04/26/24
April 30, 2003
Invoking the Lazyfilter...(more inside)
posted by vito90 to navel gazing at 11:44 AM - 29 comments
Pantheon - please feel free to delete this if you deem it inappropriate... This should also not be construed as an attempt to sell someone here a bill of goods and make a quick buck... Although if that happens I would funnel a share of the proceeds to the Pantheon as my contribution to SpoFi upkeep costs... While going through boxes of old stuff recently looking for soccer memorabilia I came across a collection of 20 or so World Cup commemorative Stamps. Not being a philatelist myself I can't tell if they have any worth whatsoever. They are all in mint condition and all countries that have won the cup are represented with a logo or flag, etc. Each stamp also has a native denomination. They look legit - but they also have years on them ranging from the 30's and 40's until recent times. I woner if they are true stamps or some sort of thing that is issued by FIFA every four years and have no value? If this is the case they were surely issued for the 1982 World Cup in Spain. I did some googling but was able to find precious little on soccer stamps...if anybody has a link that might be informative I would appreciate it...
posted by vito90 at 11:51 AM on April 30, 2003
Grummie - the lazyfilter being that if I can beseech/coerce/cajole/con/convince others into doing the reconnaissancework by taking it to the locker room then bully for me...
posted by vito90 at 11:56 AM on April 30, 2003
What countries you got?
posted by StarFucker at 12:14 PM on April 30, 2003
What countries don't I got... West Germany (2), Equitoreal Guinea (3), Mexico (3), Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, Uruguay, Brazil,Italy, Sweden, Nicaragua On preview - I guess there's quite a few I don't got
posted by vito90 at 12:22 PM on April 30, 2003
The important thing Vito is that you have Nicaragua! That's gotta be worth something. ;)
posted by 86 at 12:27 PM on April 30, 2003
Nicaragua is really fun to say. Nicaragua, Nicaragua, Nicaragua
posted by vito90 at 12:33 PM on April 30, 2003
vito, when did your passion for soccer (which drove you to collect stamps about soccer) die? Why did it die? Where did the love go? (cue reverb effect) And why not just put the stamps on eBay? Or send them to me? ;-)
posted by worldcup2002 at 12:39 PM on April 30, 2003
Actually the stamps sort of fell into my possession - they were given to me by the father of a soccer teammate who happened to be the GM of the Seattle Sounders NASL club. I totally forgot I had them. Fortunately they were wrapped in wax paper and pressed between the pages of a book (yes, THAT book...) so they stayed minty fresh. I moved away from soccer the day I hit high school. This has since changed, but at my high school soccer and baseball were the same season, so you had to choose one or the other. I chose baseball. I almost went ahead and sent the stamps...but then greed and common sense took hold and I thought, well shit, these might really be worth something to somebody...so I should at least check. Ebay might be the next step - have never posted anything there and would have to figure out the deal...
posted by vito90 at 12:57 PM on April 30, 2003
Sell high, my friend. You won't believe the things people will buy. Start high and watch the suckers as they bid up your retirement fund.
posted by worldcup2002 at 01:05 PM on April 30, 2003
So which countries do you HAVE (he says again)...
posted by StarFucker at 02:39 PM on April 30, 2003
Sorry, had a looksee, couldn't find owt. There didn't appear to be any collection of World Cup Winners stamps issued at Espana 1982 though. Any chance of scanning them so we have more of a clue?
posted by squealy at 03:57 PM on April 30, 2003
squealy - sure - would that be okay? not sure where i could post the image though...don't have a place to host it myself. I could scan them all into one jpeg scan
posted by vito90 at 03:59 PM on April 30, 2003
Didn't anyone ever tell you, vito, that philately will get you nowhere? :P
posted by hincandenza at 04:16 PM on April 30, 2003
I have them all scanned into one high-rez pdf image. I have no place to host them but I will email it to anybody who can post it. They're really quite beautiful stamps.
posted by vito90 at 04:29 PM on April 30, 2003
Mail to me! Wait, how big is the file?
posted by StarFucker at 04:39 PM on April 30, 2003
I can host it if you like vito. If I can remember how. Email is in my profile.
posted by squealy at 04:45 PM on April 30, 2003
Ebay might be the next step - have never posted anything there and would have to figure out the deal... /start rant. As someone who has been supplementing her income through ebay lately, i can safely tell you that 25% of the people are idiots and will still email and ask if you take paypal, even though it says so RIGHT THERE about 3 times in your auction. Another 15% take their sweet ass time telling you how they plan on paying, and then after taking said sweet ass time, send a money order -- apparently via carrier tortoise -- and then email and ask why they haven't gotten their stuff yet. /end rant. By the time it's all over, you'll want to tell everyone to fuck off, but at least you'll have some bank for it all. Stamps will most likely be profitable! Good luck otherwise!
posted by jerseygirl at 10:34 PM on April 30, 2003
The pdf is about 4 MB and the jpeg is about 1 MB. Don't ask me why, I thought pdf was supposed to compress? Anyway, I emailed the jpeg to squealy just now so we'll see what he can do with it. Starfucker if you want me to send it to you let me know.
posted by vito90 at 08:05 AM on May 01, 2003
OK vito, it's arrived safely. I'll try to upload it and post a link to it this evening when I'm home from work.
posted by squealy at 08:21 AM on May 01, 2003
PDF will do good with text and other vector-based graphics (Illustrator) but not pixel-based graphics like GIF or JPEG. Never use PDF for photo or photoshop compression.
posted by worldcup2002 at 11:09 AM on May 01, 2003
Well fingers crossed you should be able to see the stamps here. I optimized it in PaintShopPro so it's only a quarter of the file size it was. I left the image size the same so you can see the detail. If you don't have a browser that automatically resizes images, you'll have to do a bit of scrolling. There are postmarks dated earlier than 1982 so maybe they're real stamps rather than a FIFA commemorative issue?
posted by squealy at 11:46 AM on May 01, 2003
Those are really quite cool, vito. I'm guessing they should be worth something.
posted by Ufez Jones at 11:50 AM on May 01, 2003
Ufez, shall I put you down as opening bidder at, say, $500? :) Thanks, Squealy. I appreciate it. For some reason IE went right to it but my Opera Browser wouldn't find your URL. Thats weird, no?
posted by vito90 at 12:11 PM on May 01, 2003
God knows vito. I'm at the limit of my abilities switching the damn 'puter on.
posted by squealy at 12:13 PM on May 01, 2003
I found one of your Olympic stamps here. I hope you haven't given up the day job yet, but the complete sheet shown appears to be on offer at $3.00. :-(
posted by squealy at 12:42 PM on May 01, 2003
Two comments: 1) The only thing worse than watching soccer is collecting stamps. 2) Hal is pretty damn funny.
posted by wfrazerjr at 01:47 PM on May 01, 2003
$3.00? Let's see...with the 5% going to the Pantheon for upkeep, that works out to, 5 times 3 is fifteen, carry the one, borrow from the tens column, slide the decimal over two places...$.15! Check's in the mail.
posted by vito90 at 02:54 PM on May 01, 2003
wfrazer requires a beating.
posted by worldcup2002 at 04:12 PM on May 01, 2003
Lazyfilter?