Sorting And Identifying!!

I posted a question the other night inquiring as to what might be a productive effective method of sorting stamps.....I forgot the main point.....after you have done this.....and you start researching what you think/hope might be valuable.....how do you focus on the specific stamp (s) as you look them up?...recently I determined that I had about 6 full vario sheets full of stamps that I couldn't identify. I carry them with me and whenever Im at the library, etc, I pull them out and try to match up images. Recently, I scanned these pages and now just carry a small notebook of images, something that I can write on as needed, etc. It is very slow going, and many are cancelled beyond deciphering. I am getting ADD from this...i'm all over the place, jumping from one scotts catalog to another etc.....any ideas?...
I feel like Im lazy to keep popping images in here with a "what is this" heading...as though I'm not willing to look them up....Im at it constantly.....please ......helpppppppppppppp!

builderr, A few years ago I stumbled upon the website shown below. I was in the same boat as you and it did help me with a lot of the stamps that I seemed to hit a dead end on.

http://www.stampmasteralbum.com/For...fierHome.htm

Maybe this website has already been mentioned here in a previous thread, as I haven't performed a search. At any rate, maybe it will help you.

Ron

(P.S. - you have to scroll all the way down to the bottom of that page and click the appropriate link)

Find a knowledgeable friend with 30+ years of experience at a club?
Send us a scan?
We all love puzzles and compete for first to solve.
I particularly like the ones I can solve fairly quickly (less than 10 minutes).
When someone types "help needed with ID", I go there first!

My advice is if you are stuck on a stamp that you cannot identify and get tired of looking, then set it aside for a while. I sort all my stamps to keep by country in envelopes. When I cannot find the stamp in my catalog and get frustrated trying to identify it, I will put it back into my envelope to work on at another time. Often, I do come back to those stamps and I am able to identify it and put it into the correct place in my collection.

If the stamps have lettering that you're able to decipher, you might find this worldwide identifier helpful in pinning down the countries of origin.

http://www.iswsc.org/iswsc_ident.html

6 vario sheets full - they can't all be from individual countries. Have you looked for similarities so that you can group what you think are from the same countries/series? Even a script like cyrillic that most of us can't read, will have repeated patterns, usually for a country name or a currency. Then you could post one from each country and I'm sure you'll get the answer pretty quickly.

When I have my country group together, I put them into a vario in what I think is approximate chronological order, just based on how old they look, or the style of the stamp. Then I sit with the catalogue and work my way through the entries in date order, trying to match to my sheet of stamps as I go. I find this easier than picking a stamp and then looking through pages of a catalogue to find it.

Post a scan of the pages.I am sure we can identify most of them.
I like puzzle as well.

Some countries and areas are harder than others. Try to learn the symbols, if any, that each country uses in certain periods.

Great Britain has the Queen's bust on modern stamps or Japan has the Chrysanthemum, currencies used, abbreviations for currencies, styles of stamps perhaps also.

Some French and British and other European countries have issued similar series of stamps for their colonies which are pictured in the front of the catalogue usually.

All kinds of tricks like that, and as you learn one then that area or country will become easier to find next time.

Learn bits of foreign languages as you go along also. Use Google translate or other internet translaters.

If you think they are from a certain country try ebay or Delcampe or Google and search through the years or eras you think they might have come from.

Learn to read postmarks and check the dates for which year they were used. This won't work sometimes as stamps were kept and used for years after sometimes but it gives you a start point.

You cannot know everything there is to know. The best thing to do is have books or computer databases (like Rod's) or knowledge bases like SCF to query. That is a smart move.

The more you get to know, the more there is to know, but when you get to a certain point it all slows down and you know enough to know where to look for an answer or where to ask a question. That's when it all becomes easy.

There is a book called Outliers that talks about how people become so good at different things that they do. It all comes down to how much actual time you have spent doing something and had practice at. To be Good you need 4000 hours. To be able to teach something you need 8000 hours. To be in the master class of anything you need 10,000 hours. Kind of gives you a perspective doesn't it?

When you start out at something and have a few hours or maybe 10 hours in at doing something and you get frustrated at your lack of progress and how hard it all is just remember the 10,000 hour rule. At 10 hours there is no way you are even close to the 10,000 hour mark so just relax and enjoy the ride. Simple.

attached is a picture of page one of eight......this picture does NOT have notes but some have been identified. I used the vario page to store stamps that I either bought of found and wasnt sure as to rarity or value, or identity. I didnt want to seem lazy about researching but after filling approx 300 vario pages both sides, basically, by country, and barely making a dent in what I have....over 7 years that I have been back at it....I like to think that I am somehow making a dent into organizing what I do have. Im not sure how many hours I have been doing this and although sometimes I just think I am spinning my wheels by sorting and filing, I have spent a lot of time with a stack of Scotts catalogues in front of me...

I would say about 1/3 can be IDed as is, another 1/3 can be IDed with considerable eye strain, and the remaining 1/3 would definitely require a bigger picture (not just to ID, but to weed out forgeries).

May I recommend that you post the pics of the ones you need help IDing 2-4 stamps at a time (i.e., bigger pics). Let us know if you want the exact ID, or just want a hint regarding which country to look under. I'm sure there are more than a few collectors here who are willing to help.

with khj.

Some I know almost right off, most are harder to see.

Some could be cut squares from postal stationery (envelopes, wrappers, postcards) (see Rod's thread Mutilated Stationery) that will not show in Scott but may be in specialized country catalogues.

The idea here is for you to learn as you go also. If someone identifies one, then you could ask how they did it, if identifying even the country has escaped your study.

Scott does not have all revenue stamps of all sorts either, or telegraph stamps (I think (not sure)).

The posts above have the right ideas. I have made the same mistake myself, trying to put too many stamps on one page as the restriction to 100k reduces the detail.

Interesting selection from Italian states (?), Japan to early German states with some French colonies and Venezuela thrown in, as far as can be seen at the moment. My knowledge outside GB is limited, so I'd like to know more too.