Our area in north Texas has had gorgeous weather all year but we hit a hot, dry streak in mid July peaking in 30 days of 100 degree plus temperatures in August. Keeping everything green outside is a challenge!

We have been working on the web site as much as we can to correct problems that keep arising. The outfit which maintains our web site is constantly tweaking their software. This tweaking often overrides our software and results in all kinds of problems – images appear in the wrong place – catalog numbers get sequenced out of order – and old listings which had been replaced get reloaded which ends up relisting stamps already sold and deletes stamp recently listed. And – this is the best service we have used in 20 years! The good news is that our customers are understanding and often let us know when they see a problem which helps us identify and correct problems. We just finished rechecking many listings and hopefully have eliminated most of the errors. We try very hard to have everything listed on our website in stock when you order.

Also changes in European postal systems have made our acquiring all new issues more challenging. The German post is the worst. Standing subscriptions are often not filled and new issue shipments can be delayed by months. We gave up on the Post and have a German dealer run down the new issues for us. He does a meticulous job – gets us every issue, but often has to circumvent the postal system to get everything. Because of all the delays in our receiving every new issue – we are considering changing our new issue service to shipping one complete year set vice our quarterly mailings. Given that album publishers don’t print new issues pages until late spring annual mailing of new issues already works well for most of our subscribers.

We have added over 200 new lots to our web site listings and substantially revised Germany listings 1-200 and back of the book.

As active auction buyers, we watch all auctions in the US and overseas for good German and Austrian collections. The market for singles, sets and collections has been getting stronger and stronger in recent years with a major upturn occurring during the past three years.

The biggest price increases are for the truly scarce stamps and better collections.

The trend for the bigger auction houses is to hold their auctions live on the internet. This trend has increased bidding on lots and resulted in higher realizations overall. On line auctions improve the chances of bidders absent from the auction site to compete against floor bidders. Traditionally most of the better material has gone to floor bidders but this has changed. Auction houses also do a much better job of showing images of the stamps in collections on line. This improvement has done as much to increase online bidding. Buyers now have a realistic idea of the content and quality of each lot.

For collections the best auctions are Rasdales, Kelleher, and sometimes Dutch Country. They provide good descriptions and images.

The auctions that I consider best overall for Austrian and German material are

Daniel Kelleher Auctions, Danbury CT

Rasdale Stamps Auctions Chicago

H.R. Harmer New York

Cherrystone Stamp Auctions – New York

HBA (Hanseatische Briefmarkenauktionen OHG) Hamburg

Heinrich Kohler Auktion – Wiesbaden

Dutch Country Auctions, Wilmington DE

I should also mention that collectors interested in buying at auction should check out stampauctionnetwork.com. They list  most of the major auctions conducted in the US and Europe. One can access each auction from this site which greatly simplifies the bidding process for buyers.

NEW ISSUES

We continue to supply a new issue service for the countries we stock. We make quarterly shipments for those who don’t like to wait. I would like to suggest though that it is more cost effective for customers to request new issues be shipped altogether at years end. Complete year sets generally run around two hundred dollars these days. Year groups qualify for higher discounts than quarterly shipments. We greatly appreciate those customers who sign up for year sets and provide us with authorization to charge their credit when the stamps are mailed. It greatly speeds the process for us.

Contact us:

R Schneider Stamps
PO Box 978
Iowa Park TX 76367

Office (618) 975 2099
Fax (940) 213 3596

Email:
Rschneiderstamps@gmail.com

Website:

RSchneiderstamps.com