Logistical Advice For New Collector?

Hi --

For those who haven't met me yet, I am new to US stamp collecting having spent the past 40+ collecting just GB used. My interest in US was sparked a while back when I " inherited" (acquired in a shoebox of junk) a bunch of mostly 1930s W-Fs and quite a few precancels. I probably have a few hundred.

None of the precancels seem to have been sorted, but nor do they seem to have been acquired with any deliberate care. I think the prior owner was probably a schoolboy -- lots of ripped stamps where he didn't bother to soak! To my untrained eye, there also seems a lot of repetition and most of them seem to date to c.1900-1935. If the rest of the philatelic material in the box is typical, then I am not expecting to become wealthy overnight, but having them all just lying around in paper bags (and maybe a very few on antique approval sheets) seems criminal.

Having recently gone thru the box and id'd the other stamps, I now would like to continue to sort and collect precancels. I have ordered the PSS catalog, as a start.

Knowing how huge the field is, though, I could use some logistical advice. Primarily: how do I organize the material so I have a clue what is in there?

a) the ones I have cover a wide range of cities and states, and as a foreigner in the US I don't have a huge connection to one particular area, so I had thought to collect both Bureau and T&T, and all states, at least for now?

b) since I already seem to have so many different stamps from the same town with the same precancel on them, I also am having trouble imagining where to draw the line on collecting as many different stamps with the same cancel as possible? Just having one example, seems kind of dull ...

c) I have started trying to organize them -- but how do you do that? If I organize them by Town, how do I keep track of what Types I have? If by Type, then how do I know if I have every Type for a given Town? I started and stopped a bunch of times.

d) At the moment I have a stockbook (still almost empty), but I'd rather have album pages (by Town or Type). I saw at the website that you can download and print album pages -- but as best I can tell, they are only for one example of each Type for each Town? So if I want to collect different stamps with the same Type, where do I store those extras? Is there a program out there that would enable me to design my own pages?

e) dare I say it -- how does one go about acquiring more? I see lots of auctions on ebay, but I assume one is not going to find a gem and they are pretty picked over? Maybe repetitive? So are there other, better sources - other than buying them one by one which sounds horribly expensive for a beginner?

I would so appreciate it if anyone would care to share advice or pictures of how they organize or choose their fields of interest, acquire new material -- and especially how they store their collection/extras so that they can tell what is where.

Many thanks.

I would arrange them by state and then by town and then by type/buro. I would wait for your Precancel catalog and then add them to blank album pages that you could customize to your descretion. With precancels it does not matter the stamp it is on nor the condition of the stamp itself (in most cases). Check out the other posts in the precancel topic for other helpful or not so helpful tips and advice. Have Fun!

Greetings,

I recently started collecting precancels as well and have battled my way through many of the same questions you have. I acquired several albums of approximately 30,000 precancels and I can relate to the daunting question of how to sort and catalog everything that you have.

If I could offer a key piece of advice it would be to purchase yourself both the bureau and town & type catalogs on CD. If the PSS catalog you ordered is the paper version that will work; however, I have found the electronic versions to be easier to navigate and a bit quicker to sort through.

For me personally, I sort through my precancels and separate first into two groups; one group for bureau's and one group for town & type (the PSS catalogs will help you distinguish between the two). For the bureau's I sort by state and mount them on bureau album pages; all the duplicates go into a shoe box for future trading/selling. For the town & types I also sort by state and town (alphabetically) and then further by the precancel type. For now I put the town & types in a stockbook. Eventually, I will probably specialize in T&T for California and Virginia.

Regarding the question of how to acquire more, there are many routes you can take. Personally, I recommend contacting Dick Laetsch. Dick will send precancels on approval and also sells on ebay under the ID "precancel44uw." Some of the lots Dick sells on ebay are for 10,000 (1/2 bureau; 1/2 t&t) and these might be a good way to go initially. If interested send Dick an email (precancel@aol.com).

Have fun with your precancels!

