Occasional Finds on eBay: A Superb Swedish cancel

As most stamp collectors know, eBay is a giant mish-mash of stuff... from absolute rubbish to incredibly overpriced classics.

That said, you do occasionally come across a "gold nugget" or two. Earlier today, I came across a little "gem" that is perfectly representative of what Swedish town cancel collectors strive to find for their collections.

I know it's certainly the kind of stamp I like to add to my own cancel collection, but you rarely find one like this: It is not only a well-centered stamp without faults (Sweden no. 36, 30 öre ringtyp perf 13), it has a perfectly struck upright cancel.

Although not enormously rare, RÖK is a smaller place and by no means common.

I have seen these types of cancels-- in this quality-- sell at major auction houses in Europe for 100 € or more, so it is interesting to see one like this show up on eBay.

No, it's not mine... the seller is actually in Sweden, and the stamp is open for bids till Sunday, August 31st. This particular seller actually has several nice Swedish cancels up for sale at the moment. Here's a link, if you'd like to go have a look!

At auction: Classic Sweden and Town Cancels (Ortstämplar)

Many years ago, I developed an interest in classic stamps from Sweden. I was particularly attracted by the neat looking cancels that seemed to fit so perfectly on the stamp.

What follows is a bit of a "back story" about the stamps I have for auction on eBay this week. If you want to skip the story and just look at the stamps, follow this link to my auctions. The stamps shown on this page are actual items up for auction this week, bidding open till Sunday, September 8th.

I actually developed this interest in my 20's, more or less by "accident." I had reached a point in my collecting "career" where my student budget no longer was enough to acquire the stamp for the "next empty space" in my album ($20.00 for one stamp was a lot, for me, at that time), so I was gradually learning to specialize... which allowed me to collect "different" examples of the same-- but less expensive-- stamps.

A nice cancel from FLODAFORS. Somewhat scarce, this is no
longer an independent postal place.

I used to go back to Denmark (as a student in the US) during the summers to work... and one day during my "off" time, I found myself wandering the streets of a part of Copenhagen that-- back then-- had quite a few brick-and-mortar stamp stores still open.

I found myself in one (quite short-lived) shop where the owner took in people's collections and "box lots" on consignment. It was a tremendous mess of stacks of albums and moving boxes and index card boxes and more. A veritable treasure trove, for a stamp collector!

In the course of checking all these boxes and albums, I came across a shoe box filled with ancient yellowing glassines filled with old-to-classic Swedish stamps. Clearly, someone had started an accumulation with the intent of "doing something" with the stamps, at some point... which evidently never arrived, since the box was now for sale. Most of the glassines were filled heavily duplicated "common" stamps from the "ringtyp" era forward to the 1940's. What I also noticed was that there were a number of glassines noted "bedre stempler" (Danish for "better cancels") and that piqued my interest-- I'd already started collecting Danish numeral cancels and "star" cancels, as a specialty.

Cancels just seemed interesting to me, perhaps because of the way they "told a story" about a stamp-- when and where someone used it to mail something. And I liked the idea that the stamp had been used to serve it's "natural purpose."

The box of old Swedish stamps was really more money than I could afford at the time, but I decided to go ahead and buy it, anyway.

A top quality cancel from BÖDA, no more than a tiny village on
the island of Öland. Quite scarce.

I spent many enjoyable evenings going through the thousands of stamps in that shoebox, picking out the particular "choice" examples with beautiful cancels. Although there were no great rarities in there, approximately the first 300 stamps in my "town cancels on classic Sweden" collection came from this box, and have formed the foundation for a collection I have been adding to for almost 30 years.

As the years have passed, I have narrowed my scope a little bit. In its original incarnation, my Swedish cancel collection included all issues up to the UPU sets of 1924. About 15 years ago, I cut that back to just the Arms ("Vapentyp") and Circle ("Ringtyp") type stamps. As of this writing, I have over 4000 stamps in the collection, sometimes with multiple examples from the same town, where different canceling devices may have been used, at different times.

"Hembygdsfilateli," Swedish-- literally-- for "home town (or area/region) philately," is a popular collecting area in Sweden. For many, it's considered "postal history" as much as "stamp" collecting. Although I do have a number of covers in my collection, I am primarily interested in loose stamps.

