As you might expect we are still recovering from our move from Illinois. Our movers turned a pretty smooth move into a painful one by not delivering our household and business goods for 10 days – it was only a 650 mile trip! We have everything now and it is all organized! Our new home has an extra 1000 square feet which provides space for everything. My office is to die for – 24 x 13 with built in wall shelving 8 feet high across two walls. My built in desk is 7 ½ feet wide by 3 ½ feet wide. I have a separate room for safes and another for supplies and excess inventory.
My daughter Jill and I are now co-located again and it much easier for us to share the work load. Jill does all the difficult stuff!
Note that we continue to offer our Liechtenstein stock with a 40% discount on all orders. We are discontinuing stocking Liechtenstein stamps to better concentrate on our main areas Germany and Austria. We will close out our offerings of Liechtenstein this fall as our stock has shrunk significantly since we offered the large discount.
This month we have updated our German Offices and Colonies Price list Part 1 which begins with the German offices and ends with Cameroun stamps. We have acquired a lot new material for this list – particularly in the Offices of China. There are a lot newly added forerunners and Michel listed varieties added.
Next month we will update our Germany proper list part D – German semi-postals. We are breaking up our part D list into two parts – semipostals and all other back of the book issues in a new part E.

Expertizing your stamps

For many years we have advocated the Bund Philatelistischer Prüfer (BPP) Guild as the best expertizers for German area stamps. Over the
past several years I and several of our customers have had serious problems with their service.
The quality and reliability of their examinations has not been questioned but their business practices are not always the best.
The most serious problem I have had occurred last year when a very substantial shipment – valued over $10,000 was lost in the mail from the expertizer to me. The expertizer returned the shipment via registered mail but failed to insure the shipment. (European posts will insure registered mail to the US). The shipment was lost in the mail and the BPP does not cover any of the loss, The BPP expertizer did not even provide a copy of the invoice which was enclosed in the shipment. The bottom line is the risk of loss resides 100% on the sender in shipping stamps both to and from the BPP expertizers.
Several of my customers also suffered loss of mail both to and from Europe. The most common complaints were lack of communication with the expertizers and lengthy turn around times for examination – up to 8 months in several cases. In my experience some expertizers returned the stamps consistently with two weeks and some consistently in 3-4 months.
In recent months I have had dealings with the Philatelic Foundation and find them to be very credible in their examinations, fairly prompt, and their shipments are fully insured! The APS expertization service is another alternative but not a favorite of mine for German or Austrian stamps but reasonably credible.
Frankly, my bottom line is to have stamps examined with minimum risk of loss. I will still send lesser items to BPP examiners but not really valuable ones.

Most Popular Countries

The May issue of The American Stamp Dealer & Collector magazine includes an article by Richard Lehmann listing the top 10 countries being collected. # 1 of course is the US, #2 China and #3 Germany.
The article lists the average cost of assembling a complete collection for each country omitting the stamps valued at $1000 and up. A mint collection for Germany is valued at a collector cost of $150,000. The estimated cost for a used collection is $238,000.
The article also mentions that Germans prefer used stamps and Americans mint never hinged stamps.
Our Treasure Boxes
We have been offering these boxes for about 10 years – almost every customer who has tried one box has ordered another. We have quite a supply of treasure box material – excess stock, areas we don’t normally stock, and just plain stamps we don’t have time to examine. We always insure that there are stamps of value included in the boxes but otherwise don’t check anything. There of course will be a lot German and Austrian related stamps and covers in the lots but there can be almost anything philatelic, These lots are designed for collectors who like to search through lots of philatelic items. Each $175 lot is different from the others and each will fill a medium priority box.

Our Online Specials

We offer specials on our web site regularly. For some reason we sell fewer of these than we expected to sell. It seems that our web site customers just don’t notice the special listings. We think this is happening because we frequently get orders for items in the regular listings which are also offered in the specials section at a lower price.
We also list items in the special sections which don’t quite fit into our regular categories – e.g. mini-collections and unusual varieties.
Contact Us:
R Schneider Stamps
PO BOX 978
Iowa Park TX 76367
Office (940) 213 5004
FAX: (940) 213 3596
Email: RSchneiderstamps@gmail.com
Website:
RSchneiderstamps.com