What Did You Do Philatelically: Today Or Recently?

I visited an old school stamp dealer (can I say who?) in Middletown, NY. It was the first time in a very very long time. Turns out this dealer bought part of the stock that belonged to the last dealer I had been to many years ago in Rochester, NY. I didn't purchase anything as I initially just wanted to meet the person and get a feel for what his business offered. He showed me around and we had a really nice conversation. Should I decide to fill holes in my collection, I'll definitely be going back.

I uploaded scans of my collection to the cloud - almost 7GB (5700+ scans). Scans were usually 300dpi 100% quality jpegs..

Picked up a shoebox of stamps/auction lot I won this week at a local estate auction. I usually don't buy anything at auctions but saw this lot had no bids so placed a $5 bid with $10 max bid. Of course they said I won it for 10 so I paid a total of $12.80 to pick up. Was actually thinking I spent too much, the auction pictures showed very little. One surprise was just down a couple of envelopes was a pack of Dennison hinges, about 1/3 to 1/2 full. Good thing they didn't flash that in the pictures. Haven't gone thru all the stamps yet. 80% of the stamps in the box are German which is just fine for me. Ranging from empire to the 80's, plus a few small mini-sheets. If I find a few I need it's a win, there might be some better replacements also. I did find a 9n2 I needed right off the bat. Rest of box is mix US and foreign.

Mounted a second set of Future Delivery revenues after discovering a set of pages with RC24 before it became RC3A.

Backed up my 400,000 stamp images
Windows 7 with USB 3
"Copy" route
Took 2 hours which worked out at 24 mbps

Finished the first chapter of my next book. That was the easy bit......

About 15-20% done sorting the box of mostly loose stamps that came the other day. Love my sorting trays that I got at Target. They will fit inside those same clear plastic bins that are holding the rest of the loose stamps.

Nice setup NicholasC

Ooooh been that route, Ugh!
for me, that was a headache, ends up in entropy, stamps everywhere !
I had bought a carton of take away containers, to do similar
never again.

I have reduced my sorts to just two cardboard boxes.

Filled it with Aust Post Envelopes, each with a country / emission name
(300 +?)

1 box labelled "to scan" 1 box "to album"

Sort say 100 stamps on desk, then pop into "to scan" envelopes
repeat ad nauseum

When working on a country pull out the envelope, sort those which need mounting, rest go into glassine for duplicate swaps.

Nice clean workspace, everything in order.
Something I once thought impossible as a worldwide collector.

With a swap of say 300, I can have them stored away neatly, in under an hour.

Believe it or not, what I'm doing above is very efficient. I arrange the countries roughly by position on the globe. North America / Caribbean at the far left, then South America, then Africa, etc. The sheet of paper in the middle is the staging area, even for stamps that go into the bins. I pile up stamps in the middle and quickly sort. All countries are within arms length and I remember where each one is (sometimes I can place the stamps without looking). When I finsh the pile, then I move the small sorted piles to the bins. I'm gonna need a few more bins as the numbers grow for some countries.

Absolutely,
you have to tread your own path.

It was something I struggled with for years, being brought up in the Navy,
there was always that saying "being squared away"

As a WW collector, and having 1000's upon 1000's of stamps,
being orderly was a nightmare.

Finding my final route was a breath of fresh air, finally cracked it, I recall feeling.

Good luck with your own regime.

Sounds more fun than sorting through hundreds and hundreds of the same stamp, given that I wasn't paying attention to the front!

Don't hold us in suspense Bobby '
Explain that stamp, looks curious (Red Paid) ?
Postmark?

PS: Have experienced similar with several hundred KGV sidefaces.

The red postmark is a French PD marking. The black postmark is a first type 1 of Ryde. It's one of my favourite DLR stamps.

The 2d DLR has 7 different watermarks plus a no watermark type. There's a heck of a lot of perforation types too! The joys of studying definitive stamps eh?

WOOHOO! Milestone post

Congratulations.