Coincidence

 Ever hear something and suddenly the next day you see it even though you haven't seen it for quite some time? Claudia, who's a member of the group "stamp collecting" said "Portuguese stamps, where are they?" just 2 days ago. Well lo and behold last night I pulled an envelope out with a few stamps in poor condition that if they were in good shape(they are not) would be great finds for me and one of them happened to be this stamp from Portugal.
 This is King Luiz on an issue from 1870-1884. It's catalogue value, #42 in mine, is $14 when in much better condition. Still a find by my standards of low cost acquisitions.
 King Luiz was a man of science, he invested heavily in research boats that set off to the oceans in pursuit of studying new specimens of ocean life. The reign he held was forced upon him by the deaths of his two elder brothers. He had no political skills to speak of, but his scientific interests far outweighed that in my own view.  I just happen to be reading the memoirs of Thomas Henry Huxley vol. 1 at the present time. who was a philosopher during this time from Great Britain who began his career with the British Royal Navy as a researcher on such a vessel. The first part of volume one was a bit boring, but now I'm half thru and it's picking up. So in a sense, it is even more fortuitous that I ran across this stamp.

JimmyB

Birds

I needed to get the magnifiers out to see this birds name. I've never seen one before, but no wonder, it lives everywhere but in the Americas.

Abelharuco, the English wiki names it Bee-eater. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee-eater

Thank you Andre

Lucky Streak!!!

Wowsers!! I need to go to the casino with my luck lately.

This series of 15 stamps was mandatory to use on Nov 29-30 and Dec 1 and 2 in order to raise money for a museum.

I've bungled across 4 of the 15 today. The 3 below are the highest values in the set valued at $11.50, 12.00 and 18.00 respectively.

JimmyB

Portugal Masked Cover

Today turned out to be exciting!!

I got home and found this cover in my mailbox. Promised to me but forgotten about. I was in the IPDA chatroom during the marathon chat and mentioned to this guy that I needed Portugal in my quest.

By the way Jose, I can help you out on the space stamps, I just happen to have a few.

Masks are pretty cool. It's getting to be the time of year we all put costumes on for different festivals thruout the world.

Halloween comes to mind for me.

Even a super cool metered stamp!!!

Always looking for more countries. I still need Mexico to finish North America off. Costa Rica is the only Central American cover I have. Germany? Austria? Poland? Help!!!!

JimmyB