Sometimes,it is just about the color...plus what is with capricorn head?

Sometimes, it is just about the color, and sometimes it is about the message and sometimes both.  I guess the mystery here is on two levels....what is EXPO 74?  World's Fair in Montreal maybe?  Second mystery is why did we make a pretty stamp and pretty much do nothing with the message of conserve the environment?  Easy art vs hard, committed work.   But seriously, what is up with the stamp below from Magya Posta?  Very colorful indeed including the convenient carry around head.  The dude with the ram or capricorn horns on his head is looking fierce.  Probably a simple explanation like it was Halloween in Magya Posta right?  We can't be the only country where grown adults and children dress in costume, go to haunted castles where people pretend or actually do kill and maim people, and send out children door to door seeking candy and to make acquaintance with the local pedophile   Must be that...must be Halloween in Magya Posta.

Another favorite chase....so "Who's this dude?"

  Here we go again....on my favorite chase back into history when real people, people like you and  
me worked, farmed, had sex, but how they survived without HDTV and a good laptop, I will never understand.  Just tough hombres.

Mariano (not Rivera--greatest closer ever, but I digress, Mariana Matamoros.  Lived to the great of double fours...44 (always a good number for you dice game APBA geeks like me).   1979-1814.

Inevitably or so it seems, all these stamp dudes were some level of hero/soldier.   This gent was ordained a Roman Catholic priest back in the day but eventually took sympathy for those fighting for Mexican's independence from Spain.   He rose up the military ranks and fought till he couldn't........captured and killed.  He is a hero in Mexico with monuments and even towns named after him.....just another who knew.   All this info was easy to find because the stamp identified the guy... a research short cut for today, points deducted.

The stamp is another search and an easy one.  This is a 1971 $2 airmail stamp created by Diego Rivera.  I have this great fictional  intelligence source  that tells me this Diego Rivera artist is a cousin to the great baseball artist, Mariana Rivera.

Think about it.  This Mariana Matamoros fought the good fight and died so these two Rivera dudes could live to paint the corners....one with paint and ink, the other with a cutter.

Do I see a 3 days at the Delano coming from this sheet of stamps?

    I have been hot on this stamp for days now, even sending it to my stamp guys...no response.  It is a 1968 Helvetia stamp (Switzerland) depicting the St Mauritius Cathedral in village of Appenzell.  More info on that to follow.

The sheet is mint, perfect condition and seems to possibly have a flaw.  The cathedral is inverted in four of the eight columns.  Was this intentional and normal in the printing of this sheet?

I am not finding much on this stamp finding only a few used singles for sale or perhaps a new stamp as part of a collection of stamps from similar design and celebration.     

The first sheet shows the serial number for the

sheet printing.  I may be crazy but I am going to keep chasing this stamp for more information.  I can seea stamp collector over in Switzerland looking for just this piece.       

                                           
UPDATE. 4/7/13----So I went to my local stamp show today and showed this to a gent who is reputed to be very knowledgeable about Swiss stamps...and no, apparently this stamp is not taking me to the Delano....might not even take me to the bathroom......but hey, he could be wrong, right?                          

Just another chapter of "Who's this dude?

UPDATE2:  Bacho Kiro, nickname for Kito Petrov Zanev.   This is a good guy! To make a long life short in words, he joined a Monastery and then worked as a teacher in various villages in his country from 1857 to 1876.  He walked streets and paths on foot preaching armed resistance against the brutality of the Ottoman empire.  He was front and center in the April uprising in 1876.  Later betrayed, he was captured and hung.

You go history...teach us.

The stamp itself is Bulgarian, 1985 stamp, I think.  The dates gave me confused.....unless celebrating the 150th of this good guy/good dude.  What an honor!
The stamp is in good condition, albeit used.  You can see the faint outline of a circular cancel.

Research and some time will hopefully yield the answer.  It is a fairly recent stamp...certainly no later than 1985. .  Nice mustache, slicked back hair, steely eyes.
One of the biggest challenges in researching these stamps is to figure out the country of origin.  Looking at this, I have no clue   The Lady of the House is very adept at research discovering a recent entry, the terror of Mongolia....was a 1945 stamp from Mongolia.   I will be seeking her help on this one.

UPDATEL:  still no luck....though a dear friend did suggest he looks like a young (obviously) George Harrison.  Identifying the language is a key and Gail is chasing a stamp web site that has a language identifier.  More time is all we need to identify the language....after that, still another chase.

