South America part 1 - Uruguay

It's been a very hectic few weeks with a lot of time spent on my day job, both in visiting various sites and then resolving a number of issues to enable us to complete an important project. As a result I've made no additions to big red, but I have managed to progress some of the sorting out that goes before stamps get put on the pages.

The stamps of South (and Central) America seem fascinating to me. They reflect a time of great upheaval, when for example Bolivia lost 60% of it's population in a series of conflicts with it's neighbours

As well as that, the governments were experimenting with printing techniques and designs. Uruguay is one such country, with designs printed using a number of methods and of such wonderful eccentricity that I can't help but be captivated by them

the two sheets above are a selection of the stamps that I'm sorting out at the moment for inclusion in the album. They're not brilliant stamps, some show some wear and tear and have missing perforations etc. They cover most of the bases though, numerals, images, famous personages, views, flora and fauna.

But there's a certain eccentricity about these stamps both in the selection of images and their interpretation, not is always as simple as it seems.

Look at these below, they're numeral stamps, but some of them are not as we've seen them before with all sorts of decorative flourishes and distortions.

There's a variety of images that get included, run of the mill stuff like the people who work on the land (or might do) a shepherdess, a gaucho, gods and goddesses, statues, even great achievements so there's a locomotive. Several of these are printed more than once over the years in different colours and using different printing methods.

But look at the crazy cattle on this beauty

or this cherub

and tell me you aren't a little bit seduced by their beauty

Unstable conditions produce overprints all over the Americas at this time and Uruguay is no exception

Later on we have several series of tough looking portraits, men who would lead you into battle and steer the young country into calmer waters

More gods, here's Mercury delivering some important mail

And the calm waters of Montevideo harbour

All in all, a whole series of stamps rich in history and beauty that repay giving them more than a casual glance

Jumping in at the deep end

Last year, having been accumulating stamps for a while I bought a pair of Ideal albums for foreign stamps with a few stamps in that I've been gradually filling the empty spaces in from the various countries I've been particularly interested in.

I've already posted a few pages from these Ideal albums on a forum I belong to, but at the moment my main interest is in filling them, so worldwide collecting. I wanted to write something about what I'm collecting and why and how. This first post though is more about the stamps there are spaces for on the pages and how likely one is to complete the album. Or not, because the Ideals have spaces for some very expensive stamps 

As an aside, this sort of album simply swallows stamps up, I've already put in over a thousand since I bought the albums and they look no fuller at all

As Jim has noted in his inspirational and very informative blog about filling his big blue Scotts International, the compilers of these one size fits all albums have sometimes made curious choices about which stamps to include and which to exclude. I've never seen one of the Scott albums, although I've bought odd pages from sellers on ebay, which have confirmed what I've read. It seems that at least there's a bit of logic to their general policy in that they tend to exclude all expensive stamps. Which is good if you're someone who needs to fill all the spaces

Stanley Gibbons on the other hand have a different policy. In several - if not most countries - they seem to have included stamps which are out of reach of many collectors unless you get lucky and find an accumulation of stamps with lots of the missing treasures in, so I've resigned myself to the fact that I'm unlikely ever to complete many of the countries, although quite a few pages could get completed. I think one or two choice stamps might be missing from the majority of the pages. Sadly, this page from Bolivia may never have any more of those blanks filled, but actually I'm not too bothered by that, I'm obviously not really a completist. 





This page already contains one stamp I'm delighted to have got that I snagged on ebay for pennies, the rather gaudy 2 bolivar stamp with the coat of arms. I never thought I'd get that stamp, used or unused. 

Unfortunately I'm going to have to get very lucky to find the missing stamps on this page for the sort of prices I'm prepared to pay. As you can see from the heading this is not even the first page in the album of Bolivian stamps, there's half a page before this of earlier stamps and I very much doubt if I'll get more than a handful of those unless I have an unexpected windfall.