i had my surgery on my left arm – finally. I broke it on 1 October and it never healed. Turned out that my arm was much more messed up than the MRI’s showed. My surgery was scheduled for an hour and a half but lasted four and a half hours. I have a large plate and in there now so the arm is holding together well. They have me on a fancy $12,000 device which sends radio waves through the arm and is supposed to facilitate bone regeneration. I use the device 30 minutes daily. Needless to say this is getting old ! I’ve spent the past two years healing from bone breaks!

Everyone in my close family has now had their Covid19 shots and we are able to get out and about much better now. We now visit restaurants regularly again and I hope to reestablish bridge groups very soon.

This year I started all of my garden plants from seed and will be planting them outside this week. Most of the plants are 12-15 inches high so am getting a good start. Also am resodding the back yard with zoysia grass. (Our cocker managed to kill off the sparse grass we inherited with the house.)

We got a little behind in our stamp business with my surgery at the end of March but are back on track now. We have been buying steadily all winter and have greatly strengthened many sections of our stock. Now we have to get the stamps listed on our web site – a formidable task. We are now spending much more time maintaining our web site listings than our printed price lists. This has been coming about for along time – mainly because most of our sales start on our web site.

This month we are updating our German offices and colonies price list Part II which includes issues froM German East Africa through Togo. The are many new listings particularly among the British and French occupations.

Next month we will most likely update either Germany Part II or German States part II. We have lots of new material for each of these lists

AUCTION TRENDS

The bigger auction firms are now conducting their auctions online as well as by mail and live. As a result there are far more bidders participating in the auctions and auction lots are now selling at higher prices. This is particularly true for collection lots.

I bid in many auctions and watch the results for German and Austrian related lots closely. If you read our newsletters regularly you have noted that auction sales have been getting steadily stronger across the board. Online auctions are leading the pack with consistently exceptional sales. US auctions are out performing European auctions. Despite the stronger Euro these days bidders are more likely to find better prices among the European auctions.
AUSTRIA PHILATELIC SOCIETY (US)

The Austria Philatelic Society (US) is entering its 21st year as a stamp club focusing on the Austrian area. We have members throughout the US and abroad. The club is anchored by its quarterly bulletin and twice a year stamp auctions.

If you collect stamps and/or covers from the Austrian area you should consider joining our group; we have members from beginners to extremely advanced collectors. Dues are still only $16 a year. Ask us for a free sample bulletin and application. Check out our website at
www.AustriaPhilatelicSociety.com

If you collect Austrian stamps or covers give our club a try!!

MICHEL DEUTSCHLAND SPEZIAL KATALOGS

The 2021 Germany specialized catalogs (Volume 1 and 2) will be released in Germany on 16 April. The prices for these catalog remain the same as last year. It is uncertain when the catalogs will be ready for distribution as suppliers have not been notified yet as to when they will be available. As soon as the catalogs are distributed by Michel you can logs can order them from Richard Hummel www.hummel-buch.de. His web site is in English and he has complete stock of the European published catalogs. The quoted prices include postage which is a real killer now – each catalog costs 90 Euro but postage is 46 Euro.

Michel Deutschland Spezial Katalog 2021 Band 1 (Germany Specialized vol. 1 – 1849 – April 1945), in German, MICHEL catalogue Germany specialized 2019, Vol. I: Over 6000 high-resolution color images and approx. 96,000 price evaluations.

Michel Deutschland Spezial Katalog 2021 Band 2 (Germany Specialized vol. 2 – from May 1945 – now), in German, Around 10,000 images and over 115,500 price quotes • New listings up to March 2020 • 1472 pages long

Payment can be made via PayPal.

ALTERNATE CHOICES

We frequently remind our customers to please provide alternate choices on their orders. We wish we had an unlimited supply of stamps, but we do not. We always fill your first choices if we have them and use your alternate choices only when we are sold out of your first choices. By providing alternates you insure that you will get stamps and not a refund!

R Schneider
PO Box 978
IOWA PARK TX 76367
Office 940 213 5004
FAX 940 213 3596
Email:

RschneiderStamps@gmail.com
Website:

http:www.RSchneiderStamps.com