European Stamp Prices & News

The Stamp Echo (http://www.arpinphilately.com/blog/en) is the blog section of Arpin Philately’s website. Arpin deals in stamps of all sorts, for all budgets.

The blog features helpful information about stamp basics - the Penny Black, the Inverted Jenny, as well as occasional news from the postal and philately world. Most interestingly for us, lately they have had some interesting articles about fakes and forgeries, most fascinatingly about Jean de Sperati, an Italian forger whose craftsmanship is legendary, and whose forgeries are sometimes worth more than the genuine issues.

The blog is updated by Daniel Arpin about 2-3 times a month on average and dates back only to October 2007, so it isn’t a place to frequent. The posts that are there are interesting though, and like most blogs in our Stamp Blog Review series, The Stamp Echo offers information not collected in quite the same way anywhere else.

The blog’s layout is very pleasant - nice dark greys and blues, with easy navigation. It would be nice to see more posts per page, but for a blog with so few posts it is perhaps understandable.

Comments are enabled on the blog, and are not as scant as the posting frequency would suggest. For interesting posts about forgeries and stamp design, The Stamp Echo is a knowledgeable, well-written blog.

(The blog is in English with a parallel French version, L’Écho du Philatéliste.)

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This is an interesting blog. Southwest Stamps Blog (http://blogs.ebay.com/gsquared7/) is hosted on eBay by a longtime seller of stamps, and it is used to warn people about scams or other things to look out for, to opine about eBay policies, and to offer helpful stamp guides.

Unlike many vendors, the author (gsquared7) doesn’t make all his posts crass attempts at funneling buyers to his auctions. That’s obviously a priority, but his blunt opinionated posts are genuinely helpful, and he doesn’t seem to care whose toes he steps on to make a point.

He picks out specific listings that catch his eye, and if necessary warns possible buyers or gives opinions about the stamps for sale. The basic thrust of the blog seems to be, lately at least, that people are selling “junk” stamps on eBay and hyping them as if they were more valuable or interesting than they really are. Given eBay’s safe buying policies, buyers are generally happy with their purchases; the issue is that misleading descriptions can lead to a sort of false sense of buyer happiness. gsquared7 aims to educate.

For example, in this post from December 2007, he describes how he bought two stamps from another eBay vendor, but was unhappy with how the language in the original description was somewhat misleading. He asked for and prompty received a refund from the seller, but noticed the stamps re-listed on eBay with the original description intact.

The posting frequency of this blog is rather low - about once every 2-3 weeks or more. The layout, too, isn’t much to speak of - eBay’s usual color scheme and a distinct lack of HTML formatting give the blog a very no-nonsense air (note too the complete lack of pictures accompanying the posts). But as a window into the inner workings of stamp buying and selling on eBay.com, it is a great resource.

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Adrian Keppel’s blog at http://akphilately.blogspot.com/ is distinguished by the excellent, exhaustive historical info contained in each post.

Along with high-quality scans of obscure issues and overprints, Keppel (who lives in Scotland) discusses the history of issues, offering historical context and geopolitical perspectives for his stamps.

His energy and fascination for stamps jumps off of the screen (in his About Me page he lists his favorite books as “stamp catalogs”!), and the design is customized, not a typical Blogspot layout. Although Keppel concentrates on stamps related to the Netherlands’ Queen Wilhelmina (and occasionally birds), his posts have a wider range, though focus mostly on Europe.

Comments are enabled, but one oddity of the blog is its lack of permalinks (the post titles aren’t linked to anything). A categories list on the side lets you find the topic you want easily enough. His posting frequency is generally good, though as of this writing he hasn’t had a new post in a few weeks for some reason.

AK Philately is good for getting into the minutiae of certain issues - plates, design, and that sort of thing. It’s a refreshing view of stamps; Adrian Keppel seems to just enjoy the whole idea of stamps, their production and use rather than just their modern-day collection!