There are different ways to collect Swedish town cancels, but it's important to remember that there really isn't a "right" or "wrong" way. Some collectors are happy as long as the town name can be "clearly made out" while others will only collect stamps with "perfect" strikes.

Those stamps with perfect ("lyx") and near-perfect ("prakt") quality cancels often command huge premiums at auction, and from dealers who specialize in cancels.

A sampling of the actual stamps for auction this week.
Click this image to see a larger version.

The stamps in this week's eBay auctions represent some duplicates I have accumulated over the past few years... usually as a result of finding "a better example" of a particular cancel. Some-- from the "Oscar" period-- are also outside my collecting area.

All the stamps pictured in this entry are up for bids.

This week's auctions include a total of 135 lots. These are a nice mixture of many fine town cancels, and well as a few classic Swedish stamps with plate flaws and varieties, as well a a few chosen simply because they are in really nice condition.

All stamps have an opening bid of just US $0.99, and there are never any hidden reserves... and since there are some pretty valuable stamps included, the opportunity to find a few bargains definitely exists.

Bidding is open until Sunday, September 8th, till about 1:00pm US Pacific Time/4:00pm US Eastern Time or 22:00 Central European Time. I hope you'll find something of interest to add to your collection!

Click here to see the current auctions with Swedish stamps.

Thank you for your interest!

Up for Auction: Classic Sweden with Varieties and Better Cancels

It's stamp auction time again, and this week the focus is on older Swedish stamps, including varieties and better town cancels.

Scarce shade of 6ö grey

The Swedish "ringtyp" (or "circle type") stamps of 1872-1891 happen to be one of my areas of specialization-- I collect both plate flaws as well as nicer town cancels on these classic issues. This week I am letting go of a number of duplicates.

All items listed start bidding at just 99 cents, and there is NO reserve... regardless of the stamp's value. Some of these items are quite good, including such stamps as this genuine deep blue-gray 6 öre perf. 14-- the scarcest of the grey shades of this stamp, with a catalogue value of 1000:- Swedish kr. in the Facit catalogue. There are also some nice stamps from the "Arms" (Vapentyp) series.

There are at least a dozen listings featuring plate flaws on these classic stamps-- making this a nice group for the specialist.

This auction series also includes some nice town cancels from Sweden-- currently one of the most popular specialties within Swedish philately.

Go to:  Current stamp auctions with classic Sweden

Bidding remains open till Sunday afternoon, August 12th, so I hope you'll go take a look. Since everything is listed with a low starting bid, there's always a good chance to find some bargains!

A nice WADSTENA cancel

Thanks for your interest!

How Rare is "Rare," in Stamp Collecting?

I was surfing mega auction site eBay, a couple of days ago.

In spite of the fact that the format of eBay-- and the quality of material offered-- has changed (and not for the better) over the years, I still like to go on occasional "treasure hunts," there... looking for the unusual and esoteric for my collections. It saddens me a bit that the site has moved more and more away from being a genuine auction marketplace to being more like a giant retail store. An often severely overpriced retail store, at that.

But I digress.

It seems that eBay stamp sellers-- of all colors and stripes-- are extremely generous with their use of the word "rare." I am always amazed at the number of listings that include phrases such as "Look! Rare old stamp!" to characterize something that's quite ordinary.

It got me to thinking about what "rare" really means, for us stamp collectors. And I was reminded that "rarity" is a very subjective concept.

No doubt, we can all agree that unique stamps like Sweden's 3sk Bco yellow and the USA 1c "Z-grill" qualify for the designation "ultra rare." A US "Inverted Jenny"-- of which only one sheet is known to exist-- can also safely be called "rare." But most stamp collectors don't spend much time in such lofty domains-- we are typically looking at a whole different type of material... but does that make it "common?" Or, more relevantly, can some of this still be considered "rare?"

Let's take a stamp like this one: This is the 1kr King Oscar II high value from Sweden, issued in 1900 (Facit no. 60/Scott no. 65). As shown here, this may qualify as "old," but certainly not rare. This one is in its typically found condition, somewhat off-center with a typical somewhat messy cancel, probably from a parcel card. A pretty normal stamp, which can be had in most dealers' stocks for about $1.00, or less. And it's available, in most dealers' stocks. Rare? Hardly. I probably have 20 of them, here in my duplicate stockbooks.

