eBay wait
There’s an eBay lot that I really, really want. The auction closes in less than one hour (4:40 a.m. PDT is probably some sensible time in Johannesburg, where the seller resides), and the bidding is at 14% of my high bid. I would love to get this lot for 14% of my high bid.
I can’t sleep, as you can probably tell, so I’ve been fiddling (they call it a “one tweak loop” in computerese) with the sidebar. Let me know what you think — if you can tell the difference.
Firefox did not complain about the word “computerese”. Wow.
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March 13th, 2008 at 07h39
In the last few seconds (predictably) it jumped to 32% of my high bid. I’m still very pleased.
March 13th, 2008 at 09h21
So, did you get it? What was it?
March 13th, 2008 at 10h35
Not to just say “duh“, but yes, if it closed for 32% of my high bid, I won it — for 32% of my high bid!
Early British stamps had “corner letters”. The sheets contained 240 stamps. The rows each had 12 stamps (so a row cost a shilling), and there were 20 of them (so a full sheet cost a pound). In the upper-left of the sheet, the corner letters were “A” and “A”. In the upper-right, they were was “A” and “L”. In the bottom-right, they were “T” and “L” (follow?)
Someone took one issue, an issue I collect, and “virtually” reconstructed a sheet (on stocksheets), assembling an example of all 240 corner-letter-pairs. This is something I’ve been trying to do for a while.
Now, I’m going to do something harder: I’m going to take it apart and figure out exactly which printing plate each came from, exactly what shade each is, and come up with n partial sheets (I won’t know what n is until I get the reference works I borrowed from the APRL). I expect this to take about 80 hours, but to be immensely rewarding.