Another New Guy...

Hi everyone

I'm Joe, I live in Columbus, Ohio. I buy a lot of stuff on ebay and this past spring, I got the idea to start saving the stamps, particularly from my overseas purchases. I was trying to start a stamp collection with my 7 year old daughter, but now it's all me. :) I've always felt that I'm white and nerdy, but I could stand to be a little more nerdy, so hopefully philately will do the trick.

I started with random stamps and discovered I liked a lot of stuff from the old Soviet Bloc countries. In particular I felt drawn to stamps featuring Yuri Gagarin. I've always felt he has been marginalized when Americans are taught the history of space exploration. Since then, there are a few series' that I've started trying to complete. The first series I completed was the US Transportation series.

I use Google Docs to track my stuff. Both what I have and what I'm looking for. I've found all the different catalogs and catalog (or catalogue) numbers very confusing. I was using Scott numbers in my spreadsheets, but a lot of my Gagarin stamps didn't have Scott numbers, they had Michel numbers. And then I found a stamp retailer's website that I liked a lot, but they use SG numbers, so now I have to find the SG numbers for all the stuff I'm looking for. Right now, I'm searching for a list of the Commonwealth Peace issues with SG numbers. I bought an unsorted lot of stamps on ebay and it had about 30 MNH stamps from that series so I want to finish it.

Anyway, I've publicly shared (read only) my Google spreadsheet with different pages for different series and topics. I was going to post the link and see if anyone else had their own lists on Google Docs that might be useful to me, but then I read the rules and saw the part about not posting external links when you're new.

Oh, and I studied photography in college, then one of my kids was diagnosed with autism and now I'm a stay-at-home dad with an ADHD 2nd grader girl, an autistic+ADHD Kindergartener son and my younger daughter is 15 months old.

So, there you go I guess. That's my introduction.

Thanks!

Joe

Superb introduction !

Welcome aboard Joseph.

I have been known to buy on ebay too. Just a bit.

Welcome Joe!
I'm sure you'll enjoy the forum!
A friendly and helpful bunch

Welcome Joe,
sounds like you have your work cut out.
Philately may just be the right thing.

However, none of this "more nerdy" stuff,
to be a collector, you need to commit to "full nerd" status,
we don't want any half nerdy people,
(tin foil hat not compulsory)