Straits Settlement Stamps Collection - Part 2

Here's the other batch of my Straits Settlement stamps. I cut the picture from the original photo, and thus these pictures suffered from the same mis-alignment in the angle sense, with a bit of blur image effect. There are other Straits Settlement stamps, and once I captured them properly (in photo) I'll put them up.

The four cents stamp below is actually a mint, but due to an accident I washed it (regrettably).

Related Posts:
- Straits Settlement Stamps Collection - Part 1

Singapore Stamps with Colour Alignment Errors

I used to buy stamps online via Yahoo! Auctions, and made online friends with the sellers. One such seller is Zeetl. She is a keen stamps collector / seller, and often bought packages (or kilowares) of stamps both locally and from overseas. These kilowares would then be 'processed', i.e. soak and dry before Zeetl put them up for auction.

Today she told me that she found stamps with mis-alignments in the printing colours, and here's a picture of the stamps. Click for a larger view. I guess she will be keeping these stamps instead of selling them.

While the bottom right stamp is obvious (spot the 'Singapore' name mis-alignment?), the rest of the errors could be harder to spot. Both stamps on the left have some 'blur' lines caused by the colour mis-alignment. I think it might be easier to spot the errors with normal versions side by side.

P.S. Earlier I mentioned the painted postboxes that could be found around the island, and recently these painted boxes were replaced with the usual metal / white painted versions. I wonder if there will be another painted postbox competition coming?

Visit to the Singapore Philatelic Museum - Part 2

We spent quite some time on the ground floor before moving up to the Rat's Tale gallery located on the second floor. SPM has done a fair amount of work in decorating the place in a 'Rat's theme, and you can see these pictures of rats everywhere, including on the floor and walls. It should be fun to the kids (and adults) who visit the museum.

Before we moved to the Rat's Tale gallery, we visited the permanent gallery located on the second floor, where the stories about Singapore's early trades (e.g. wooden barrel making) were displayed.

We also visited the gallery with displays of early Straits Settlement stamps and envelopes. There is auite a fair bit of philatelic history being displayed in the gallery. There is even this mail chute, which is interesting to me from a philatelic perspective. Mail chutes were used by employees located at the upper floors of a building to drop their letters straight into the postbox below for collection by postmen. Wonder if people used to drop parcels straight into the post chute / box?

Ok, now let's see pictures of the Rat's Tale display. Earlier this year SingPost just released the holographic Rat stamps, and here at the gallery we see many other interesting versions of rat stamps as well. There is even a quiz about the different famous rats.

Rats are interesting as rat is the first animal in the eastern / Chinese zodiac. So there is some explanation of the zodiac myth involved, and how the rat irritated the cat because of their race to be among the animals included for zodiac.

The second floor also has another gallery of Vietnam stamps. Well I figured that there is great interest in collecting the Indo-Chine series of stamps for some collectors, although I actually didn't have that many Indon-Chine stamps. Overall the SPM visit is enjoyable, and well worth the money / time spent for a leisure weekend visit.

Related article:
- Visit to the Singapore Philatelic Museum - Part 1