Tying It All Together!

I always try to tie my collections (Turkey, Germany, etc.) together. Sometimes, it's difficult. I've got first flight covers from Interflug, Lufthansa, and Turkish Airlines to both countries, some military APO covers from Turkey and Germany, and of course the German offices in Turkey. What do you do to tie your collections together?

Baling wire and bubble gum!

But seriously, I haven't made a concerted effort to tie my collections together as I collect too many countries. I like your choice in coutries, though!

How many countries do you collect? I collect world wide (generally whatever I like) but I find that I seem to have more stamps from some countries (Russia, India, Egypt) than others.

I specialize in US, Canada, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Poland, and Italy. That is to say, I actively seek out stamps from these countries to fill my albums.

I have ~20 specialized albums in my collection, some of which have been untouched for years.

I also collect 19th century worldwide. I have a lot of interesting stuff (including Ottoman Empire) that has gone into my stockbooks and sorted by country, but is otherwise untouched. I'll save working on those until I retire 25 years from now :)

Ottoman stuff is great. I used to enjoy sitting by the coal stove in my living room in Turkey and sorting them and dealing with postmarks.

I may pick your brain in the near future on identifying types. There were quite a few stamps I struggled to properly identify.

No problem. Do you use PULKO catalog for Turkish stuff? Also, I used to have a photocopy of a catalog of Ottoan cancellations. Unfortuantely, it's all back in TUrkey for now.

I do not. I use Scott catalogues on all my worldwide except for Germany (I use Michel)

I also have a Minkus catalog from like 1982 and it shows ALOT more variations of stamps and overprints than Scott does. I wish Minkus hadn't gone under.

Hi,

I collect only Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela. Therefore, there are really two major ties for these three collections; Simon Bolivar and Gran Colombia.

babateacher wrote:



I have a Minkus 1980 Latin America catalog and I would not part with it for anything. In my collecting area there is a lot of information Scott doesn't list.

Jerry B

Jerry,
Just out of curiousity, have you heard anything about Minkus and why they died? The Turkish stampdealer who I used to frequent for years in Istanbul used to tell me that out of all the preprinted catalogs and albums, he preferred Minkus. Minkus puts everything in Chronological order instead of by sets and had more details.

I'm confused did babateacher start a new userid as teacherbaba? My wife's grandmother was called Baba which means grandmother in Slovak.

Hi

I think it was the late 80's or early 90's that Minkus was sold to Krause Publishing Company. It was subsequently sold to another company whose name escapes me. Finally Amos Publishing (Scott) bought the company. Since the first sale the Minkus Worldwide catalogs were discontinued. Today Amos publishes the Minkus album line. An interesting fact is the Minkus album pages contained Minkus catalog numbers for the stamps. Now it is Scott numbers. It can be confusing if one's album contains old and new pages.

Jerry B

Stamperdude, Baba means father in Turkish. My nick came from my daughter who was one of my students when she was in primary school. At school she called me "Baba teacher" and I told her I'm just teacher at school and baba at home. She told me "Well, for me you're both!"

JBC:
Just out of curiosity, what was it that you think made people favor Scott over Minkus? Like I mentioned before, the Stamp Jedi Master who I used to frequent in Istanbul told me that Minkus was better than Scott for Ottoman/Turkey because they lay things out chronologically instead of by the set.

Interesting discussion!

I collect Ottoman Turkey and use the SG Part 16 Central Asia catalogue as my main reference. I also use Michel and occasionally Pulko or Scott.

I strongly recommend the four volumes of Postal Cancellations of the Ottoman Empire by Coles and Walker.