I've Finally Arrived...

Hey everyone, great site, I've really been enjoying reading your posts the last few days. As a child both of my grandfathers collected stamps and in the late 80's I started putting together a collection of new US issues and also buying mint copies of US stamps for my Scott album starting around 1940. After a couple years, and having filled up my album through the 60's I put the tongs down and walked away...Fast forward to this past December, I was visiting my mother and came upon my old collection.

My grandfather had died about 10 years ago and it dawned upon me to ask my aunt if she knew what happened to his stamps and if she had them maybe I could come and fill up a few pages in my album. I was surprised to find out that I was the first in the family to have shown an interest and she insisted that I come right over and take a look. Taking a look soon became taking over the collection and I have begun shipping the collection across the country to NM where I now live.

This collection is something that I think most philatelists would dream about. Housed in about 20 white ace binders on hagner style stock pages are the US releases, starting with Scott #1 and going through the mid-1980's. There are very few gaps and in some cases 100's of copies of certain stamps. There are 15 binders containing full sheets, mostly from the 40's-60's, and a bunch of plate block books which cover around the same time period. There are also white ace binders that house revenues, officials, special delivery, airmail etc etc etc. You get the picture, a really complete collection and an awesome opportunity to get back into the hobby of kings. As you can imagine I have been overwhelmed with the US collection but have recently started having the world collection sent out here. Yes, there's more!

The world collection fills 30 or so binders the contents of which I have only just started to explore. Lots of African stamps, lots of full sheets, and pretty complete looking Germany, Israel, and Russian collections. Oh also I forgot to mention that my grandfather also had an old card catalog filled with 1000's of glassines. I couldn't have the entire set of drawers sent out so I had my mother send just the envelopes and have been spending a lot of time building my own custom card catalog and organizing the glassines. So far it looks like its mostly plate blocks Scott #1000-2000 with some older ones mixed in in the Scott #300-400 range, and also a ton of used copies of everything. Then there's the world glassines which I haven't even touched yet. So you can probably tell how excited I am about getting back into collecting.

I love reconnecting with my grandfather through his collection and introducing my own 4 year old son to philately. I would like to work on filling in the gaps in my US collection and also catching up on the 1990's, 2000's and today. I have been using the stampmanage software to organize the collection and had been pulling out the best mint copies for my Scott minuteman album but have recently realized that I think hingeless is the way to go. I'm hoping to find some active trade partners as I think that some of you might be interested in my foreign collection and I intend to focus primarily on US issues. OK, that's enough rambling for now, looking forward to meeting some of you, I live in the middle of nowhere and have nobody to talk stamps with so I think I will be here often!

to the forum!

I noticed a few sentences that really caught my attention:




And this one:




Wow! I am looking forward to seeing scans of you and your Grandfathers' hard work! From the sounds of it you have an awesome collection and can see why you joined! I'm just glad that the first thing you typed wasn't I want to sell them! Anyhow dig in your heels and stick around. We love seeing this type of stuff you mentioned! -Jeff

Welcome to the SCF. How exciting to hear you describe your find and connecting with your Grand-Father. Some of my most cherished memories are when I was a Teenager and my parents and I would sit at our kitchen table and sort stamps. Oh how I would like to do that again. I still have some of the ads from "Boy's Life" and various sports magazines advertising 100 stamps for 10 cents or 20 cents.