What Did You Do Philatelically: Today Or Recently?

Coincidentally, last Sunday, I thought a glimpsed a small furry visitor. The question is always, "a mouse or a family". And, if only one, is it a female carrying a brood? Of course, the orthodoxy is that, if you see or hear one, there are more.

I know that feeling, a faint movement in peripheral sight.
I usually get just single meece.
They would starve at my place, no food at my pace not in containers.

Mostly come from chicken run, but they bought a dog and we have been
free for a number of years.

The peanut butter, and the boomerang trap have them caught in a trice,
before setting free. It's just "overnight stay" and we don't charge.

Working today on adding pre-decimal QE2 commemoratives to my Stanley Gibbons Windsor album, plus I've got some Franco period Spanish commemoratives to mount as well as adding to the Hungary collection.

Got some Circuits from the Royal Philatelic which included some nice mini sheets for Germany. Filled lots of holes. Still plugging away at Japan also seeing less blank spaces.

Dianne

Hi Dianne...... pictures?

Thanks.

I will as soon as I get my scanner going. We are renovating and most of my stamp room is in boxes

Great thanks.

In the past few days I have scoured Delcampe looking for missing stamps from my Netherlands Colonies/Indonesia stamp collection. Found 2 missing postage dues c. 1967 from Indonesia, and Scott 101 from Netherlands Antilles. Down to just a very few stamps but they are very scarce and difficult to find MNH.

Searching on Delcampe takes some thought and practice. Scott numbers only work perhaps 5-10% of the time. Many sellers within a given category don't consistently use catalog numbers at all, relying instead on descriptions. So you often have to search by year of issue, which isn't a bad thing at all except it won't find every possibility. Specialized catalogs certainly help searching a great deal, however for Netherlands Colonies my NVPH catalog is en route as we speak.

The other issue is that while it's possible, within a single seller's store, to home in on each of the Netherlands colonies listings by country, at the very top level of search you cannot do this easily. Some sellers list by "Netherlands Indies," while others list by "Ned Indie," "Nederland Indie," or some other words that aren't in English. So to ensure you see the maximum number of results, you have to become adept at using country names the way a seller may use them.

To save time, I try to find sellers who have larger stocks of the area I am searching, as Delcampe will allow you to zoom into the single territory you want to view, regardless of what name the seller uses for that territory.

Have you tried HipStamp? I have very few Indonesia listed there, but having joined just a couple months ago I find it a good site and like it better than eBay.

Thanks very much for the suggestion DDAANN. I have done over 3,000 transactions on Hipstamp.

Wow!! - well, you know HipStamp a lot better than I do. My feedback is only approaching 200 there (vs over 31000 on eBay).

I have not tried Delcampe - guessing maybe incorrectly that they are more Euro-centric?

I saw HipStamp advertised in Linn's Stamp News but never paid it any attention. Then heard about it on the "stamp show here today" podcast, and signed up. Very straigforward, and I have to believe the buyers are more trustworthy than some who frequent eBay.

I just bought 8 large stockbooks, and just ordered another 8. Lots of sorting is on the cards!

DDA - my eBay rating is miniscule compared to yours. You are correct that Delcampe is Euro-centric. The site is based in Belgium and it seems as though the majority of sellers are from Europe.

I like Hipstamp a lot- it is much better managed than eBay but not as well-known. eBay tends to be better for more expensive items. While I've sourced some expensive items on Hipstamp, they are much better for inexpensive to medium priced material you won't find on eBay.

To stay on topic, opened several packages with Showgard mounts to accommodate the Egyptian and now rapidly dwindling list of Japanese souvenir sheets/lottery prizes that need to be mounted. Looking forward to adding those to the album this weekend.

To shift to the topic du 'jour; DelCampe is indeed more euro-centric. For searches there; I tend to broaden the search to simply a country/genre and visually look for what I want as Scott# searches don't always yield the best results and I don't have Yvert or SG to reference. In any event, an unused Ecuador 173 is nowhere to be found there!

Also prefer Hip to eBay, and that gap is growing. 3,392 transactions there, compared to 600 on eBay for whatever time frame they keep those stats. Agree with Shermae though in that you can generally find better deals on higher priced items most of the time on eBay if you have patience. Seems as though Hipstamp is mostly legitimate dealers who have a better sense of market value and tend to have more inventory to pad the order with additional stamps to justify shipping costs with items I will file away in the stock book when I find something inexpensive.

And back on topic: Starting to mount the Australian stamps I've been socking away the past few months as the Steiner pages are printed and ready to go.

Upgrading some of my French Africa collections with lots won at Dutch Country recently. Some good finds there. And in the process listing all the dups on my Hipstamp/Delcampe stores. Self-funding (or even better, profitable) collection upgrades feel like such a win-win. Next on the list is the same for Canada and Ecuador. Should keep me busy for much of the month...

~Greg

Hipstamp? Looks like a great place to buy singles and maybe small lots. Correct?