What Did You Do Philatelically: Today Or Recently?

Started on classic Poland. Not so bad through 1940 and WWII occupation, but dreading the sorting and cataloging beyond that.

One positive is that I found a handful more Eastern Silesia hiding out.

Spent most of the day moving Germany stamps from my stock book to my album...while watching Star Wars movies. The hip is doing well, thank God for pain medicine.

I arranged my Zanzibar stamps and as I was getting ready to print pages, I noticed that Zanzibar has quite a few definitive sets - many driven by watermark variations.

Yesterday (9/26/21) I went to the Boxborough Show, the first show since 2019 due to the pandemic issues. Talking with my usual dealers they said they had a good Friday & Saturday but Sunday was a little slow. For me that was good as the tables were light & I did not feel hurried or crowded as I 'stalked' my way through their stock books & 1/2 price boxes for bargains. I found some missing moderns and acquired some inexpensive W/Fs. This show will return in May of 2022 (it's usual schedule) I mention this as the next show is the WALPEX in late October (which is that shows normal schedule). Having two great shows so close together can be a budget problem. I queried the vendors & they all said that they would be back in October. I missed the shows in 2020. The one issue I had was that the USPS table was not staffed on Sunday & I suspect that this was due to the 'no overtime' mandate. Also the Federation did not have show cancels on hand, again due to a snafu (miscommunication?) with the USPS. I purchased an uncancelled cache envelope & will just place in my annual album with a note. The crowd Sunday was quite sparse so I hope to go on the Saturday date in October (10-30-21) so I can get a show cancel.

Finished laying out classic Poland for mounting. And, in the effort to free up more glassines, I started on classic Romania. Pages are printed (except Postage Due) and most stamps are ready to be mounted. Still have several watermarks to identify and figure out which Postage Due pages to print.

Working on my bids for the upcoming Raritan auction which is a great Russia only affair. Also figuring bids for Old Louis this week. Excited to be nearing completion on my 1918-1958 Russia!

Romania classic remounting has begun. I'll be taking a break from sorting so I can mount the 200-300 pages (Romania, Poland, and several others) I have laid out. It's coming up on a year since I purchased the Steiner pages. Will refresh my remounted total counts after mounting everything that is ready, grab the most recent set of pages, and then decide what to do next. Still have several larger countries I have not touched.

Conversely, I've been putting together ebay lots of Romania for disposal. Haven't reached the classics yet, but have worked back from 1947 to pre-WWI.

Searched this forum for reviews of Stamps2Go and found nothing (yet) that compels me to use it.

<<<<<Searched this forum for reviews of Stamps2Go and found nothing (yet) that compels me to use it.>>>>>

BF, it all depends what you are looking for. I have found some nice stuff over the years on that site. Why not give it a try and see what is there?


Peter

I have had somewhat mixed results on Stamps2Go over the years, but I still look for new singles that get on my want list. The main issue I have had is that sellers frequently claim stamps to be MNH when they have been previously hinged. You can ask questions ahead of buying, so it may help to communicate with sellers before buying. I do that now routinely, however I have not made many purchases lately.

Working through digitizing approximately 10,000 photo negatives of Bank Note engravings so they available for generations to come. Scanning negatives at high resolution is slowwwww. Yuck, will have literally hundreds of hours in these before they are done but given that these photos were taken from collections and groups which are no longer together the effort should be worthwhile.

Working on new AirMail Week catalog in collaboration with Jim Haxby (soon to be freely available to all).
Don

Just mailed off 70 or so "Cinderellas" to APS stamp store. Many APS convention favors dating back to 1916. $2-5 each Also older Christmas seal multiples, other miscellaneous non-stamps. Engraving often very nice.

Just got several packets of stamps in the mail, inventorying them, culling out the duplicates and getting ready to make album pages as needed for them.

Don: I feel your pain on the high res scanning. Got any kids/grand kids that need some money? I trained and hired my youngest son to scan railroad photos, & negatives and tickets. I pay him by the scan and he loads the entire 11 x 17 bed up. Photoshop automates separation. He files in folders with a naming convention based on the box/binder it lives in. So far he's done a little more than 8,400 photos. 1,825 scans X .50 a scan. That's about 12% of what we have for him to do. I pay him every two weeks and so far he's made about $912. Re-scans don't count. I should have negotiated a better rate but I'll stick to the agreement.