I recently went to a MR.DIY store and found this toy robot. Its box is around 14.5″ x 4.5″ x 11.7″ in size. The plastic parts are held together with metal screws. The PhP 430 price (currently around US$ 7.50) seemed ridiculously low for the relatively high quality of the toy, so I just had to buy it. I later found out that it was originally priced at PhP 990.
A cinderella stamp is “virtually anything resembling a postage stamp, but not issued for postal purposes by a government postal administration. […] Named after Cinderella, a folk-tale underdog heroine who was treated as inferior within her family. Cinderella stamps similarly were considered inferior to postage stamps.”
Illegal stamps “are postage stamp-like labels issued in the names of existing independent countries or territories used to defraud postal administrations, stamp collectors, and the general public. […] Illegal stamps are to be distinguished from the many varieties of cinderella stamps which may have some of the same characteristics as illegal stamps but which are not usually issued in the name of an existing country.”
I recently found the stamps shown above being sold at HipStamp and described at Colnect (where I got the image from). The HipStamp entry claims it is from 1997 and is a “private issue.” The Colnect entry claims it is from 1999 and is an “illegal stamp” (“This item was illegally produced without the authorization of the postal administration inscribed on the stamps. They have no postal validity.”)
The mini sheet consists of four stamps with different designs, each having the words “Gagauzia Moldova B-JORK 1.00” and a picture of Björk.
The International Moldovan Philatelic Society calls these “Gagauzia Bogus (Cinderella) Stamps,” saying that “such material is entirely worthless in philatelic terms” and “were all privately made either for propaganda purposes or in the case of more recent products, purely for speculative reasons.”
I’m currently not interested in collecting cinderella stamps because it is difficult to tell if they are genuine or if they are reproductions.
According to Wikipedia, Björk’s 1997 song “Jóga” is dedicated to her best friend Jóhanna Johannsdóttir. It “is a love song; its lyrics were written by poet Sjón, Björk’s friend and collaborator. Björk explained her inability to write the song’s lyrics in an interview with MuchMusic: “I tried to write that tune but, I mean, I just wanted mainly to write lyrics. It was just pathetic. I was like ‘her… her…’ it was like ‘love… love…’ I couldn’t even put it into words. So, you know, it’s—yeah, it’s probably the—I think it’s the fiercest love song I have written, I think.”
A 1997 episode of “The South Bank Show” shows a page from Björk’s notebook containing what she describes as “the lyric to a song about my best … mate Jóga.” (See 47:20 in this video.)
Here is my transcription of that page. (I didn’t include the alternate words written in the notebook.)
all that no one sees – you see
what’s inside of me
every nerve that hurts – you heal
deep inside of me
I don’t have to speak – you feel
I rest my head in your hands
but when I leave
I leave you only to give out to the others
state of emergency
how beautiful to be
state of emergency
it’s where I want to be
when I’ve lost my cards – you deal
me another hand
even when I sleep – you’re real
on your way to me
you don’t have to speak – I feel
this strength I get – from you
I rest my head – in your hands
but when I leave
I leave you only to give out to the others
state of emergency
how beautiful to be
state of emergency
it’s where I want to be
state of emergency
how beautiful to be …
The words in the image are hard to read, but, fortunately, Björk sings parts of the song (at 45:04) so I was able to reconstruct the words. Note that most of the lyrics here differ from the lyrics of the song that was actually released. So I assume that these lyrics are by Björk and that she replaced them later with some lyrics by Sjón.
This Classic TV Series Batmobile (Tooned) looks really cute.
This Hot Wheels Coupe Clip is the simplest Hot Wheels I have ever seen. It seems to be made solely of two metal pieces joined together. (I suspect the inside is hollow. Otherwise, the manufacturer would have made the unit in just one piece.) Even the paint is very minimal: only a small white Hot Wheels logo and a white circle on each side. (The base color is called ZAMAC for Zinc, Aluminum, Magnesium, And Copper.) There are no moving parts—the car has no doors or windows or even wheels. The back of the card shows a drawing of the car used as a key chain; there is a hole at the rear of the car for this purpose.
A few years ago, I bought an auction catalog from Book Sale describing Sale 1040 of the Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries (“Outstanding United States Stamps,” March 26-28, 2013). My favorite stamp in the catalog is the one shown here (lot 1211). (I got the image from http://www.usphila.com/us/stamp/price/scott-17-page-8.) Estimated to sell for US$ 6,250, it sold for US$ 5,750.
Although some people consider the stamps in the Columbian Issue or in the Trans-Mississippi Issue to be the most beautiful United States postage stamps, for me this United States 12c Black (Scott 17, issued in 1851) is the most beautiful U.S. stamp I have seen.
Stack Exchange Winter Bash 2021 ended a few hours ago. I was able to get 11 hats. I wasn’t able to create a composite image showing me wearing each hat. The image below is the standard image.
I was surprised to learn that out of 759,959 users of the Stack Exchange network (who presumably chose to wear hats), I am ranked #134. The user ranked #1 had 38 hats; the user ranked #2 had 35 hats. The 759,959 users had 955,796 hats, which means an average of around 1.26 hats per (hat-wearing?) user.
