I'm a dedicated stamp collector. My darling wife is very patient with me. I started out collecting stamps when I was a kid, but then got interested in more important things (girls) through my teen years, and then my kids came along, so my stamp collecting was put to the side for about 35 years. I have now picked it up again with a vengeance. I mainly collect Australian stamps, that being the county of my nationality, but have recently got interested in other places like the Cape of Good Hope, Nevis, the Falkland Islands and early Canadian and Canadian Provences. I belong to the Stamporama.com (SOR) stamp club where I pick up a lot of my stamps from the auctions at very reasonable prices. It is really very enjoyable because you meet a lot of really nice people.

I recently pick up a lot of 16 stamps from Cape of Good Hope that varied from 1885 thru 1904. They were an interesting bunch that kept me amused all Sunday afternoon, identifying just what they were and valuing them. It was quite hard to work out just which stamps they were because the same type of stamp (as shown above) was issued many time and with many different water marks. So it was fun working it out. By the way, I discovered in the process that when I placed the stamps on my open scanner, with the room light on above, the water marks showed up quite clearly in most cases. It was an interesting discovery.

Well that is all for now... FatherAuld.

Slideshow of Early Cape of Good Hope stamps