However, if we compare this stamp to the 10 öre value from the same set, I suppose we could arrive at the conclusion that it is relatively rare. 3.8 million copies of the 1kr stamp were printed, while 1127 million copies of the 10 öre red were printed. So there are 295 copies of the 10 öre, for every copy of the 1kr stamp.

But in an "absolute" sense, it's still not a rare stamp. For the average collector, there's little or no "searching" involved in finding one. Pretty much any dealer who sells Sweden will have it. Or you can visit a stamp selling web site like Delcampe or Stamps2Go, and there will be a dozen presentable copies for sale, at any given time.

So let us change our perspective, a little.

Let's say that we only want "really nice" stamps in our collection, and so the first stamp shown here would be of no interest to us. We want to get our hands on a "premium quality" copy, like this one at right:

This is a well-centered example with a light cancel, fresh colors, full even perfs and a clean back. Given that this 1kr stamp was the top value in the set, and most were used on parcels (or parcel cards), it does take a little work to find a copy that isn't creased, and isn't heavily or messily canceled.

If you were to look through a random batch of 100 of these stamps, you might find two or three in this condition.

Now, we're still talking about the same "not rare" stamp, but has it become rare, because of our premium condition requirements? Well, certainly less common. We now have to "work a little" to fill that particular space in our stamp album.

Most stamp collectors are familiar with the terminology that describes stamp condition: "Average," "Fine," "F-VF," "Very Fine," "Extremely Fine" and so forth. There seems to be a parallel set of terms to describe rarity, although it's far less standardized: "Common," "Uncommon," "Scarce," "Rare," "Extremely Rare." However, stamp rarity seems to be misrepresented (or overstated) far more often than condition.

Now, let's get back to our 1kr Oscar II stamp.

Let's say we want the stamp to have an upright, readable, almost perfect town cancel, like this example here:

Given that most of these stamps were used on parcels and parcel cards, and these were seldom "neatly" cancelled like letters might be, things get a lot trickier. To get a copy like this, the stamp would first have to be one of the limited number that was used on a registered or "money" letter, requiring a high value stamp... in order to get a neat hand cancel. Perhaps 1-in-50 of these stamps were used for that purpose. But not all of those got a perfect cancel. Cancels of this quality are very difficult to find, on the 1kr Oscar. Perhaps 1-in-100 (of the 1-in-50) would actually get a "lyx" quality cancel like this.

As a collector of early Swedish town cancels, I know how difficult it is to find a 1kr Oscar with a cancel like this-- even if the stamp itself isn't perfectly centered.

Remember, we still have the same "not rare" stamp, but has it now "become" rare? Certainly something close to it. In Sweden, cancel collecting is a very popular area of specialization, and if this stamp showed up in a stamp auction, it's a good bet the bidding would ramp up to $50-75-- for a stamp with a catalogue value of $2.25.

This brings up another facet of assessing "rarity," namely the interaction between "absolute" rarity and the "desirability" of a stamp.

Back when I collected British Commonwealth, I had a copy of British East Africa no. 2. This was an overprinted GB stamp, and only something on the order of 2880 copies were created. You'd think this would be an extremely valuable stamp (given that quite a few were used up on mail and discarded), but I only paid $90 for it. Why? Whereas the stamp was definitely "rare" in an absolute sense, only a handful of collectors are interested in that area, so the number of collectible copies of the stamp vs. the low number of collectors wanting/needing it keeps the price low.

In the case of our 1kr Oscar stamp, the superb cancel certainly makes the stamp "scarce," in its own right. However, with potentially hundreds of Swedish collectors eager to own such a stamp, the demand for the available examples in this quality grade this means that it now "appears rare." And the stamp pictured above is far from "perfect:" It's a little off-center, the cancel leans 5 degrees to the left and impression is not 100% "sharp." If all these factors were present, the value placed on the stamp might go into the $100s.

So, to summarize the "meaning" of rarity in the world of philately, the most accurate answer seems to be "it depends." The best thing a collector can do is to become educated about the stamps from their areas of interest... and then take seller claims of "rarity" with a large grain of salt!

