Sixty Bucks o' Fun! Kingston Spring Stamp Festival

Last weekend, the Kingston Stamp Club held its Spring Stamp Festival at Crossroads United Church. My first stop, as always, was the club consignment table. Their pricing and selling system is effective and after perusing tables full o' goodies, I was checked out with my consignment items (above and below) in my reusable shopping bag. I was especially pleased to find two tins full o' stamps! Who doesn't like a tin or cigar box? 

Also, several stock pages of mint Canadian postage, albeit 5-6 cents in the majority. However, I did find several blocks in the 10-25 cent range. (It's tough to find an envelope big enough to effectively hold first-class postage in these small denominations.) Over $38 face value of stamps for $13.

Then I was off perusing the sale tables. I picked up a few items from Verona's Roy Lingen. 

Also three small stamp-block albums from seller Don. Over $53 face value of 5-25 cent stamps for $4.50:

I was hoping to pick up some black stamp mounts but didn't find any dealers at the show selling supplies. Among the club consignment items, check out this three-dollar U.S. album with some high values, open view of the top photo items:

STAMPed Volume 4 Published!

I came across this cool graphic (top photo) somewhere and was surprised to see a similar sea-turtle theme in the email I received from the APS publicizing the publication of Volume 4 of STAMPed! This volume is indeed unconventional as expected, with several off-the-wall articles about micro-nations, low-cost early postage, and stamps that don't appear to really be stamps. Plus a pretty good article on Antarctic stamp-issuing entities.

 

This Saturday! Kingston Spring Stamp Festival

Kingston Stamp Club president Bob Gardner reached out with some local highlights for this Saturday's upcoming show:

• Jim Skelding. a postcard dealer from Merrickville will be bringing 150 vintage Kingston/Queen's postcards.
• John Beddows, a dealer from Gananoque will have some vintage Kingston postal material.
• Graham Noble, a club member will have some Kingston-based postcards.

All dealers will have signage to assist in locating the appropriate dealer. 

 

The club will have eight dealers along with sales tables from several of our members. The club will also have a large sales area. Our club has 60 members with the Fall and Spring Festivals being our main events.

Looking forward to it!

Why Stamp Collecting...

 

This Canadian Stamp News article explains why quite concisely. A nice break from (how one somewhat-critical article described) philately becoming simply postal history. When we focus only on Penny Blacks and hoary old covers with nearly-unintelligible postmarks and quill-penmanship, we forget what interested us in the first place: bright, colourful, engaging.

Boston 2026 World Expo - Donations Wanted!

Publishing this Boston 2026 World Expo post for future reference in January, with an update from March.

I will be making a donation, especially my hundreds of the same NZ bird stamps! I appreciate the fact that the organizers are offering the stamps not only to the perennial 'youth' but also 'beginners' of any age. Also...glassines.

Update: I put together a package of 3,825 New Zealand and 1,710 US doubles. The former from a bargain pack of a half-dozen bird and other NZ stamps picked up for $2.50 at the most recent stamp show in Kingston. The U.S. were from a packed stock book of US at a previous show purchased for $12. Found a few I needed for my collection, several postmark improvements on some already in the collection, and the rest now going to new homes. That's 5,535 stamps heading to Boston soon! 

Update: I saved a dollar on postage by making the weight up to 500 grams. Even so, I had another 600 U.S. and a few New Zealand stamps that wouldn't fit, so those stamps went in a separate mailing, along with some surplus glassines!

As of March 21, over 2 million stamps have been received! I got this nice letter in the mail acknowledging my donation:

New Vatican City Album

It's probably as challenging to find a used Vatican City stamp as it is to find a non-Catholic living there. I do have a few, but for the last year-and-a-half I've been fortunate to exchange with Michele Castino of Milan. My Vatican City is now something to see. Holy See, See of Rome, Petrine See or Apostolic See. 

Thanks to Michele's generosity, my mainly-mint collection has burgeoned into its own album. I took a quick video of the results: new cover, glossary of some Latin/Italian inscriptions, the collection, then my collection of Pope John Paul II. 

Youtube link here.

2025 Coin & Stamp Show Planner

Just posted by Canadian Stamp News today, the 2025 Planner includes the April Kingston Spring Stamp Festival but no fall show listed.

Hail, Colombia!

Thanks to Dave from Toronto for kindly sending along this accumulation of stamps and covers. This is the third time a fellow rail enthusiast has noticed this blog in my main blog's sidebar and reached out re: philatelic re-homing. Dave mentioned that he had been going through some of his late Grandmother's items, coming across 25 air mail envelopes posted in Colombia circa 1968, and two envelopes  with stamps from England, Jamaica, Zambia, France and other countries. One envelope was taped shut with a newspaper clipping asking for used stamps to be sent to OXFAM in Ottawa. Upon arrival following the December postal strike, here's what Dave generously sent:

I look forward to going through these stamps, examining them, perhaps clipping, soaking, and further re-homing them. It's possible that some doubles will find their way to OXFAM, therefore they will not go to waste. I look at it as honouring his grandmother's wishes all these years later!

One of my favourite planes-on-stamps - the Lockheed Constellation! 

*It seemed appropriate to title this post as I did now, what with the US Presidency and Vice-Presidency about to roll over. Hail Columbia is the name of the Vice-Presidential ceremonial entrance march!