What Did You Do Philatelically: Today Or Recently?

More Vario pages arrived so can do more sorting / organizing. The nice aspect of vario pages you never need to use a pH pen to test acidity unlike any paper products.

Received a large package today with more than 500 modern covers that I purchased some time ago. After having a quick browse through the covers there is going to be excitement about some of them that will have a new home in my collection. Also interesting to see that other people collect the same as I do, even though this time from an estate of a collector that has passed away.

My stamp collecting journey has taken a detour.

My primary worldwide collection is on Steiner pages and covers British Empire and the independence up to around 1980. My habit tends to not like buying large collections to end up with duplicates but I do have a couple of worldwide albums (Scott Modern and Ambassador with countries I did not collect. Rather than hunt/purchase to build my collection, I decided to start removing these countries and put them on Vario pages. My focus now is the "smaller" countries (former colonies, etc). I do not plan to much in the way of organization by catalog. When I get a critical mass for a country, I will put on Steiner. For example, I have a lot of Indonesia to warrant mounting in the pre-1980 period.

For stamps after say 1980 (the beginning of the Disney, Princess Dianna, etc area), I will organize these by topics that interest me.

I have abandoned my Machin chronological based Album Easy page project to just organize by denomination since it gives me much for flexibility on adding varieties. I may just adopt some already made pages for a basic collection using duplicates based upon Concise but add EME and other major varieties.

This will be similar to Adminware pages but try to consolidate more so fewer pages. The Adminware Intermediate set has over 350 pages but will still stop at security issues.

I finished a 16-page letter to Russia. The letter falls in the second weight step. Maybe, one day, the stamps will be part of someone's collection.



If that collector has a uv lamp, he can have some fun with these stamps.

I have a large amount of material that is ready to be placed in albums (probably Vario). Over the past 1-2 years, I have been organizing the material in a way that will make it much easier to put country collections together when I have enough time. This pursuit has turned into 13 red boxes plus 4 larger bins for stamps that arrived in stock cards that wont fit into 102-sized red boxes. Still, I have several large bins of material I have not yet organized, so I chip away at it more or less daily.

Here are some images of items I recently found while seeking to get my Netherlands and Colonies organized. Some of the sets are the various 1920's to 1930's Wilhelmina definitives that were issued with multiple experimental perforations. I have all (affordable) variations complete, with the exception of Scott 174c.

There is also a set of the high values of the 1930's Wilhelmina definitive issued for Netherlands Indies, with watermark, issued in 1938-40. The set was originally issued on unwatermarked paper in 1933-37. The reprinted issue is interesting in that a rather scarce 50c was issued in this design, but not included as part of the complete set. This is one of those cases where Scott seems very inconsistent in rules it applies to what is or isn't listed. The 50c was only available at the philatelic window in one city, Amsterdam, so it was not regularly available for sale to the public. As I understand things, Scott does not normally list stamps that had such limited availability. I've seen MNH copies for sale, but have not decided if it belongs in my collection. Most likely, I will end up sourcing a copy as they can sometimes be found on ebay or Delcampe.

Many more of my Netherlands and Colonies are in the boxes, but at least for today I tracked down some of them.

Broke down a collection of MNH Burma, and while it had some good definitive sets (including 4 complete sets of Scott 139-52), I was disappointed to find that the lot did not contain a set of Scott 102-15 so I added that one to my want list. I guess one of these days I'll have to open a HipStamp selling account, or perhaps try my luck on ebay.

While working through more unsorted lots today I found the set pictured below- a complete MNH Reunion "France Libre" set. I have not collected many of the France Libre sets although I know I have the one from Somali Coast, as I am paranoid about forgeries. Scott does not mention forgeries for these sets, nor does Dallay. I do not have an Yvert catalog to check there, but it's inconceivable to me that all of these sets weren't forged. The difference in catalog values is huge.

Edited to correct a key omission.

I was expecting a load of stamps. I was out in the front yard washing a car yesterday when the mail truck went by. The driver didn't even make an attempt, they just threw one of those "sorry we missed you" notices into the box, since apparently the stamps required a signature. Never came to the door. Never came over to me, since I was standing right there. Just the note.

I already filed an official complaint with USPS, but if these are the kinds of people they're going to hire, no wonder people hate the post office. They're not doing their jobs.

Been a while since I posted last. I finished going back through my binders and mounting stamps that I didn't have the sizes for and merging country pages that were scattered about. There where hundreds of stamps and dozens of pages. And just a couple days ago, I started mounting Romania 1941-1955. I'm about halfway through. It'll take time due to having a significant percentage of all the stamps issued during that time.

Cephus, happens all the time here in Florida too, no door knock/bell ring, just a notice in the kiosks they make us use now.

Ed, will be texting you about your excess Burmas!

To keep in line with the subject post though, finally finished printing Algerian Steiner pages up to 1970. Hopefully will have Saturday free to start sorting/mounting a new country.

Sounds like a plan Andy!

This morning I have been working on Somali Coast, one of my favorites to look at.

The multi-colored engraved stamps from France and its colonies in the 1950s and 1960s (and early 70s) are my wheelhouse.

Something I stumbled upon that may be of use: if you see a posted picture of anything (not just stamps) that has the "Photobucket" logo covering the view, just right click and select "Open Image in New Tab", and you will find the original posting.

hello all. today put a total of 48 mint new york united nations stamps in a schaubek album for the years 1972 to 1975, still a lot of enjoyable time ahead with this album. keep stamping ken.

I ordered a full set of 2020 Argentina stamps. Those arrived today so I got them into my album!

Ah! Romania! 1941-1955 all mounted. 75 pages and 729 stamps. On to the next batch.

Mounted Czechoslovakia 1945-1955 regular issues. That was 40 pages and 451 stamps. So nice that most pages are full. On to Bulgaria 1946 to 1955.

Update: Bulgaria 1946-1955+ mounted. That was 35 pages and 356 stamps. On to Poland or Russia, perhaps.