Classic Denmark and Swedish Cancels on eBay

With fall around the corner, and the weather outside not as friendly as it has been, I have been working more on organizing stamps and sorting through old lots.

As a result, I have been adding new items to my eBay stamp store. As always, I focus on listing good quality and desirable material. It continues to sadden me how many stamp sellers use eBay to "dump their junk." I definitely do not choose to be part of that philosophy... and to the degree I sell "junk" stamps, I usually lump them into one large "floor sweepings" lot, clearly marked as "stamps with problems."

So, what's new?

Denmark 4RBS Chestnut Brown

Right now, I am in the process of adding Danish stamps, most of them pre-1930. There are quite a few from the "Bicoloured" issue, although I have not spent time plating most of these... however, the scans are large and clear enough that collectors should easily be able to determine printings and positions from the scans. I have also been listing a number of better varieties and plate flaws... although I am not going to get into specifics about these, as it seems like they sell almost immediately.

Among the better items going up for auction later today (start Sunday, October 9th, end Sunday, October 16th) is a very presentable copy of Denmark's 4RBS brown (Scott #2b/AFA no. 1IIIe) in the rare chestnut brown shade. Although not listed in US catalogues, this shade is valued at US$300.00+ by European catalogues. As with all my auctions, I start bidding at 99 cents, and no reserve.

Meanwhile, I have been sorting and cataloguing a large lot of Sweden Officials and Postage Dues, bought at auction earlier this year. This has turned out to be a very interesting lot, containing not only some nice varieties, but a large number of really nice town cancels. The lot has an interesting "history," in that it contains all Swedish stamps, but was assembled by a collector in Canada, then sent to Denmark to be auctioned, and now has ended up with me in the USA. An excellent example of how stamp collecting truly is a Global hobby!

Normally, when I sort "messy lots" like these, I end up with a lot of defective and uninteresting stamps. This group, however, has been "cleaner" than most with a surprising number of good cancels. After picking out many stamps for my own collection, there has still been a lot left over to sell as duplicates... or as simply not fitting in with my areas of interest.

Current new listings include this copy of a 20 öre red "long" official with a nice strike of the fairly rare "VESTRA KARABY" town cancel. Valued at 500:- SEK (about US$72.50) in the Swedish Facit Postal cancel catalogue, this is one of the rarest cancels I've had on eBay in several years. Although stamp collecting may not be thriving in a worldwide sense, the collecting of postal history and regional town cancels in Sweden is going strong. Known to many as "Hembygsfilateli" (literally: home area philately), this is a highly specialized area of Swedish philately, where collectors focus on postal history from their county or region. This may sound relatively simple-- on the surface-- but it can be surprisingly challenging, as many small towns and places of the 1800s are no longer active postal places, and some were in use for very short period of time.

I hope you'll take a moment to check out my eBay stamp store, today!

Classic Swedish Cancels

I started collecting town cancels on classic Swedish stamps in the mid-1980's.

A nice "SKENINGE" cancel on 5ö green

The collection started more or less "by accident:" I was at university in the US at the time, and had gone "home" to Denmark for the summer-- in part to visit family, and in part to work (I didn't have a work permit for the US, at the time) to make money for school.

One day, I found myself strolling through the streets of central Copenhagen, looking at stamp shops. This was back in a time where "street level" retail stamp shops were still fairly numerous; there were at least 12-15 shops I liked to check out, on a regular basis.

One stretch of Gammel Kongevej had several dealers clustered together-- one of them was a favorite: Usually a "cluttered mess" of boxes and albums; this dealer's specialty was to take in people's collections-- and even entire holdings-- on consignment "as is." His opening hours were... well... sporadic, and I expected depended on whether he was out making a "house call" to an estate or someone who wanted to get out of the stamp collecting business. I don't think more than maybe 1/4 of the shop's stock was actually the dealer's own material. Anyway, this shop offered a constantly rotating "treasure hunt" for stamp collectors-- no knowing what might show up.

