What Did You Do Philatelically: Today Or Recently?

Spent my afternoon differentiating Japanese v. Chinese stamps. I don't know how to tell the difference so I had to find them in the Scott catalogue to verify country...which was rather tedious. However, I came across a website that said Japanese stamps have a horizontal buckle while China has a vertical one. By buckle I mean a square with a single line running through it. Japanese horizontal, Chinese vertical. From what I could tell the info was accurate. Has anyone come across this vertical horizontal business?

I do not know about a buckle, but most Japanese stamps show a chrysantemum in the design


Peter

Inscriptions Japanese.
"Buckle" is referring to the first character from each country.

Watermarks

Hasn't been a lot of time for stamps due to work and summertime activities but a couple of rainy days got me going again. Had about 800 different stamps from France sitting in a stock book (mostly used, some mint) decided to finally print an album and get them mounted. Have been using the stamp pages from www.album.france-timbres.net/ sans images. I like the French pages and descriptions with the French stamps.

Finished my catalogue of Tokyo 2020 Olympic stamps for my website yesterday. Today, I started revising my long-overdue update to the COVID-19 catalogue beginning with some reformatting and then adding images for all the A entities. I will work on some New Issues updates tomorrow and perhaps post a new article or two.

Also began photographing each page of Big Blue Part I (not just the ones with stamps on them). My plan is to create a PDF book of each of my albums -- something that I can keep on my various devices as both a record of what I own and a wantlist for the blank spaces. When I acquire new stamps, I will insert a new image of the page into the file. My Part I is a bound copy so I need to take photos; my other volumes are two-post so that I can remove the pages and scan them (although that will be much more time-consuming!).

CoffeeRules, the "buckle with horizontal line" is an attempt to describe one of the two kanji which together spell in Japanese Nihon, the name of Japan. The "buckle" is actually the symbol for sun if used alone. See https://www.japanesewithanime.com/2...meaning.html for more. I have never heard of the buckle description, seems to me it would be preferable to just call the two particular characters together Nihon. But it is accurate as far as it goes.

On the Chinese side of things the character with the vertical line is part of the character set for both Chinas, PRC and the Republic of China (Taiwan) and their unified predecessor, so you need to look at multiple characters, not just that first one.

Was reading through a thread here about manila vs. Vario stock pages and a member mentioned that one could obtain 25 Vario pages for $18.45. I searched on ebay and found the exact offer(s), and was pleased to discover that the seller offers free shipping!

Upon a closer look, I also noticed that the seller was offering a special where if you bought 2 packs of 25 of the same size, you'd get 10% off the second package. This is only for 8S and 7S pages. Awesome! So I just bought 50 each of the 8S and 7S which will go a long way in helping me mount my accumulation of WW definitives.

Nothing exciting. Registered for some up coming auctions. Cleaned up some files, cleaned my office, inventoried my mounts and ordered some that I need, and sorted some philatelic material that had been piling up.

Went to the P.O. this morning to mail an APS stamp circuit. Had to wait a while in line because only one clerk was working at the counter, and the man ahead of me asked for postal cards. The clerk checked the safe, and they have no postal cards. All of this (one clerk and no postal cards) was a little surprising because this post office is not small; it is a very busy place

I received a registered shipment (stamps) from the UK to here in North Carolina that was mailed on July 6. Thus was quicker than I expected.

I have started to organize my British stamps starting with the Machins. Wow, I know there was a lot of variety, but this is a series that can be as simple or in depth as you are will go.

Hi Worth, I see you are starting with the easy ones! Good luck,


Peter

Albumeasy webpage has a 97 page Machin album you can print, can get as detailed as you want !!

Received the Schuyler Rumsey Westpex catalogs and am viewing them. Such great material. The postal history is just so rich. Plotting my bidding strategy for the upcoming Raritan sale. A lot of auctions in Late July/early August.

Just got back from picking up about 2 xerox boxes worth of albums, ~99% US, ~.8% UN and a ~.2% foreign and a little over 600 covers, large number of blocks and plate blocks and some odds and ends singles in glassines. My wife spotted them for sale locally so I met with the guy. His dad was a life long collector and this was the last of his philatelic treasures.

So Tomorrow 'Hi-Ho, the derry-o a sorting I will go..."