The big deal in the St Louis area for August was the lunar eclipse. Everyone wanted to see it and our region was really crowded for a couple of days. The event was covered so much by the media both before and after the eclipse that the actual eclipse was not all that exciting for me.
August was a busy business month for us. Jill and I had a table at a stamp show which is a rare occurrence for us. We got to see some longtime customers which is always fun. I must admit though that I don’t like the long hours of immobility by sitting behind tables at shows.
Collectors who attend shows seem to seek covers and cards far more than stamps. We sold more postal history items than stamps which is the exact opposite of what we usually sell via our price lists, on line and want lists. The good side of that is that we greatly lightened our supply of covers – most of which had never made it to our price lists.
We have been buying a lot of very rarely seen material from collector estates this summer. We have many high end items that we have never had before from both the German and the Austrian areas. So far the best material has been from the German occupations and Austria some very rare local issues and printing varieties. Many of our acquisitions are going to fill long standing want lists but we still have hundreds of new items for our lists.
This month we have updated our German area Part I price list which starts with Albania and goes through Croatia. We now have just about all of the Belgium and French legion stamps and souvenir sheets in stock.
Next month we will publish a special price lists for Austria printing varieties, occupations and post war local issues. We will also try to get all of these items added to our web site with scans. We also have piles of modern postal stationery and special issues from the Austria Post which we hope to organize and include on a new price list.

German Post’s New Issues

Starting In July the Germany post office has begun to issue stamps in formats never previously used. These formats don’t fit the current Scott numbering system so we are trying to guess how they will be treated.
In July the Post issued this semi-postal set of three sports stamps

These same stamps were also printed in booklet form as follows:

The stamps in the booklet however are printed in what appears to be a souvenir sheet format with 7 different setenant combinations of the stamps.

The “souvenir sheet” though is firmly attached to the booklet cover so it is not easily removed.
No problem, the post also printed the “souvenir sheet” separately – unattached to the booklet. These sheets are missing the selvage at the left on the sheet above but the sheets are not folded in the middle as they are in the booklet.
For August the Post released this booklet

Containing this “souvenir sheet”

Note again the souvenir sheet format with six different setenant combinations.
This “sheetlet” was also printed and distributes with the missing left margin but unfolded.
I have no idea how Scott will list these issues or display them on their album pages. The open booklets are very attractive as “souvenir sheets” We will have to wait and see.