Of course, being just 24 at the time and a "starving student," my stamp budget was quite limited. Besides, I was in the business of saving money... not spending it; I needed to pay for my classes. However, I was working the 11pm to 7am shift at a factory AND taking on all holidays and weekends I could get (at the time called "antisocial hours"), and making a rather good wage-- so I had allowed myself a little "stamp money."

At the time, my primary stamp collections were Denmark, Sweden and France. I had pretty good collections for someone my age, and had even (hesitantly) started a couple of specialized collections... Danish numeral cancels and the Danish "Bicolours" issue.

As I looked through the shop's endless piles of boxes and albums, I came across a battered shoebox marked "old Sweden." Inside was an unruly mess of old yellowing glassine envelopes with thousands of classic Swedish stamps, from the "Arms" issues to the "Oscar" issues. Some seemed sorted by stamp; some seemed all mixed together. Mostly, I noticed that there was extreme duplication on some stamps-- and I guessed that was why the box was only marked at 1200,- Danish kr. (about US $200, but still a hefty sum in 1984, to a young man with little money). After all, who would want 1000+ copies of a 10ö red Oscar II stamp? I didn't know much about classic Sweden, but I did know that "bundleware" (even old) tended to be cheap.

Originally, I included the Oscar II series

I am not sure what possessed me to take a second look-- but as I scanned through the old glassines, I noticed a few had been marked "better cancels" (in Danish) in pencil. I also noticed that these "better" cancels were lovely strikes, by any measure-- most of them were on 12 öre blue "ringtyp" stamps, as well as the "Oscar II" issue. Having recently started my collection of Danish numeral cancels, I decided that collecting old Swedish cancels might be a fun sideline-- since I had reached a point with my Sweden collection where adding more stamps generally required me to spend $20 or more, per stamp.

I should add that I really "didn't know what I was doing," at the time. In my mind, I had a notion that perhaps I'd get a hold of a map of Sweden and cross off (or highlight) town names as I found them. I should also add that I found this box before cancel collecting in Sweden really became "a big deal."

My Swedish cancel collection started quite humbly. I bought a 32-page stockbook, which gave me a page per letter of the alphabet, with enough left over to make a separate page for major cities like Stockholm and Göteborg. Aside from that, all I did was put stamps in the stockbook, alphabetically, by place name.

It was actually several years before I learned that there was such a thing as a Swedish cancel catalogue-- the "Facit Postal" catalogue, issued every 4-5 years. And then I was amazed to discover that quite a few of my original "shoebox cancels" had considerable value... and they went on to form the basis for my Swedish cancel collection.

That was 27 years ago. A some readers may know, Swedish cancel and postal history collecting has since become a "big deal." Although "ortstämplar" and "hembygdsfilateli" are mostly Swedish philatelic interests collected in Sweden, I have met many fellow specialty collectors around the world-- from Denmark, to the UK, to the US, to Australia.

"Finds," like my original shoebox lot, are rare these days because awareness of this type of material is so much higher than it used to be. Top quality classic cancels sometimes sell for extraordinary prices at large Swedish philatelic auctions. Even those from relatively common (large) towns have been known to sell for many multiples of their catalogue values.

"WESTERÅS" on an early printing of 20ö red

About ten years ago, I decided to narrow down the scope of my Swedish cancel collection, limiting the stamps to only the "Vapentyp" (arms type) and "Ringtyp" (circle type) issues, Facit numbers 1-51. I still have many of my Oscar cancels, but am not actively collecting them any more-- and periodically have sold off some of the better items on eBay. Even so, my collection has grown to several thousand stamps and continues to grow-- albeit slowly-- as I visit stamp shows and pick up an occasional "box lot" or collection from a stamp auction.

Part of the slowness of the collection's growth can be directly attributed to my own rather particular requirements of the quality of cancel I am willing to include. From time to time, I realize that I may have put unreasonable constraints on myself-- but I am in no great hurry, and hopefully have at least another 30 years of collecting ahead of me!

Along the way, I have had the good fortune to pick up a few rarities-- at least within the limited context of Swedish cancels. That said, I am still missing quite a few "fairly common" cancels... just waiting for examples to show up, in the right condition.

Fine and Rare, Number 4

The "Fine and Rare" pages of this blog is a space where I sometimes share some of the "gems" (in my opinion) and favorites from my personal collections. Some will be rare, some will just be of exceptional quality, some will merely be unusual-- a few will be "all of the above."

