R. SCHNEIDER’S THIS & THAT
JULY 2023

Last month we mailed a printed price to our customers who order primarily through those lists. We received a grand total of three orders from that mailing! The vast majority of collectors these days buy stamps on line and /or via auctions.

We stopped mailing monthly price lists over a year ago in order to spend more time maintaining extensive listing of our stamps on our web site. We expected to hear from some disappointed customers but never did. We will continue to mail a few price lists each year but far fewer than we have done in the past. Most of our customers order directly from our web site or send us want lists. We do our best to find stamps that customers are looking for.

Our Treasure Boxes

We have been offering these boxes for about 12 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.

We have been selling a lot of our treasure boxes because the large volume of stamps and covers gives collectors a lot of pleasure searching through the pile. We have assembled more boxes and are ready to mail!

SCOTT 2024 STAMP CATALOG VOL 3

The new 2023 catalog is a reprint of the 2022 catalog with Germany listings of new issues for 2021 added.. This trend continues – few German areas have received any changes in the last 7-8 years.

As in most recent years I would recommend that you continue to use your current version of Vol 3 if it was issued during the past ten years. Scott is just not posting many changes to listings or prices.

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 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 return the stamps consistently within 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.

R Schneider Stamps
PO BOX 978
Iowa Park TX 76367

Office (618) 975 2099
FAX: (940) 213 3596

Email:
RSchneiderstamps@gmail.com

Website:

RSchneiderstamps.com