2011-2014 ArchivesHi, Welcome to Ken's Korner. I created this page to tell you a little bit about me and what is new with Nieser Stamps.
Thanksgiving Day 2017: Here's wishing you and your family a very blessed and happy Thanksgiving. Here we are having 14 for dinner. The turkey is in the oven, the sides are made, so I am working with stamps while I wait for the turkey to cook. Today will be a very international affair with friends from 5 different countries joining us (4 continents).
As always, I have been busy buying new material. I have boxes of Dominican Republic, Honduras and Cuba that I haven't even yet opened. Recently, I have broken down stocks of Colombia, Uruguay, Haiti and Paraguay and probably some others I have already forgotten. Being a one man show with a full-time non-stamp job, sometimes I fall behind on orders and that is currently the case. I apologize for any inconvenience, but if you are waiting for stamps from me, please know I haven't forgotten you.
Also, even though I regularly update the website, the changes are usually small and you may not notice them. I just added a lot of modern stationery to the cover pages for Argentina and Costa Rica. I also just this morning added a collection to the pages for Uruguay, Chile and Mexico. I was also looking at one of my price lists and noticed that I had stamps in a stockbook that were not on the list. So, I would encourage you to inquire about items you need, even if you don't see them on my price lists. While I try to keep up, my priority is getting orders out, and then making certain that one of a kind items are removed from the website as they sell.
In the next few weeks, expect additional collections to be added to many countries. Also, I will be adding an Odds and Ends page for Uruguay which will have many classic stamps with interesting cancels. I should also be adding quite a bit of modern postal stationery from Brazil and probably some other countries.
Finally, my long-term goal will be to update the website so that you can place your order directly using a shopping cart feature. I plan to have the webiste custom built for me, so that it is much more user friendly than many of the stamp websites I see. The transition will be long and slow as I have tens of thousands of individual items for sale, but hopefully I can get a few parts of the webiste built next year and then get some feedback from you so that I can make adjustments. Stay tuned.
August 30, 2017: Thanks to everyone who has emailed or called to find out how we made it through Hurricane Harvey and the unprecedented rains here in Houston. We were very fortunate as we had no flooding and have had electricity throughout the storm. We stocked in plenty of food so, everything has been okay here. However, our thoughts and prayers are with many thousands of our neighbors who did not fare as well.
July 9, 2017: Only 4 months have gone by since the last update, hopefully this is a good sign that I can post here more regularly. We just returned from a trip to Boston at the end of June. My stepson, Nicolas, had a conference for "future medical leaders" up there and we stayed for a week. While there, Nicolas made a campus visit to one of his top university choices, MIT and really was impressed. We also did a city tour of Boston, walked the battlefields of Lexington and Concord, did whale watching off the coast of Glouchester, and visited Salem. A very pleasant week and we were happy to escape the heat and humidity of Houston for a while.
Recent acquisitions have included an amazing dealer stock of BOB Uruguay. My stock was already strong, but before where I may have had 1 or 2 of an item, now I have 6 to 12. The stock included dues, officials and parcel post (J,O,Q) and a few others. If you want to fill out your collection, now is the time to check with me. There were often odd quantities, so I can also service want lists for singles. I also recently purchased a few Haiti collections, a nice classic Dominican Republic collection and some recent used Ecuador.
Some of the better items to come in include 4 which I have never had before. I recently acquired Colombia C3 and C9 used, just beautiful copies of these rare stamps. Also Ecuador C6 unused and Ecuador O102 unused, both nice centered and seldom seen. If you would like to see these items, you can find them on our better stamps page. Here is a link BETTER ITEMS.
Price lists are in the process of being updated. Bolivia will be relisted this week with many substantial price reductions.
NEW ISSUES: Finally, Brazil 2015-2017 has arrived. A few 2017 issues are in from Colombia, Costa Rica, Honduras, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela...with more on the way soon. My stock of recent Guyana has been strengthened after I switched new issue suppliers, so if I didn't list something you needed earlier, check back again. It may now be available.
Have a wonderful summer. Do not hesitate to contact me if I can be of assistance.
March 7, 2017: It's funny, I have the best intentions of regularly adding to Ken's Korner, but whenever I think of it, I am far away from the computer and when I am seated working on stamps, I never find the time. However, upon seeing that it has been nearly 15 months since I wrote anything, I really should give an update.
Non-stampwise, my stepson, Nicolas, is finishing his sophomore year of high school and beginning to look at colleges. He is looking at engineering schools all over the country, so Ana Maria and I will be travelling quite a bit with him. Some of his top choices are MIT, U Washington, Duke, Georgia Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins and UT Austin.
Stampwise, virtually all the 2016 issues are now in. I am waiting for two issues from Chile, 1 from Colombia, 1 from Panama, all of Brazil and a few sets issued in December by Peru. I have made numerous purchases over the past year that have tremendously improved my stock in certain areas. For example, my Argentina Ministeriales or Departmentales (Scott ODs) are now virtually complete, I may be missing 15 stamps or so. This includes many better items including the rare perforation varieties. I also made a major purchase of Colombian States. Not all of it has made the price lists, so feel free to send a list of what you need. You might be pleasantly surprised. I also bought a wide variety of revenue collections from virtually every Latin American country. Check the individual country collection pages to see what is on hand.
Also recently, I re-organzied the country collections, breaking them into individual webpages for each country, rather than one very, very long list. I add to the available collections on at least a weekly basis, as I work up new stock. The latest to go up was a beautiful mostly NH Mexico collection in a hingless album. Check the pages frequently as you never know what may turn up.
