We have had a really cold winter this year. After quite a few years of mild winters we are not very resistant to bitter cold! Part of the problem is that we are trying to train our new puppy to go outside rather than on our rugs and it is cold out there!
We have been buying lots of exceptional material and already have enough new material for all of this year’s price lists. Last year we were very proud of our selves for reducing the pile of new, unsorted material by 80% but our acquisitions have created new piles larger than those with which we started last year. The good news is that we have lots of exceptionally scarce and desirable material for our customers.
This month we updated our German states Part I price list which includes stamps from Baden through Brunswick. We also added a new category to our Germany listings on our web site. – “Specimen overprints – Muster stamps”. We don’t yet have a printed listing of these issues but hope to finish one soon. We didn’t deliberately acquire these issues and have a relatively small stock of them that we have priced below retail in hopes of selling them quickly and discontinuing stocking them – we just have too many categories of stamps.
For those of you in the Mid-West, plan to come see us at the St Louis Expo Mach 6-18. We will have lots of our Austria and German material there for you to peruse. We attend few stamp shows these days because of my limited mobility so we hope to see quite a few of our customers at this show

AMERICAN PHILATELIC SOCIETY
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Periodically, we remind our customers that the American Philatelic Society (APS) is one of the best philatelic bargains around! For $26.25 a year members receive an excellent monthly stamp journal and a myriad of philatelic services.
As the premiere stamp organization in the US, the APS offers a sometimes overlooked benefit to its members. As prospective member applications are reviewed and because the APS demands member responsibility, being a member of the APS brings added credibility when you deal with fellow collectors and stamp dealers. Citing your APS membership when conducting philatelic business is perhaps the single best philatelic reference you can give. Almost all stamp dealers will send stamps on approval to APS members without requiring any additional reference.
APS services include a superb sale circuit, an on-line sales site, an excellent research library, stamp expertizing service, and affiliations with many other collector groups If you would like an application, we have them. You can also visit our web site and click on the APS button. You can use me as your APS proposer reference.

ABBREVIATIONS USED ON OUR PRICE LISTS

– and on our web site.

We have been using these abbreviations for nearly 50 years and forget that some of our customers are unfamiliar with all of them. (We can tell from all the questions we receive.) We used to list all of abbreviations on the first page of each price list but have stopped doing this to save space. Here is a listing of most of those abbreviations.
** – MINT NEVER HINGED
* – MINT HINGED
U – USED
ANK – NETTO Catalog
CAN or CANC – Cancel
CERT – Certificate
CL – Close
CPCR – Clipped corner
(2 Perfs or more)
CR – Crease
CTO – Cancelled to order
DG – DISTURBED GUM
DT – Design Touches Perforations
EX – Expertized
FD – First Day
FERCH – Ferchenbauer catalog
G – Good (stamps have large defects)
G/VG – Good/Very Good (stamps have small defects)
HOFF- Hoffmann PPC
HOR – Horizontal
HR – Hinge remnants
HH – Heavily hinged
LG – Large
M or MAR – Margins
MI – Michel Catalog
NG – No gum
OP – On piece (on paper)
PR – Paper remnants
P – Poor
PC – Pen cancel or post card
PF – Plate Flaw
PPC – Picture postcard
RC – Rounded corner
SE – Straight Edge
SM – Small
SP – Setenant strip
SPC – Special Cancel
ST – Stain
TY – Tiny
TR – Tear
SCHAN – Schantl Catalog
Vert – Vertical