What Did You Do Philatelically: Today Or Recently?

Today I went through an envelope of stamps from my childhood that I had labelled 'unrecognisable'. Well, 45 years later (and with much help from the internet) I'm down to 2 stamps remaining. Most of them were common Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Russian, but glad to have got them sorted.

I would think that a dying hobby would not be seeing more aggressive pricing rather than less given the old supply and demand thing, too many dollars chasing too few goods.

Yesterday, we tried to go to one of the last remaining brick-and-mortar stamp shops around, nearly 150 miles from the house. We got there and it was closed, they'd gone to a stamp show and failed to mention it anywhere. What a complete waste. I guess it's clear why these things are dying. They can't even exercise the most basic customer service.

I spent seven hours yesterday at WESTPEX. I bought a fair number of things that were on my shopping list and several that weren't, though I didn't spend a lot, compared to most of the people who go to these things.

Bought a couple stamps on the weekend.
pretty excited about what I found,
Hopefully it all arrives safely!

I'm not sure the hobby is exactly dying just yet but I don't often see younger adults at club meetings and shows, and no "kids" other than perhaps scouts working on the merit badge. Maybe they, like some of us here, will someday (when they have more time) unpack a childhood collection and delve back in.

I would speculate that the "too many dollars chasing too few goods" are coming from a smallish group of older collectors who have the dollars, rather than from new collector dollars coming into the hobby.

To get back to the topic, yesterday through this morning I won or purchased on ebay 4 lots relating to my topical interests of Franklin Roosevelt, the Red Cross, and bicycles.

Likely because the younger demographic does not generally engage in activities that way. The internet and technology are king. The younger collector is also more likely to be busier in life with more demands on time. I believe that they are there. You just don't see them in the usual places that us old fogies hang out, this forum accepted.

Visited my friends at Emerald Ventures in Richmond today to pick up some auction lots won previously. Had a nice chat, but far too short...would have liked to browse and swap stories all afternoon. Tonight continued logging some Spanish stamps I had recently mounted, and of course, looked through my new acquisitions...some mint latter day Australia with some high denominations, a few Aussie postal stationary items, a small stockbook with some mainly used treasures from GB and elsewhere, and some album page remainders of France, Luxemborg and various M countries. Also some Belgium definitive color and cancellation studies...Enough to keep me occupied for quite some time. I need more hours in a day.

Mounted a bunch of stragglers for Afghanistan, Aitutaki, East Africa & Uganda Protectorate, Epirus, German Democratic Republic (general issues), Ivory Coast, Jordan, and Montserrat. Also finished laying out New Zealand and Panama. I need to finish laying out Portugal, then I still have classic Canal Zone and Newfoundland. The latter two were hiding out in my U.S. and Canada glassine sections.

I went to Staples and bought a Fiskers paper cutter. I got tired of fighting with my pages no longer fitting nicely into the sheet protectors. I only use 1 brand of 65 lb paper and 1 brand of sheet protectors. But the past few packs of 100 sheet protectors seem not quite the correct width. I wound up trimming 1/8 inch off the right side of each page. Fit so much better!

I am now also experimenting with trimming International pages to 8.5 x 11. I have an empty International Part 1 with terribly torn pages and so I might trim all pages (or select countries) then scan them in and copy onto new acid free heavy paper.

Packed up my Russia collection for shipment to auction house next week.

My Great Britain collection is housed in Schaubek albums, on Brilliant pages. Like a lot of other GB collectors I'm calling it quits on new issues. The proliferation of commemoratives, now at least twelve new sets a year, and the multitude of stamps per issue, plus definitives at the new rates, at higher and higher face values means that it now costs well over 100 pounds a year just for the stamps. Add to that the cost of the Schaubek supplements, another 100 euros a year when you factor in the shipping, and it's getting out of hand, so I drew a line under the year 2018, and am now collecting British postal stationery. I want to keep the collection uniform so I acquired a few extra Schaubek binders for the postal stationery part of the collection, and back when I was still buying the annual supplements I ordered some extra blank pages from Schaubek, but those were all used up. Last week I found a dealer on line who had blank pages for sale at a great price. Those came in the mail yesterday in a priority mail box, and almost the entire front of the box was covered in stamps for the postage: an entire sheet, minus the selvage on one side that would have had the plate number(s) of the 1976 13 cent state flag stamps (50 different designs), plus 10 more 13 cent Spirit of '76 commems, plus 12 forever flag stamps plus a couple of 3 cent commems from the 1950's, 74 stamps in all!

Completed a set that not many do. Canada Diamond Jubilee Issue. But, there is always room for improvement. My $1 and $3 are both F/VF Specimens. $4 have mint and used. $2 have two used. $5 have one used that's a little muddy looking. You can still see both faces clearly though. I also have blocks of 4 and strips for a lot of these between 1c and 50c. These will probably be among the last 5% of the stamps that I sell off when I'm 'old'.

Bought a small accumulation of 1800's postal cards with fancy cancels. Waiting to get them to see if there are other interesting attributes too.

Prepared new material and took a stab at organizing for the upcoming RIPEX show on May 21 in Warwick, RI.

Just filled my 51st 1.5 inch binder with world wide on Steiner pages, and I'm a third of the way into number 52, having finally mounted Dominican Republic. There are also six 1 inch binders on top of that. Estimate is about 5400+ pages and 40K stamps in the 1 year and 7 months since I started. All stamps are in clear Scott mounts. All pages are 67 lb cream cover stock. The dates generally range from 1840 to 1940, with British Commonwealth through at least 1952, French colonies into mid 1940s or later, and various other extensions. Not included are United States, China, France, and most of Germany before 1948. I have those in Scott National and specialty albums.