Khorloogiin Choibalsan--the Terror of Mongolia

I love this stamp, and of course have no clue who this dude is.  He certainly looks important what with all those medals, shoulder pads.  Now, the easy route would be to go all prejudicial and assume he is a decorated killer of humans in yet, another war, perhaps with even the good ole USA as the fighting partner.  But, I am not going in that direction....not my style.  I say he is a humanitarian.  I am guessing this dude did remarkable work caring for the sick and indigent in his country, maybe set up the first child workplace daycare.  That is what I am thinking on this one.

Update:

As Johnny Carson would say to Ed McMahon, "not so fast, bozo breath."  With the help of the Lady in the house, the truth has been found....Khorloogin Choibalsan on a 1945 stamp from Mongolia.  This dude was very bad, very very bad.  Head of state and military when he came close to eradicating the Buddhist population of Mongolia... and that is the very short story.  While born in Mongolia, he schooled in Russia, and was mentored by Stalin.  On it goes, death after death. Annialation after annihilation  Just another damn stamp telling an awesome,  if sickening, story.  You go history.  Teach us.

For the record, this stamp in this condition is a collectible worth about $30 American dollars.  Love to play it in an auction. Love the subtle color and shading. Love the history.

Sometimes, it is just about the color--Portugese edition

This is by far, not the most colorful collection of stamps I own, but this little set has a lot going for it.  The color collection is subtle but very noticeable.   Working the Les Brown collection as it found its way into and through my life, I found many versions of this stamp, many different colors, and I took a strong liking to it.

The stamp itself is a Portugese issue, 1953.  The Medieval Knight complete set consists of fifteen stamps, only 7 of which are shown here.  The complete set has minimal, but some collectible value.

I have a few fantasies in my brain, but none involve riding one-handed very fast on a horse wearing body armor and waving a sword in aggression/ self defense. Kill or be killed.  What were they fighting for?  Land and to be the conqueror?   They had to be scared right?  I cannot fathom in the deepest ridges of my rather inept brain what it must have been like to live and die in those times, and they didn't even have the internet either.  Yikes.   War, what is it good for?  Absolutely nothing.  

Baseball, the true harbinger to spring

                                                                                         

 So, snowing stupid here today in Whitewood town....no school even for us office supply clerks, so it must be a bad storm. 

 Under normal circumstances, I have always been hands off when it comes to the weather. It is what it is.  There are two exceptions.  When I was bossman of assisted living, and my buildings had to run and be staffed 24/7 and snow created trauma for single mothers and everyone else.  So much sacrifice by so many...but I covered that in an article in Retirement Community News back around 1995.  Very few storms in 20 years did I take off....sometimes having to sleep on site.  The April 1 storm of 1997 is a blog in and of itself.  The other time weather matters is if I am on vacation.  Working 49 or 50 weeks a year, raising a family, the weeks on the beach every summer were solid gold.  Just don't ask Bradley.  If one year the weather sucked, the realization that another year of everything had to happen just to get back to that place was a depressing  disheartening thought.   Weather pressure.  Now, I travel once or twice a year, and the thought of spending that time and money and having marginal or worse weather....well, the stuff of personal nightmares and  suicidal ideation. 

Which brings me to Lou Gherig and Wally Pipp.  I love the Wally Pipp story and brought it to life at work recently when I went on the disabled list for a week.    The valuable supersub, Ms R replaced me.  I was quite sure I was going to be Wally Pipped.   Probably would have been except the aforementioned relief specialist doesn't want to go to work everyday....having too much fun in retirement.  I am almost there.  Can't wait.

Which brings me to baseball.   Opening Day is only some 22 days away.  It almost never snows on opening day and the weather, while chilly, and certainly too baseball-chilly for me, is usually reasonable.  I have to remind myself of that as the heat cranks and the world is white outside. (Imagine if snow were black or yellow--how awesome would that be?  or if it changed colors each season or storm?---that leads me to a larger philosophical question..wouldn't a more whimsical God make that happen?  My religious friend(s) hates that I ask such questions.  Just thinking like that makes me a bad person according to some. Maybe I am, maybe I am not.   I understand the gun control thing is hard to fix from above, but making snow neon pink or amber rose or some other color to entertain us sinning masses, that should be fun and an easy do...wouldn't you say? Scientists would have a field day too. They would be all in a tizzy doing studies and criticizing each other.

Turning water into wine has its merits, I guess, but if there is no food on the table, does it really matter?
Way too many people have no food.  Even a ballpark hot dog tastes good if you are really, really hungry....but I digress.

