up - often a century or so after the stamp was issued.  I saw an eye-catching example recently and shown nearby.

It was the 1932 2d Red Australia KGV head overprinted “OS” imperforate at top, offered by Auction with an estimate of $A5,000.  The stamp has been torn from the margin at an angle, with a 4mm gap between the top perf, and the imperf top of the stamp.

After near 90 years it is odd the first example of this should appear on the market.  This is a totally new discovery.  It needs to be remembered that this was issued in 1932, at the height of The Great Depression, and Commonwealth Stamp Printer, John Ash was a frugal Scotsman!

Ash was averse to waste, at any time.  His mantra was that any sheets of otherwise defective stamps too poorly printed or too ugly to be sold to the public, would where possible, be put aside, and overprinted for the “Free Government Use”.

So possibly a sheet part imperforate along top was put aside for this purpose - we shall never know.  Sometimes only one or two stamps were affected, due to a sheet corner turn, so that not all 4 sides were perforated etc, and several such stamps exist in other values.

This same 2d red CofA watermark “OS” has several stamps recorded with INVERTED OS overprints of course - cat $100,000 each in ACSC, and SG 0130a, cat £50,000.  So quality control at this point in time was certainly not all it should have been.

John Ash was especially zealous regarding poorly centred/perforated stamps, and they were set aside for official “OS” overprints and perfins.  I illustrate nearby, a pair of the 1d Green KGV of this same set, with spectacularly poor centering, as you can see I once sold.

Stamps are a strange hobby.  Collectors pay a PREMIUM for very well centred stamps.  The Americans pay quite INSANE premiums as we know for “Graded 100” stamps, that as we all know are often nothing like perfect centred anyway!  The American almost Ponzi style, snake-oil system at work.  More on that below.

Poorly centred normal stamps generally halves the prices - indeed it often quarters it.  From any country.  Indeed, for cheap stamps you can barely give them away.  HOWEVER here following is the totally perverse part of this hobby.

GROSSLY misperforated stamps suddenly take on a whole new price level.  Instead of a few dollars for bad centred, the 1d KGV pair I show nearby, I sold for a few $100s.  THE ACSC of course lists and prices this pair as 82(OS)b, at $A400.

So say $20 for a superb centred pair, $4 for a badly centred pair, yet $400 for a quite appalling centred pair!  As THAT is a “variety”.  This is indeed a strange hobby.  And rather hard to explain these kind of wildly contradictory concepts, to new adherents for sure.

The 4¢ USA 1901 stamp shown nearby, the Professional (sic) Stamp Experts “PSE”  graded as utter perfection - “100 GEM Condition” yet a blind man can see it is somewhat off centred to the right hand side, the black central vignette is also poorly centred, and two corners are bent, and seem about to fall off. 

A pretty stamp of course, but not remotely NEAR the ultimate “100 GEM Perfection” grade.  Scott cat is just $US185.  Six MILLION were sold!  Retail if I owned it, or most sane dealers outside the USA, a few $100s.  Nevertheless, some American Bunny with FAR more money than sense, paid over $A50,000 for it at auction.  Never, if he lives to age 1000, will he get even half that figure back. 

tinyurl.com/4c100Gem has a several hundred post discussion where the two left feet PSE “Promotions Manager” Caj Brejtfus ducks, weaves, slides, obfuscates and insults folks calling them ”Communists and douchebags” etc, if they disagreed as to how this stamp ever got given anything near the perfection “100 GEM” grade, that it very clearly is NOT. 

His lame efforts to comically explain the unexplainable, have likely set back numerical grading by 50 years. “Sorry we screwed up badly here folks” is not in their vocabulary.  Probably if they withdrew their loopy “100 GEM” number grade, the $50,000 dummy buyer would sue them for his huge loss?  Only in America.  PSE are based in Las Vegas, after all!

“Numerical Stamp Grading” seems to be just another corny American huckster fad, like YoYos, and Hula Hoops, and Beanie Babies.  The stamp sucker buyers seem to be drying up, and some grading numbers recently seem just like wild guesses.  Perhaps PSE will then move on to numerically grading Coca Cola and Pepsi bottle caps out of 100? 

As we all know, every major event in the past century or so has had some kind of stamp issue highlighting it.  Wars, conflicts, Moon Landings, political upheavals, Royal Weddings, natural disasters, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions etc, etc.  Stamps document the path of all these things, and the COVID-19 epidemic has now joined them.