I have removed my third Majorette Transporter from its packaging. (I mentioned that I might in a previous blog post). It has a scale of 1:87, and I only have very few models with that scale. I decided to nevertheless take some pictures of some of my “free” models (those that have been removed from their packaging) regardless of their scales.
The picture above (“white”) shows three Tomicas: a Lamborghini Countach LP400 (1:61), a Speed Racer Mach 5 (1:??), and a Toyota Vitz (1:57).
The picture above (“Skylines”) shows three Tomicas: a silver Nissan Skyline HT 2000GT-R Racing (1:62), a dark gray Nissan Skyline GT-R (BNR32) (1:62), and a red Nissan Skyline HT 2000 Turbo RS (1:63).
The picture above (“performance cars”) shows a Tomica Subaru Impreza WRX STI (1:67), a Matchbox ’71 VW-Porsche 914-6 (1:60), and the three Skylines from the previous picture.
The picture above (“transporters”) shows the MAN (1:87) next to an M2 Machines 1957 Dodge COE (1:64) and 1969 Dodge Charger Daytona HEMI (1:64).
I decided to include a few pictures of some of my “free” models without the transporter. The one above (“food”) shows four Tomicas: a Suzuki Carry (1:55), a Toyota Town Ace Hamburger Car (1:64), an Isuzu Giga Fried Potato Car (1:???), and a Daihatsu Midget (1:50) in Coca-Cola livery.
The picture above (“construction,” but the combine harvester is “agriculture”) shows a Siku Truck with Trailer and Compact Excavator (1:87), a Tomica Yanmar Combine AJ218 (1:47), a Tomica Sakai Pneumatic Tire Type Milling Machine (1:91), a Tomica Furukawa Wheel Loader FL140 (1:79), a Tomica Hanta Asphalt Paver F1741WZ (1:77), and a Tomica Maeda Seisakusho Mini Crawler Crane (1:???).
I have a few more “free” models, but I didn’t have time to take pictures of them.
When I was a child, I was slightly uncomfortable playing with models having different scales. It was difficult to create reasons why, for example, a motorcycle would be bigger than a truck. I said to myself that when I grew up, I would buy models that have the same scale. Now that I’m an adult, I find out that the only models that have the same scale are the expensive ones that are not being sold in the stores I usually visit. Maybe when I retire, I’ll create my own models that have the same scale.
Around four years ago, I blogged about my Majorette Transporter. Some time after that (I don’t know when), I bought another Majorette Transporter with the intent of removing one from the package. (My memory is getting bad. I thought I had blogged about the second Majorette Transporter before, but it seems that I haven’t.) When I got home, I was a little disappointed to find out that my second Majorette Transporter was not exactly the same as the first one. This meant that I couldn’t open either of them. Before reading further, look at the images below and see if you can spot the differences.
The one at the bottom is the second one I bought. For some reason, it’s more expensive (around 450 pesos instead of around 400 pesos). The front of the card is different (showing two trucks instead of a bus and a truck). The side of the truck cab has black trim but is otherwise plain (instead of having no trim but having white text and decorative lines).
The backs of the cards are slightly different. (The one at the bottom is the second one I bought.) Perhaps the most noticeable difference is the presence of car company logos near the bottom.
The front of the models are also slightly different. (The one on the right is the second one I bought.) The logo’s lion is above the word “MAN” (instead of below it). Other than these, there appear to be no other major differences between the two models.
If you are quite observant, you will notice that the other model in the photographs above is not the first one I bought. (For example, in the first model that I bought, the price sticker covers the image of the headlights. In the first photograph above, the price sticker doesn’t cover the image of the headlights.) The photographs above are actually of the second and third models I bought. I’m thinking of opening the package of the third model soon.
I recently bought three more “ordinary-looking” Matchbox scale models.
This seems to be the first time Matchbox has issued a 1979 Chevy Nova. The metalflake light blue color is really beautiful. (The card shows light blue; the actual color on the model is closer to cerulean, which I like more.)
This 1976 Honda CVCC in white is very nice. There is a metal column in the rear seats to provide structural support for the scale model. As a child, scale models that had this column bothered me a lot, as I tried and failed to invent an in-universe reason for the column’s existence.
I initially didn’t plan on buying this 1957 Dodge Sweptside Pickup because it didn’t look “ordinary.” (It would have looked more “ordinary” if it was in only one color.) But the matte ivory paint and the glossy “red” (more of a reddish-brown, actually) paint was so beautiful that I convinced myself to buy it. I never had a pickup truck scale model when I was a child, and that made me a little sad because I had lots of stories that involved transporting objects and a pickup truck would have been perfect for them. I now have a few pickup trucks, and they’re 1950’s (’56 Ford Pickup, 1956 Powell Sport Pickup) and 1960’s (1961 Ford Ranchero) American makes.
As a child, I only had a few scale models (perhaps less than 20) and one of the “stories” I wanted to play was “traffic jam.” But some of my models didn’t belong to that story (a forklift, a tank, etc.), so I didn’t have enough models to create a realistic traffic jam. I now have enough models to create a traffic jam in theory. (But I would need to remove the models from their packaging for that to happen.)
Joel Reyes Noche 