Attention: All Cinderella Collectors

Greetings ,want your input and advice .......I just returned from the NAPEX stamp show in Washington D.C. . During the show ,Regency had another stamp auction which included the second part of the James Czyl collection of Cinderella stamps .
If you don't know who Jim was,he was the most advance and most knowledgeable collector of this material. After he died the better stuff went up for auction in England . The bulk of his "stuff" was consign to REGENCY STAMPS of St. Louis .
I purchased a huge lot at the St Louis auction last March ,this was a multiple box lot of tons of Cinderella material . At the auction this past weekend I purchased another part of his vast collection . At the end of this auction was a single lot with all his books and notes in a 5 banker boxes a huge philatelic literature lot .
Now that I have a lot of his material ,combine with my own material that I collected . I was thinking of setting up a viewable website for Cinderella material but we already have the WITT COLLECTION and this website .
Now I really enjoyed the WITT COLLECTION over the years and sure it helped me and thousands of others, I think the posting of those pages by RIGA STAMPS was a bonus for all of us in the philatelic community . But it is getting old and there is a lot more stuff that should be added to it .
Now comes the most important question that I need your advice and input ,please feel free to post what you think ,no opinion will make for hard feelings or respond to in a negative postings ,so help me out .
Should I just make my own website and duplicate 99% of the WITT COLLECTION and add another 50% or maybe 100% more material . Second thing is to just added hundreds of new stuff here which will be searchable to anybody using a search engine . Third should I approach RIGA STAMPS and offer to take over the Witt website ,not sure if they want that. But built on it to include the names of WITT,CZYL and FLOORTRADER and show it all under one website , the site will be expandable for the next 10 years and be open for others to add material with credit given with a ebay or chat room name but no real names .

Congratulations!

Actually, I don't collect cinderellas, but...

I say be your own boss and set up your own website. It'll be a lot of work, but better than spending half your time wrangling with your "partner" regarding major changes.

Can't hurt to ask Riga if you can link into the Witt Collection pages with proper credit/links, even if you do set up your own pages that duplicate the Witt pages. Like a good research paper, a good research site will provide the references for confirmation/further research.

I advise against only posting the stuff here. I really like this forum, but I know others have run into this similar experience elsewhere (at more than one place, I might add): invest a lot of time/posts/information into a forum, only to have it all disappear when the forum administrator/owner shuts it down or simply decides to delete a bunch of stuff. If it isn't in your hands, be prepared to lose all the posted work.

Best wishes!

I agree that you should set up your own site and link to the others as needed.

Floortrader,

Could you define (in your opinion) what a Cinderella is, there are so many definitions of what is and what is not a Cinderella,

Pagoda

PAGODA ----Really have not yet define what to include in my collection . But there are areas I want to keep away from or show very little of ,like Christmas seals, stationary, revenues , poster stamps ,Easter seals ,stamp exhibition labels .My goal is more to show stuff that the regular person who collects will run into and not sure what it is .

PAGODA----Here is some of the material I will pass on, I have a few hundred pages of this type of material that will NOT be part of my Cinderella collection . Not yet decided what to do with it . Can you see if a new poster comes on this chat board and asks a question about BOLLAWOLLABONGO stamps .

Just a update -----Yesterday purchased most of the lots from the third and final section of the JAMES CZYL collection that was put up with Regency Stamps . Between the time of my first posting here and now ,I have added hundreds of pages to my Cinderella collection . With the final lots gets delivered to me I hope to add a lot more pages.

floor, exciting times!

I was fortunate enough to purchase one of the Witt collection Poland pages awhile back. It is a treasured addition to my collection.

I would agree that you are probably better off doing the business on your own. Later, you can make changes and "tweek" things on the experience and advice of customers and friends...without running into disagreements with a partner.

A few random thoughts:

1. Your own website, definitely.

2. I see what you've defined yourself out of...what is definitely "in"? Back in the days when the Byrum catalogue was being produced there were lots of things to catalogue that were never going to be in Scott; lo and behold, with the annual additions to the Classic, more and more show up each year.

3. Images should be expandable to see details. Small images will lessen the utility of the site. (As a side note, I know some people hate watermarked images with a passion; I don't mind them, as long as the watermark is off the face of the stamp and not obscuring details.)

4. If you can improve the layout, detail and images, then I would not hesitate to duplicate material from Witt. If the presentation is going to be essentially similar, I'd start out with new material before I duplicated the effort.

CJD---Thanks for the input , there is a lot of stuff that came out after the WITT Collection was scanned and posted . I accumulated two stock books full of Cinderella material that I have been writing up and mounting. Then over the past year and three stamp actions I have purchased a major part of the CZYL Collection ,that should expand the collection to double the size of WITT .
I really like what RIGA STAMPS did for the internet but as you said the scans today require a better lay out and bigger pictures .

very cool. I love cinderellas, and would also love to see more of what you've acquired!
please, please, please!!?

UPDATE on my auction purchase from the JAMES CZYL collection ,as most of you read that I purchased the reference works that Jim had . Today going thru some of the books ,I found a published book that is very unusual in that it had no title , no cover page and no indication were it was printed . The only side name found in the book is the name ---VOSGOS S.A.
The book is filled with 400 to 500 very detailed photos of recent European stamps from the 1970's, the reason I post this that I found no reference to these and any book or reference source doesn't reach into the 1970's ,once a reader knows about this type of stamp it will be easier to call it as a fake or Cinderella . Below I will post a sample .

Here is a sample of what I am talking about . As you can see this would be sold as a rare imperf proof or a trial proof ,with a price to reflect this rare find .

NEW UPDATE--------I just got the stamp auction catalog from REGENCY for the SESCAL show on October 2-4, 2015 to be held in Los Angeles. First there is no James CZYL material in this auction . But I was surprised by the huge and valuable section of CINDERELLA material in this auction . First these auction descriptions are a lot different than the previous three auctions . This new material sounds like it is more labels,poster stamps ,stickers and exhibit labels and other non -philatelic stuff .

The surprising thing is the huge amount of material that is up for auction ,it is some $30,000 to $50,000 estimated value , my question to you since there is no indication who it is from ,my first and only guess is that it is from RIGA STAMPS ? It is clear that it is from a U.S. source but who has that much material for a $50,000 or higher inventory of Cinderella stuff . The catalog is written so it is clear this is a dealers stock and not a set of albums or display sheets that a collector would have .