I do
believe I made the remark once before (maybe more than once) that when the end
of the world comes with the four horsemen galloping furiously into view, thanks
to the ever increasing population, we won’t go out with a bang but the world
will be drowned in a tsunami of shit. But now, thanks to science and man’s
ingenuity, that fateful day may be postponed if not put off forever and the
horsemen can go back to the stables. A company in Sacramento , California Sacramento
I must have
spent a good three weeks sorting stamps and sticking them in albums. I hadn’t
realised just how large the collection is. Some countries produce the most
beautiful and fascinating stamps, others are just plain dull, Portugal for instance, Switzerland Douglas has looked up their
value online and the result is diddlysquat. There are three green Victorian one
and a half penny which, if they had been unused would have been worth about £75
each but used are worth only about 90p. There is an early Natal, a Cape of Good
Hope, a New South Wales, a Southern Australia and a Crete before union with
Greece, Fascinating but as I say, not worth anything. Complete set of George V1
commemorative £6.25. Wow! Taken as a whole sheer volume makes the collection
worth anything from five to ten grand and there are any number of doubles,
triples, quadruples even but it’s all just theory as I don’t intend to do
anything with them and the market anyway always fancies the buyer rather than
the seller. Looking it up online it is fantastic just how many stamps are being
offered. It really is very big business.
When I was
a kid my parents had bought a complete set of Edward Vlll and I destroyed them.
I thought they looked untidy so I cut off the perforations and landed myself in
extremely hot water. Ten quid I had destroyed, so I was informed, I wonder if
they would be worth anything today, more than seventy years later, Must look that
up merely out of curiosity.
Some time
ago a friend of his informed Chris that an auction house was selling a stamped
envelope on which was a drawing of Champagne Charlie so naturally he bid for it
and got it fairly cheap. Evidently it was made by a fellow artiste shortly
after Leybourne’s death. After that simple purchase the auction house regularly
sent me their glossy brochure of sales. Oh, what a feast! What eye-candy! What
fascination! Unfortunately, though there were most definitely stamps I would
love to have made a bid for; even the least expensive was outside my range so
eventually they stopped sending the brochure.
Talking of
Mr. Beeching I have just watched him rinse out a small paint pot and brush
under a running tap. He must have used something like two litres of water. I
have tried in vain time after time to get him to appreciate water is not an
infinite commodity. Okay, so there is no shortage here but it is the lack of
respect that gets my goat. It always irritates me when I see him wasting it. Ah
well, old habits die hard and some things I suppose are destined never to
change. Douglas’s little foible (there’s no one to point out mine) is to use
three sheets of kitchen paper where one
will suffice and, funnily enough, I have just read on Facebook that if Americans used one sheet less a day
571,230,000 tons of paper would be spared in the course of a year. I don’t know
who worked out this figure but I’ll take his/her/their word for it
I have just
looked up the value of the ten pounds Edward Vlll stamps I destroyed and
to-day’s value for a complete set of four is – wait for it – 80p!!! Eina!
(That’s Afrikaans for “ouch”.) Evidently a great many people bought and hoarded
them thinking their value would increase in consequence of which they’re actually
as common as muck. Sorry dad, sorry mom.
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