Sweden 1872: 20 öre red Ringtyp, perf 14, a very fine used example with full upright strike of extremely rare "FJÄRÅS KLOCKAREGÅRD 3.2.1877" town cancel. Facit number 22g. With certificate by Helena Obermüller-Wilén.

One of my primary specialized collections is of town cancels on classic Swedish stamps, namely the "Arms" and "Circle" types, issued between 1855 and about 1891. In Sweden, these stamp series are known as "Vapentyp" and "Ringtyp," respectively. I originally got interested in this area of collecting after purchasing an old accumulation from a dealer in Copenhagen, Denmark-- and noticing how attractive many early Swedish cancels were.

Cancel collecting is a "big deal" in Swedish philately. Collecting Ortstämplar (town/place cancels) is part of a popular trend known as "hembygdsfilateli" (literally "home municipality philately"), where collectors specialize in the postal history of a specific town, county or region of Sweden... typically the area where they grew up, or where their ancestors came from.

This stamp came to me some 15 years ago as part of a very disappointing mail auction lot, described as a "very fine specialized group of classic Sweden," which in fact was a group of primarily "awful spacefillers." This stamp was one of the better ones, VF and with just one nibbed perf-- still, no great rarity... until I looked up the postmark.

Fjärås Klockaregård was no more than a tiny "place," not far from the town of Kungsbacka in Halland, Sweden. Mail was only handled there from the beginning of 1874 till around March of 1877. As you can probably imagine, if you take a place with perhaps 100 people, in the 1870s, and a postal depot only open for a little over three years... you end up with very few surviving postmarks.

This became the first truly rare postmark in my Swedish cancel collection. I sent it off to Sweden for certification, and it came back with a clean "genuine" certificate.

The "base" value of Facit no. 22g is 70:- Swedish kr. (or about US$10.50). The cancel, however, carries a premium of 3500:- Swedish kr. (or about US$525.00) according to the Swedish Facit Postal catalogue. I have never seen another example of this rare cancel, either in auction catalogs, or in other collections.

Fine and Rare, Number 3

The "Fine and Rare" pages of this blog is a space where I sometimes share some of the "gems" (in my opinion) and favorites from my personal collections. Some will be rare, some will just be of exceptional quality, some will merely be unusual-- a few will be "all of the above."

Sweden 1877: 50 öre rose Ringtyp perf 13, very fine used example with manuscript marking "Aneby 2/3 82" in black ink, Facit number 36e.

For a lot of people, an "ink cancelled" stamp is either considered to be defective or worthless. After all, when we get a letter or package in the mail and the stamps have been "cancelled" by the mail carrier's ballpoint pen or marker, we tend to get annoyed because we think the stamps have been "ruined."

Indeed, this is true for most stamps, from most countries-- even old stamps. 

Ink "cancels" come about when postal workers at the original source post office somehow overlooked canceling the stamp on an envelope or package. Typically, it falls to the mail carrier making the final delivery to notice-- and then act on-- an uncancelled stamp in the mail stream. 

In Sweden, it was quite rare that stamps in the "classic" period (pre-1900) did not receive a proper postmark-- as such, ink cancellations are quite collectible, and become part of Swedish postmark collections. Unlike many other countries, an early ink cancellation from Sweden does not indicate a "revenue" usage... all such markings were applied to stamps in the actual mail stream.

What makes this particular stamp interesting is that it has the actual town and date fully written on it. Many stamps were canceled with a simple "X", OR the town and date were large enough to spill over onto the envelope. Although not really a "cancel" in the strict sense, stamps like these are prized by postal historians and cancel collectors alike.

This stamp came to me in an approval selection where it was marked "defective" and offered at 10% of the stamp's catalogue value. Needless to say, I was very happy to be able to add it to my cancel collection!

The base value of the 50 öre stamp in pale rose (Facit 36e) is 70:- Swedish kronor (or about US $11.50). The additional value of a "town and date" marking like this on a loose stamp from the classic period is a minimum of 400:- Swedish kr. (or about US $65.00), making this quite the "bargain" compared to its original price of about 70 cents.