I am slowly working through the "oddball" material that I come across and have been slowly adding this material to the "Odds and Ends" pages. This is a long term project as I need to cull the material from stock books, organize it so I can find it when ordered and then add it to the website. Being that I only work part-time on stamps and most of that time is dedicated to filling orders and breaking down new material, it will take me a while to have everything that I want to posted to the "Odds and Ends" section.
OUT OF STOCKS--Occasionally someone will order some items from my price lists which are out of stock. I apologize if this has happened to you. The truth is that I have very little time to keep the lists as up to date as I would like. And for stamps, I buy so much that if I remove something from the website, it might very well be back in stock the very next week. I do a much better job on the "ONE OF A KIND" items--collections, covers, proofs, etc.. because once their sold, they are gone.
Finally, we are looking into software that will create a shopping basket and allow you to make purchases directly from the website. More to come on this soon.
January 1, 2016: Happy New Year! I hope that you and your family had a pleasant holiday season. I have been busy breaking down some new material for stock. The Guyana and Netherlands Antilles price lists have each had many items added, mostly from the 200-2010 period. For Brazil, I just received the 2015 issues and a few from 2014. I also just broke down stocks of Bolivia and Paraguay so much fresh material is available. In addition, I finally have updated the Bolivia price list to incorporate 200 plus souvenir sheets that Scott has recently decided to list. These used to be listed with the Michel catalog number, but now are after the regular Scott listing when the sheets are footnoted.
Check out my collections as well. There is much new material, particularly with Bolivia.
November 27, 2015: I hope you had a pleasant Thanksgiving. We had a small affair, just the 4 of us: my father, my wife (Ana Maria), my stepson (Nicoals) and me. The past few years we've had a full house with up to 15 people...I kind of missed the company but the intimacy of the small dinner was nice.
Stampwise, new issues have come in from a number of countries...Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Uruguay and Venezuela. I heard officially that Peru will NOT be issuing any stamps this year, so along with Panama and Haiti, that makes 3 with no new issues. The others should be on the way shortly after the new year.
The biggest acquisition of late has been Argentina Departmentals. I just spent several thousand dollars to buttress my stock and I currently have in stock the vast majority of these hard-to-find items. Check out the stamps on our Argentina price list starting on p. 43. I have also bought several lots fo Guyana that have filled in quite a number of holes, including complete or nearly complete runs of many of the orchid issues of the 1980s. This week, a run of Guyana material from 2000-2010 is due in which should round out my selection of these elusive stamps and SS. I also have a Bolivia collection coming in that is supposed to be chock-full of varieties.
October 21, 2015: Happy Stamp Collecting Month! Wow, I had no idea that nearly 9 months has passed since my last installment. Guess I have been busier than I thought. I have recently added quite a bit of material to my inventory with more on the way. I have been buying portions of Scott catalog's reference material. This has allowed me to fill in many of the modern holes in my stock for many countries of Latin America. I just acquired a large box of Guyana from that material and hope to have it up on the website soon. Unfortunately, this stock only has stamps and small souvenir sheets, but I am trying to acquire the SS as well. As a bonus, say "Collect Stamps" when placing your order and you can take 10% off on your order during October.
I have also been busy adding hundreds of items to my online listings of covers and postal stationery. There have been additions for nearly every country--sometimes just a few, sometimes many. There are thousands more to list, I simply don't have the time to get them all online. Feel free to request a selection on approval if you don't see what you want.
Two Argentina notes to mention...I have added an Eva Peron page to my "Odds and Ends" webpage. It has a number of printing errors and varieties, such as Imperfs, double prints, printed on gum side, etc... Also, I have finally updated the OD section to reflect the changes Scott made a few years back. My selection is strong and will be getting stronger as I am expecting a large order of ODs from Argentina to fill in some of those pesky holes that I never seem to find in collections.
February 26, 2015: Most of the 2014 stamps are either on order or have now arrived. Here is the status country by country:
ARRIVED: Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, El Salvador
ON THE WAY: Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay
ORDERED: Chile, Honduras, Uruguay, Venezuela
The other major thing that has has happened is the posting of our first Latin American tour in several years. In August, Don Neumann and I will be taking a small group to Ecuador on a 12 day tour. The trip includes 5 days in Quito and the surrounding area and 6 days in the Galapagos Islands. There is even an optional tour to Quito's only stamp store!! Dates are August 18-29. Details are posted on the website at: www.kennieser.com/andean_endeavors.htm-- There you can select PHOTO ALBUM (a day by day picture PowerPoint of the tour) or Brochure (a written description of the tour with pricing and the application). The Photo Album takes a while to download, and you need to save it to your computer to view. Space is limited to the first 20 registrants so sign up early to avoid disappointment.
January 1, 2015: Happy New Year! I wish you and your family a very happy, healthy and prosperous 2015. We closed out 2014 by running my stepson Nicolas (age 14) to the airport for his annual trip to Colombia to visit his father. It's great for him, but the house is sooo quiet with him gone. He returns on Sunday so things will soon return to normal. Ana Maria has some back problems that are causing her some great pain and discomfort, but soon she will have physical therapy and we hope that her recovery will be quick and complete.
Stampwise, my holiday projects were to clear my desk of all loose stamps (accomplished for a few days--now there are new stamps waiting my attention) and to reorganize my stock books to eliminate overfilled binders. I added 24 new binders to the shelves and got the worst binders replaced. I can't say I completely eliminated the issue, but I got all the way to the Us (Uruguay).
I also just uploaded a major update to my Mexico price list with hundreds of new additions of better stamps. There is more to go in this little project as I have a second Mexico collection to break down, but even so, you will find many items I have never before offered. I also just added Brazil 58b (blued paper) with a Brazilian certificate of authenticity to the stamp offer page. This stamp is rarely offered.