Baseball...the ebb and the flow.  Certainly it is not a Red Sox thing.  I could be as happy on a hot summer night sitting in Philadelphia, or New York or San Francisco just watching a game.  I have been to Chavez, the new park in SF, the old and new Yankee stadiums, Shea (for regular, world series and football Playoff game) Philly, Baltimore Camden Yards (rain out and an ugly blog waiting there), Pawtucket, Portland and Orleans and Chatham on the Cape.   Just last night, planning this year's excursion to Washington with my son to take in a Nats game and to have dinner at Ricciuti's....a family (real family to me), exquisite fine dining Italian restaurant.  Baseball and outstanding food, family I see not often enough............that sounds like the real deal for me.  It freakn' better not rain or I'll be pissed.

The stamps above, general issue by the US Postage Service.  You can have them both for 33 cents.  They are mint, original gum, never hinged yada yada.  Hard not to respect a stamp honoring the great game of baseball, whose opening day is the true Harbinger of spring.

Why is there a $1 overprint on this Russian occupied Finnish stamp?

  I guess in that end of the planet, Russia was occupying everybody at one point or another.  In this case, it was the good people of Finland who were occupied.  Throughout the course of this blog, I will be doing some research as to why and when that happened. Good chance this is a 1917 stamp from that period.  The similar stamps to this that I do see are imperforated....this one not so, yet another reason why I think it is fake.

Why the 1 dollar overprint?  What could that mean?  My first guess is always a fake/forgery of some kind, but who knows?  I have found the particular stamp on delkampe.net and even ebay but of course, without the overprint and without the perforations.   It is the overprint which makes it unique and special, if it is in fact unique or special  The color is great, the margins excellent, the perforations neat...a very good stamp.  Of note, I have a full collection of overprinted stamps that would take the rest of my lifetime to research one by one, all with their unique history and likely speaking to more occupations/

Specific to the occupation of Finand by Russia, I copy this from Wiki.  The policy of Russification of Finland (1899–1905 and 1908–1917, called sortokaudet/sortovuodet(times/years of oppression) in Finnish and förtrycksperioderna in Swedish) was a governmental policy of theRussian Empire aimed at limiting the special status of the Grand Duchy of Finland and possibly the termination of its political autonomy and cultural uniqueness. It was a part of a larger policy of Russification pursued by late 19th–early 20th century Russian governments which tried to abolish cultural and administrative autonomy of non-Russian minorities within the empire. The two Russification campaigns evoked widespread Finnish resistance, starting with petitions and escalating to strikes, passive resistance (including draft resistance) and eventually active resistance. Finnish resistance to Russification was one of the main factors that ultimately led to Finland's declaration of independence in 1917.

So much history, so much to know and understand.  It seems most every stamp leads to a story about conflict and occupation, and war, and freedom.   Why is it that so many people in our country live in a bubble, thinking the world started around 1776 if not 1960?  Why is it that much of the great history of the people of other countries gets minimized by the chest thumping USA populace?  Why are we so insecure as a people such that we have to discount history and the accomplishments of people who lived under far adverse situations, yet made do, made love, made family, and made war and somehow came out the other side?  Why is there a $1 imprint on this stamp?   And why is it not a one of a kind rarity that would sell for $100,000 at auction?  Too many questions and not enough answers.

1980 China monkey...a legitimate collectible

This is a 1980 stamp from China...depicting the year of the Monkey.   The Chinese Golden Monkey Stamp or Gēngshēn Monkey is a postage stamp issued in China in 1980 of which 5 million copies were printed and which therefore cannot be regarded as rare but which has come to symbolize the strong market for collectible postage stamps in Asia. Demand for the stamp has made it one of the most sought after contemporary Chinese stamps. (Wikipedia)  

I read a story in my research, that a postal worker was forced to spend 3 mos. salary to by a dozen unused sheets of this stamp by the kind folk in Chinese government back in 1980.   He just sold one such sheet for $1,200,000.   How about that!  

This is a stamp that has been forged often.  There are some very good comparison pictures online.  For my money, this stamp is original., but unfortunately, used and not in outstanding shape.  Still to a collector, or better yet, to a speculator, this stamp has some real value....

Monkeys....the original collection that came my was was called the Drunk'n Monkey collection belonging to Les Brown.  I still hold many pages of monkey stamps from all over the world, holding on to those pages and some others while most everything else went to auction.  

According to Chinese lore, the number 8 and the color red are both good luck/good fortune symbols.  On the day I post this particular stamp, I visited my accountant to deal specifically with the proceeds of the past year's  auction.....and for me, the news was all good.    I see the connection.   I am in.  My new favorite number is 8, and my new favorite color, red.  i am taking bid now on this stamp at dcalsrandomcollection-stamps@blogspot.com.

UPDATE: Today I was checking my favorite auction site and they had about six of the stamps, albeit new and in excellent condition.  They were expected to bring $10-15,000 each.  I love this stamp.