It seems like the FIRST country to issue a COVID related stamp issue was Iran.  Linns reported Iran unveiled a special postage stamp honouring medical professionals as frontline fighters of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in that country. (Iran is in the “Top 10” of % deaths globally.)

The unveiling was announced Wednesday, March 17, on an Iranian government website. Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani launched the stamp as part of a cabinet meeting.  The new stamp from Iran is inscribed “National Heroes” in English on the lower left of the main design.

The design of this 18,000 Rial commemorative, shows four people and includes symbolic images based on electron micrographs of the coronavirus. Three of the four people depicted on the stamp appear to be medical professionals wearing face masks. The fourth person, just to the right of the English inscription, appears to be a soldier wearing a gas mask

According to information posted on the website of the National Iranian Postal Company, this new 18,000 Rial stamp salutes “the sacrifices of the country’s medical staff, as front-line efforts to fight the coronavirus.”Many other countries have since followed suit of course, and a number of stamps were also issued for stamp exhibitions that were to take place, and were cancelled at short notice.  Some were for the huge LONDON 2020 International of course - now cancelled.

Many countries issued stamps for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo before it too was cancelled, until (hopefully) July 2021.  Cyprus issued a set of 4 stamps on March 16, and the 64¢ value is illustrated nearby.  Many readers will form sideline collections of such stamps.

tinyurl.com/CovidStamps lists all those known to be issued so far.  Stamp issue programs are generally formulated months in advance - often a year or more ahead, and who was to guess an Olympic Games would ever be cancelled except in a World War?  Weird times indeed.

The Switzerland COVID-19 stamp new issue was created at very short notice as you can imagine, and designed by Berne based studio - Nulleins Kommunikationsdesign. The graphic design professionals designed the stamp at a safe distance from their home offices.

The Post Office there states that the new stamp symbolizes solidarity during the coronavirus pandemic: with Switzerland at the center, while the rotated cross reveals a shining globe.  A postally used sheet of 10 on a 10 CHF Registered letter would be QUITE a scarce piece used in period I suggest, and worth well over the 50 CHF cost price. 

The COVID-19 chaos is also heavily impacting lots of mail systems, that many may not realise.  Australia is a very remote island of course, and there are basically ZERO commercial flights in or out of the country for the past month - hence almost no airmail.  SEA to Europe/Canada from here is 6 weeks.

For many sellers - especially those using eBay this will be a total disaster, with endless PayPal “goods not received” claims. From reports I have had here, PayPal cheerfully pay out on those after a few weeks as usual, meaning the seller loses the lot – the cost of the goods, AND the cost of the shipping.

Many large countries will not send mail or parcels to Australia, and Australia cannot send any there.  These include Germany, most of Scandinavia, and Canada, and more are added weekly sadly - full regularly updated global details here - tinyurl.com/CovidMail

Stampboards members posting purchases and swaps to each other are now often seeing them returned by their Post Office.  An early April, Paderborn Germany Priority Airmail sending to Melbourne is shown nearby, with the German PO sticker translating as - "Postal traffic to the country of destination is currently interrupted. The resumption date is currently not foreseeable.  Return To Sender."

In this COVIT-19 global madness, and lock-downs, and disruption and deaths, that we are all facing every day, a little light humour is always a good thing, to bring us back to a tiny sense of normality.  There should really be more of it, and thank heavens some folks do attempt to do it.

Stampboards members pointed out a recent eBay auction of a GB 1840 1d Black imperf stamp, that came along with a toilet roll tossed in free!   Pretty innovative, and good to see a little levity and fun, mixed in among all the other depressing COVIT-19 daily news updates.  UK based empirecollectables-com was the eBay seller name.

Their ebay auction was headed thus - *Mint Loo Roll* - comes with Used 1840 1d Black Plate 6 (FH) Used”

“Not sure which of these items is scarcer but up for grabs is an Unused Mint Loo Roll Andrex Deluxe Quilted *VERY RARE!!!**  Comes with a four margin Used 1840 1d Black Plate 6 (FH) red Maltese Cross This could be the last Roll you see on offer. PS - I've plenty of Penny Blacks if we do run out!!

A member of the Philatelic Traders' Society (PTS).  We do our best to be accurate with descriptions, noting faults and giving a straight forward presentation of the items for sale.  We care what you think and welcome comments and feedback about our service and items so we can improve customer satisfaction.”

The news is, the 1d Black sold for what it would have got, if offered without the Loo Roll, so there might be a message of some kind in there - what that message is, I have no idea!  However just a little bit of harmless fun, mixed in among all the other depressing news we seem to be hearing for hours each day in recent months.