This has been a long year for me – lots of medical problems which slowed me down to almost a complete stop – especially during last summer. Fortunately Jill kept the stamp business going when I couldn’t and all worked out. Turns out that most of my problems were caused by the medications I was prescribed. I have stopped taking over half of my medications including all of the pain killers and feel immensely better.

This month we have updated our Germany Part I price list. This list contains the early Germany issues which include a great many Michel listed varieties.

We are working on updating our Germany private post price list for January. It is our oldest list as finding private post issues is extremely difficult. Private post issues are extremely popular in Germany and the supply of these is very limited. Private post issues in Germany sell for very high prices usually above catalog value. By the way, the only major catalog which lists these issues is the Michel catalogue German Private Post 2005/06. My source for this catalog is www.hummel-buch.de (His web site is in English and he has all the Michel catalogs in stock)

For those who keep asking if we am going to be at a particular stamp show (and always getting a negative response), we will have a booth again at the St Louis Stamp Expo scheduled for 31 March – 2 April 2016. My daughters will be there also as they are required to do all the work while I visit with customers and fellow dealers. Health permitting we hope to attend several shows in the Midwest area next year.

We thank you all for your orders this year! We very much appreciate each order!santa47

Christmas Stamp Want Lists and Gift Certificates

You can influence what you get for Christmas by creating a stamp want list for family members. There is still time to let your family know what you want for Christmas! Some of my customers’ best stamps come to them at Christmas. We always get quite a few orders from family members for Christmas presents – almost always because the collector thought to provide want lists for family members! If you are tired of sweaters and ties for Christmas you might try distributing Christmas want lists for stamps.

Another way to add to your collection is to let family members know they can give you a gift certificate for stamps. We will provide certificates in any amount. (We add an extra 5% to the value of every gift purchase – e.g. a $100 dollar gift certificate costs $95.) We will mail the gift certificates the next day after we receive an order for them.

OUR NEW ISSUE SERVICE

If you collect new issues from the countries we stock , now is the best time to sign up for our new issue service. We now just completing all new issue shipments for 2016 and are getting ready to line up our 2017 accounts.

We can supply anything philatelic issued by Austria, Germany, Liechtenstein, or Luxembourg. Most of our customers receive issues as listed by Scott catalog but we can also supply coil strips, sheetlets, booklets, postal stationery, FDC, etc.

We can provide both mint and used new issues. Just let us know which issues you want to receive and we will send issues on a quarterly basis – four shipments a year. Alternatively, we can ship all new issues for the year in one year set as soon as received – normally by early December of each year. Stamps will be sent with invoice. You don’t have to pay until you receive the shipments. (Most of our new issue customers though prefer to give us their credit card information and we charge the shipments when we post them – it is also our preferred payment method as it reduces our workload.)

If you would like to start new issue service just let us know what countries you want and we will start the service with the first issues in January of 2017.santa58

AUSTRIA PHILATELIC SOCIETY US

We will be starting our 16th full year of the Austria collectors club in January. The main stay of our club is our quarterly journals and our club auctions held twice a year.

Now’s a great time to send us your $16 dues for a one year membership in the society. Make your checks out to Louis Ricker (our club Treasurer) and send them to me.

ALTERNATE CHOICES

We frequently remind customers to add a few alternates to their orders in case we have sold out some items on their order. Many of our customers always provide alternates and many never do!

Remember that our stock is not unlimited and inevitably we will get multiple orders for items for which we have only one or two.

We will always send your first choices if we have them but if you give us a few alternate choices you will always get stamps not refunds.