What Did You Do Philatelically: Today Or Recently?

Completed my phase 1 on Thursday! Spent much of yesterday and this morning on reorganization and general cleanup of my stamp space. Looking forward to next project. So many to choose from.

Reduced the number of boxes of glassines taking up space by compressing out the dead space left by mounting 1000s of stamps. All straggler glassines are now back in alphabetical order!

Decided to tackle Japan 1941-1952. Some good values in those years and so they need to be on pages instead of in glassines.

Sadly discovered I didn't actually do New Zealand, Norway, Panama, Portugal and a few other small countries. But I did complete Japan 1941-1952. So satisfying to almost completely fill the pages.

Found this, though it was fun.

That's an awesome find.


Mounted classic+ for Niue, North Borneo, North Ingermanland, Northern Nigeria, Northern Rhodesia, Norway, Nyasaland Protectorate, and Nyassa. Portugal is mostly ready to mount. Working on sorting New Zealand and having a hard time with watermarks (probably why I skipped before).

Finally finished mounting and logging my stock of Phillipines (mostly 50's and 60's). Now back to the Hipstamp order that started me on that tangent, beginning with Portugal.

I was able to recently publish episode 14 of my podcast Dissecting Philately.

https://anchor.fm/dissecting-philately

I discuss my experience with NFTs issued by USPS, taking my daughters to a local stamp club meeting, and an assortment of other philatelic activities in Colorado.

I publish this using anchor fm and they just did a limited access release of their video option and this episode has a video component that allows you to view the stamps I am talking about. You'll want to listen via Spotify if you want that:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/31...3UElbQBwmCKQ



#Stamps #philately #stampcollecting #stampcollector #postage #philatelic #postagestamps #history #postal #filatelia

I've been spending time recently learning Album Easy and working on laying out my own pages. So far I've done Allenstein, Greenland, and Sweden. The latter two run up to 1960 or so.

Today I mounted Allenstein. I am complete for Scott major numbers, but I included some varieties when setting up the pages. So I still have some spaces to fill.

Album Easy allows me to place stamps in an order that appeals to me. Next country I'll be working on is Hungary.

Dale

Printed pages for German Democratic Republic back of book including occupation zones. Laying out stamps tonight!

I attended a meeting of Newcastle Philatelic society at which we saw a superb display of GB pre 1840. so We had a whole meeting without a single adhesive stamp being shown. I have never seen so many unique and vary scarce philatelic items. A bishop mark from their first year of use. Bishop marks were the first "rubber" stamps to record the date of receipt at the post office. There were also Dockwra marks which were the first rubber stamp used to indicate pre payment of postage and the hour of posting. unfortunately peter chadwick the owner of the display has Covid so someone brought this award winning collection for us to see but there was no accompanying talk.

First major Stamp Fair in over two years. Combined with a Coin Fair and also a Fair showcasing lifestyle for senior citizens.
I had been looking forward to this for weeks but somehow it was all very low key and I think it fell flat.
As my travel is free, I intended to attend on two of the three days (Friday Saturday Sunday) and was using Friday as a scouting mission,

Why did it fall flat?
Well I think prices have gone up. I think some dealers were playing "catch up". With business adversely affected by restrictions, they were going to make up for lost time.
The cost of a table (as referenced by two dealers) for the three day event was a factor. They were anxious to cover their expenses (plus fuel and accomodation) and on the first day had not yet made enough to cover expenses.
And thirdly a strange apathy. Maybe the two years of pandemic has caused many to re-appraise what is actually important in life.
A lot of discussion with collectors and dealers seemed to be about how we got thru this. Indeed a lot of folks (including me probably) have visibly aged.

I still have about 20 stamps (higher value Irish overprints) on my wants list and each major Fair (two per year) is an opportunity to take two, three or four off the list.
Once I had aspirations of being complete my my 70th birthday (its in the middle of next month) but that deadline is now pushed back five years. And somehow I am not even disappointed.
So I am sitting out Saturday and Sunday.
Actually my biggest expense of the day was a donation to a DEfence Forces Veterans Charity (and some good leads for access to people involved in Military History).

So nothing off my Stamps Wants List.
A couple of Coins off my Coins Wants List.
A couple of Irish First Day Covers
And three Irish postcards from the pre 1922 era (which have postmarks in "English" language and British stamps)

Incidently the cross-over between Postmarks (which I collect) and Postcards (which to me are a means of getting a postmark) is always problematic. People who are actually interested in postcards are interested in the theme (military, humour, topography, publisher etc) means that I can pick up a "golden age" postmark for a €1 if the theme is not collectable but the same postmark would be €20 if applied to a collectable theme or publisher.

I feel many businesses are trying to do this.

I made a few purchases overt the last week.

I cannot speak for countries other than US, but here in the US prices are skyrocketing upwards on everything. In my opinion this is due largely to inflation. Perhaps it is just me, but 45-year high inflation appears to correlate with the 45-year high in the government spending and the 45-year high in the Fed printing money. In my household, 'living above your means' is not a good thing but I guess the Fed sees things differently.

I think that stamp dealers and manufacturers are in-process with revaluing their inventory and catalog publishers will embrace 'new prices' as justification for purchasing next year's catalogs.
Don

To take a few of the above points.
I think what surprised me most is that the three pillars of the hobby...post office, dealers, collectors...need to work together and be respectful to each other...and when that works it is to the good of the hobby.
Occasionally we all "push the envelope" (no pun intended) and on Friday, it seemed the dealers were doing that. I NEVER haggle. But there is always an expectation of a discount ...say purchases cost €11.50, then most dealers will say "oh €10 is fine" and there was a near complete absence of that on Friday. There was just a pervading atmosphere of churlishness.
I am of course left of centre (in terms of Fox News I am very very left of centre) so I can certainly accept printing money to solve problems. Energy costs. Covid and now the Ukraine refugee crisis. Around 25,000 have settled here (as of ten days ago). And it all has to be paid for.

Inflation is somewhat a mixed bag. Accomodation seemsless pricey than it was. My wife and I have trips booked in Wexford (April) and Cork (August) and our third (November) is not yet booked.
Some transport fares have gone down. It does not affect me as a senior citizen, I can travel for free across the island and generally so do...twice a week.
Indeed one of the stalls at the Senior Citizens Exhibition was Expressway, the inter city bus company encouraging the use of free travel cards...it is an aid to well being and of course means that we are economically active...a breakfast in Dublin and a lunch in Cork (or Limerick or Galway)
I have noticed a hike in breakfast prices...seem to have gone from about €8 to €10
And a McDonalds previously about €7.00 is now about €8.50.
All in two years.
There is an upside. Some things...sandwich meat for example is somewhat cheaper in the south and I am under instruction to bring some home to the north, at least once a week.

The south obviously not affected as much by Brexit which has made some items harder to obtain in the north.

My overall feeling was that we are all living in a very different world.
And for years people have been saying our hobby is dying...and we are definitely one step closer to that.