10th December 2024
I get so immersed in adding new stamps to our stocks and have suddenly realised that Christmas is coming and the geese are getting fat. Fortunately Brenda tends to take care of much of the Christmas arrangements and finding things to wrap up etc. Nevertheless I always feel a little guilt at my lack of participation.

Normally at this point each time, I will list the Colonies that we’ve added in the last ten days, however, there are just too many to mention this time. Ones that stand out are Gabon with some good rarities and Cameroun. More Chinese areas too. Mauritania, Indian Settlements (with much fine used), New Hebrides and others. Most of the additions have been pre-1936 material with a good accent on fine used with circular date stamps for much of it. On the modern side, there are new TAAF items and an empty Davo hingeless album available in the Special stamps section.

Despite the poor efforts of Royal Mail with their lack of daily deliveries, we are manging to get orders out as usual on the same day as received. I am having to collect the mail myself from the delivery office which is a poor return for the amount of postage we all have to pay. Thankfully the e-mails are not affected. I have noticed that one of your favourite ways of ordering from our stocklists is printing out our listing for the colonies of interest and just marking the stamps required by circling the mint or used prices. Somewhat easier I guess than writing them all down.

At the time of writing we are having some wild and woolly climatic patterns across the UK which of course, on the brighter side, is good stamp-collecting weather, as long as the albums are kept safe and dry!

Happy Christmas shopping to all.    Terry Garcia.

Next update: 20th December 2024