I finally got the opportunity to re-visit the shop after extensive renovation last year. The first time I visited the shop was in 2005, about 5 years ago. At that time, the shop was still in its old location. In 2010, I got myself a nice assortment of low values Irish stamps and some British Commonwealth stamps. Unfortunately they didn't have any collectible stamps from British Borneo or Malaya.

Raven stamps & Coins is the only philatelic shop in Ireland's second largest city, Cork. Situated in Washington Street, it is the centre for collectors from the southern province of Ireland, largely collecting Irish stamps, GB stamps overprinted the Irish Provisional Govt, as well as GB stamps used in Ireland. My favaourite Irish stamps is the engraved seahorse overprints (2/6, 5sh, and 10sh) but these are quite expensive and difficult to acquire. Another area of interest is the pre-stamps entire and Victorian covers used in Ireland.

The owner, Padraig O' Shea and his assistant are friendly gentlemen and would warmly welcome you to their shop. There's a radio interview by RTE to Mr. O' Shea a couple of years back, and you may listen the interview here. You can get an idea about the Irish stamps in general and listen to the Cork accent. :)

In my most recent visit, I asked about book reference relating to Irish postmarks as I'm getting more interested in collecting Irish stamps, especially the postmarks. His assistant handed me two books, one by David Feldman (1976) and another newer book but without reference on the postmarks. I didn't buy them as I already have my Stanley Gibbons for Irish stamps issues and the one by David Feldman is only for the shop's reference and not for sale. Nevertheless, it is quite unfortunate that I couldn't get any stamps from British Borneo esp. North Borneo. It would be nice to see covers sent from North Borneo to a rare destination like Ireland. Perhaps I should continue the hunt in Ireland's capital, Dublin!