As far as acquiring precancels from dealers - I can recommend Dick Laetsch 100%. He and wife Marie run a 1st class operation. Other reliable, vetted, dealers can be found on the PSS webpage: http://www.precancels.com/dealers.htm . I wrote a piece on how I organize my precancels for the PSS Forum a few months back. This might stimulate discussion and comment:
VP - Notes
Hinging Binging
My love hate affair with stamp hinges heated up last week. Modern hinges stink! They are a completely un-peelable and are a serious threat to your precancel's health. However, when you have a nice album page and a good showing of stamps on it, old-fashioned hinging makes a pleasing presentation. I try to be a good steward for the precancels I own, so I feel guilty about hinging. I rationalize this by saying my stamps are not going to be relocated off those pages for a good long time. Maybe the next person to own them will be smart enough to soak the whole page when it's time to break down my collections.
Last week I used a whole 1000-pack of hinges to relocate my New Jersey Bicentennial collection from Hagner stock sheets to an album created with the new Gutman/Kimball catalog/database Albummaker. This product will be quite useful to any bicentennial collector, and especially if you specialize in certain states or denominations like I do. NJ takes about 80 pages - if you use the line break after every town option. My album is about half full and it looks much better than it did laid out on stock sheets.
Using the new catalog you get a better sense of the size and organization of bicentennial collecting. Without a catalog - all precancel collecting can seem hopelessly open-ended. A good catalog provides structure for an intelligent hobby presentation. Knowing the size: Small [small binder], Medium [large binder], Large [multiple binders] and Open-endedness of your specialty will help dictate how to mount your specialized precancels. My mounting is all over the lot: Towns & Types [Large/not open] are hinged on loose leaf - with the high value items kept at the bank. The cost of mounts or Hagners for this collection would be prohibitive. My General States [AL/DE/MT/WA] vary in size but all open-ended - kept on Hagner stock pages so I can reorganize them easily. Bicentennials [M/not open] are being switched to Albummaker pages. Overrun Countries [L/open] are hinged on O/C sheets photocopied from the Scotts National O/C page, except that if I only have one from a type I keep them on Hagners. 1918 Offsets [M/not open] I am working on switching from Hagners to Albummaker pages. Pre-1920 postage dues [L/not open] are hinged on Albummaker pages, 1930 & 1931's [L/open] are on Hagners and 1959's [L/open] hinged on loose-leaf with lots of extra space for additions. 1919 Rotaries [S/not open] are on Albummaker pages. I keep Canada [M/not open] in Hawid mounts because so many of them are more than nominal value.
Every collector will specialize, organize, and mount a little differently - Whatever! It's all fun!

Welcome to the world of PC's! All of the above advice are most helpful. For me, to put it in a nutshell, is to collect for fun and nothing more. Be creative and enjoy the hobby for what it is. As long as you have control over it (including time and money), you're going to have a personal class A collection. Once the collecting starts to control you, the fun is gone and it's no longer a hobby.

Personally, this is a fun hobby for me mainly because of my interest in Georgraphy and what better way can you collect names of little towns that supports my interest?

Happy collecting!

Frankie

Thanks for your insights -- I have started a new topic asking for help in what I must be misunderstanding about the catalogs. Primarily, I expected the T&T to list each possible stamp that had each T&T, and what I am looking at here does not.

Example: for your O/C collection, Chasa, how do you even know that it is L/Open? I must be seriously misunderstanding something here -- was it not a 1940s issue which must therefore by definition be closed? And how do you even know what cities produced PC of this issue?

Jan, in the past 20 years, with the widespread use of personal computers, much organizational data is available to collectors, specialists and beginners alike. A tireless worker on these data is Arnold Selengut who has many precancel lists and catalogs to his credit. Arnold has published a .xls spreadsheet on all the overrun countries precancels he is aware of. Some of us advanced collectors have added items to his list so it now covers around 20,000 different [maybe a lot more, just guessing]. You can contact him through the PSS webpage and get a copy for a modest price. Some new denominations are still being found - a new denomination of these does not mean big dollars - and some are even being created by rougue collectors even as we type here. I know that the overrun countries is Large because my collection takes 3 large binders [probably 12,000 different].