Exchange n.5, Slovakia and former USSR states

With some days of delay I add to my blog the scans of the nice stamps I got the past friday from my trading-partner Bohus from Kosice, Slovakia. This time I exchanged with Bohus my duplicates from Lithuania, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Kosovo, Serbia for recent used stamps from Slovakia, Czech Republic and former USSR states. This was a wantlist-based excgange.
Bohus' letter was very interesting and full of nice stamps from countries I can hardly found here in Italy. I selected few of them to be posted here. The first image shows some Slovakia commemoratives enclosed in the letter.

The definitives from Ukraine are always complicate to classify, since they were often issued twice per year without modification in the vignette but adding a roman numerals beside the year of issue to distinguish among the different series (i.e. 2007 designates the first issues of 2007, whilst 2007 II indicates the second issues). In any case, they are clearly more attractive than definitives from other countries.

Finally, in the third image definitives from Belarus, Russia and Adzerbaijan are shown. Belarus flower and wildlife definitives are very nice, but it's very hard to find them in postally used conditions (5 stamps out of 8 in the scan are CTOs). Russia wildlife 2008 definitive set in much more easy to find, even if, in my opinion, they are not so attractive as Belarus stamps. Adzerbaijan definitives aren't particularly nice, but they are the first stamps from that country that I can put in my collection, so I think that they deserved a place here in my blog!

Exchange n.4, Denmark

In the beginning of the carnival week, I got a letter from my friend Karsten from Ringe, Denmark. Our trade-agreement is quite simple: I provide him worlwide used stamps of the past 4-5 years (all very fine used with round cancellation) and he send me stamps from my wantlists, generally Denmark, Greenland and the other Scandinavian countries. This time I received a nice lot of Danish commemoratives, that allowed me to fill the gap in my collection from 1992 up to 2005. Now I miss only 148 stamps to complete Denmark collection from 1851 up to 2009 (and all the 2010 issues).

Exchange n.3, Bolivia

The first trade of February is a complete success! Today the postman delivered the letter that was sent some days ago from my new trading partner Fernando from Cochabamba, Bolivia. I received from Fernando a very nice lot of recent commemorative stamps from Bolivia (2000-2009), one of my favourite (but hard to find) countries. All the stamps are in perfect conditions and have a very clear round cancellation.
The scan shows the more recent issues that I found in the letter.

Exchange n.2, Romania and Moldova

The content of the second letter of this year is a very nice mixture of Romania 2009 issues and Moldova stamps of the past decade. The letter arrived from Bucharest, Romania, and was sent by my old-time trading partner Dan. Each letter I receive from him is characterized by nicely franked envelope and a wide variety of sheets and souvenir-sheets that Romania issues in large number each year.

This time I found in the letter the two s/sheets celebrating the 550th anniversary of the foundation of Bucharest (Michel # 451 and 452), the s/sheet commemorating the 35th anniversary of TRANSGAZ, the Romanian national company for Natural gas transmission (Michel #453, see scan) and the sheets celebrating the 31st Capital Policing Europe Conference held in Bucharest.

Besides the Romanian issues, I received a very nice lot of Moldova stamps and s/sheets too (see scan below). Moldova is one of those countries whose stamps are very hard to find, at least here in Italy. In fact, in my collection I have only 333 stamps from Moldova, approximately the 47% of the total amount of stamps issued from this former USSR republic from 1992 up to date. For this reason, as well as for my trades, I'm looking for all the issues of Moldova, independently of the year but rigorously with nice round cancellations.

Exchange n.1, Norway

And finally the first exchange of the 2010 has been completed too. I received from my long-time trading partner Svetoslav from Norway a very nice letter with 18 Norwegian commemoratives issued in the past year. With the help of my friend I've now almost completed the 2009 year-set of Norway in used conditions. I just miss now only the Michel # 1673 (Capreolus capreolus) and Michel # 1689 (Submarine Kobbe, 1909).
In the next days I will provide Svetoslav some Greek used stamp for his collection and the MNH Europa 2009 issues from Italy, Vatican City and San Marino.

Lot from Greece!

And finally the first letter of the new year has arrived! The letter arrived from Greece and I received it from a e-bay seller that offers good lots of Greek stamps at very good prices. Now and then I sell lots of my on-paper duplicates (kiloware) on e-bay, then I reinvest the profit of this small business into stamps collecting, by bidding on lots of recent stamps from those countries that are not covered by my trading partners, as Greece, Kosovo, Makedonia, Bosnia and so on.
The scan shows a selection of the stamps from this lot that now found their place on my Greece album. Some duplicate is available, drop me a line if you need them!

Trading partners needed!!

Hello!

with the new year I decided to change my usual way to trade stamps. I used to exchange stamps by wantlists and catalogue value, but this exchange basis is time-consuming and not compatible with the few spare time available for stamp collecting. So I will continue my wantlist-based exchanges only for the trades with my long-time trading partner, for those countries I have specialized collections (as Old German States, Deutsches Reich and Great Britain Queen Victoria's age) and for those countries and periods I have advanced collection.

To make my stamp collecting easier and more relaxing, I'd like to exchange my duplicates on 1:1 basis with stamps from the countries I need (see the sidebar for details). My stock of used stamps to trade consists mainly of recent used stamps from Europe, with nice round cancellation.
I have several stamps with wavy-lines cancels too, and I can exchange them for round cancelled stamps on 2:1 (i.e. 2 of mine wavy-lines cancels for 1 of yours round cancelled), 3:1 and 4:1 basis too.

In any case, I'm open to all your suggestions concerning the exchange basis!

Sincerely,
Marco