The holiday season was unusually quiet this year as we did not have a family gathering. Nevertheless holiday food was as plentiful as ever. My family knows what my wife and I like and we got lots of goodies this year.

We had a lot more holiday sales at the end of last year. Usually December is our slowest sales month. I suspect the cold snap we had across the country may have had many of us working on our stamps. The has returned to normal here – our lows are staying above freezing and day time temperatures are in the mid to high 50’s.

We switched our web site to a new provider a year ago and finally finished cleaning up most of the problems with the new software. We had to rescan several thousand images and recreate many of our listings. Also, over the course of last year we added about 5000 new items to our listings.

We have completed our year sets for 2023 and they have been added to our year set listings online. This year Germany joined Austria in issuing crypto stamps. They are listed in Scott catalogs as major issues so collectors who want a complete year set have to buy them. The postal folks have another money maker.

NEW ISSUE SERVICE

We are just now mailing all of the 2023 new issues. 2023 was another record year for new issues for both Austria and Germany, Both countries issued complete series of regular issues to cover every price category for their postal services. These issues included many high denomination issues and pushed the face value of their year sets to all time highs.

If you would like to start a new issue service, we can supply anything that the posts of Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein or Luxembourg issue. We tailor our new issue mailings to the needs of each customer. Most customers collect all of the issues listed by Scott catalogs as major catalog numbers as these will be the stamps that spaces are provided for in American made albums. Some of our customers use European albums and we can tailor our mailings to include issues that will appear in these albums too.

If you want to sign up for new issues, all you have to do is let us know which issues you want and we will send on approval via quarterly shipments. (We can also wait until of the end of each issuing year and send you new issues in one big batch. The yearly shipments have become very popular as you can put the stamps on anyone’s album pages for at least several months into the next year). No deposit is required. (We prefer though that you give us a MC/Visa/American Express account number and then we charge the issues as we ship them – it really simplifies our book keeping.)

Dr Ferchenbauer’s Austria Handbook
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We continue to maintain a small stock of the 2008 Ferchenbauer edition which is in 4 hardbound volumes and weighs 18 pounds. (That’s 3 times the weight of the 2000 edition.) There are about 2800 pages total – each page in color with images that are so true in quality that they can be reliably used by collectors to verify their own varieties. Essentially the catalogs list and describe all philatelic items created from 1850 through 1918 – stamps, covers and postal stationery. Prices are given for all items.

We are the sole US distributor for this handbook/catalog set. Again – we have a small supply of these catalogs on hand. The price of the set of 4 catalogs – delivered – is $380.00.

Due to the high shipping weight, we offer these catalogs to US customers only.

2023 YEAR SETS

We have the year sets for 2023 in stock. We apologize for the prices of Austria new issues – Austria is issuing more and more stamps each year and the Crypto stamps are expensive and in limited supply. Unfortunately Scott has been including the Crypto stamps on their album pages and in their catalogs.

Germany – NH – $203
Germany used -$203

Austria with Crypto Stamps NH – $373
Austria without Crypto stamps used – $277
Austria NH without Crypto stamps – $277

OUR PRICE LISTS
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We still maintain printed price lists but publish them much less frequently. We spend much more effort keeping our web site listings up to date because that’s where most are of customers are now.

If you would like our printed lists just let us know and we will send them as issued. We have multiple lists for each of the 4 countries we stock. Be such to let us know your specific collecting interests and we make sure you get the price lists of interest to you.

R Schneider Stamps
PO Box 978
Iowa Park TX 76367
Office 618 975 2099
FAX 940 213 3596

email RSchneiderStamps@gmail.com

web site
www.RSchneiderstamps.com