Mounting Your

Your World of Stamps.—VII Mounting Your Specimens

By Kn

DO not forget to always mount your stamps on one side of the page of your album, so that when the pages are turned over the stamps do not become inter locked. This could damage your specimens.

To make it easier for collectors, some stamp albums are available with special transparent tissue or cellophane inter-leaves.

However, you could make your own individual “see through” in sertion pages, if you like.

And, another useful point: Although stamps look neat and at tractive if arranged in rows across the page of an album, why not arrange your specimens in geo metrical pattern s—in squares ; diamonds, triangles? But always re member to leave plenty of room on your pages for additional specimens Never overcrowd a page. An overcrowded page can be most boring when “showing off” your col lection to, say, a non-collector!

It is quite common these days that when new stamps appear or the market, little relevant informa tion regarding the reason of issue or what the actual designs signify is readily available.

Should you want to learn some “background” to the designs, con sular or travel offices connecter with the country of issue car sometimes help you.

Further enlightenment can be gained from the various philatelic bulletins that some countries make available to interested persons through their postal administrations

Some Recent Issues

The recent issue by the Egyptiar post office of a large stamp, show ing a modern liner passing througl the Suez Canal, to commemorate the Egyptian nationalisation of the Canal Company, recalls that othei waterway, the Panama Canal which since it opened in 1914, has beer the subject of special commemora tion and anniversary issues from the USA, Panama and the Canal Zone In connection with stamps whose designs have an agricultural forma or honour special farming or agri cultural events, it is of interest tha quite recently the French Coloniei of West and Equatorial Africa Madagascar and the Cameroons, pro vided stamps to encourage produc tion of and sale of coffee.

A typical coffee plant compnsec the design.

Always ready to distribute appro priately-designed stamps of ax educational and really worthwhilt

nature, the United States is to shortly place on issue a stamp as a tribute to the school-teaching

profession.

This will be deserved, although in 1940, in six distinct sets of stamps of 5 designs each, portraying famous Americans (scientists, com posers, poets, artists and inventors),

one was set aside to feature noted American educators.

Railway engines are always a favourite hobby with boys—and their Tattlers, whether it be merely watching them pass or playing with model specimens. Thus, when it comes to “engines on postage” stamps, the field is still very wide.

A few months ago additional railway commemoration stamps

appeared in Portugal and in Sweden, to celebrate the 100th an niversary of the individual railway systems. The Portuguese contri bution in four values included examples of 1856 and 1956 loco motives, while the stamps from Sweden pictured labourers working on the railroad, an old-time train and a modern train crossing a bridge.