What Did You Do Philatelically: Today Or Recently?

I printed out some Steiner pages for Pakistan and mounted stamps. I still need to finish some of the officials. Then I spent time in the garage trying to organize better and did some car clean up.

Been mounting Russia 1941-1955 on Steiner pages. It's going to be a nice binder when I'm done. Already have 55 or so pages done, but I still have 1941-1947 to finish and I'm out of several mount sizes again.

Just a warning: If you like, as I do, to have some margin between the stamps and the frames, beware that you will need to rework some pages. I've had to redo at least a dozen pages (so far) so that they look decent when clear mounts are used. Unfortunately, I had printed all the pages before I truly discovered rework was needed.

While waiting on 39mm mounts so I can finish Russia, I was able to mount almost all of my Poland from 1945 to 1955. Was 43 pages and just a handful remain waiting for the 39mm. I still have another stack of pages. At this point, I can't remember what they are since I prepared them months ago.

I finally finished writing up the B post offices for my book.

I should be finished the whole thing by the end of 2025, all things going well.

My remaining mounts arrived yesterday. I finished Russia and Poland that I had previously started. 129 pages and 1369 stamps between them. I mounted a Steiner set of pages for France regular issues from 1840 to 1940. And then threw in some precancel pages. And last, I mounted some US plate blocks. Need more mounts to finish them.

Finished removing stamps from my 1968 Scott Gold Award. That was the last set of "old" pages outside my Scott National Parts V through VIII that are still mostly in tact. Time to cycle back through everything and see what needs mounting. I decided to up the ante and remount up to a minimum of through 1955 on Steiner

For what it's worth, Staples started carrying a different brand (Hammermill) of the 65 lb cream cover stock. It's almost identical to the original paper I used when I started my 1840-1940 project. Very happy about that.

Apart from adding to my specialised collection of Machins, I have been looking at completing my collection of British 'Traffic-light gutter pairs.'

It is a bit of a folly. The 'Traffic Lights' existed as gutter pairs from 1973 until 1979. There are just 43 issues. They have been re-introduced two decades ago but are nothing like the original ones. The first eleven issues and two further ones have quite high catalogue prices when compared to the ordinary sets.

One or two years ago, lots of these sets were offered on ebay at a big discount to catalogue prices. They are getting more difficult to find and prices asked are crawling towards 50%+ of the catalogue prices.




This is a block of the first 'Traffic Light' and 'ordinary' gutter pairs (atrocious lighting due to a torch: the weather is not so good today.). I suppose it is obvious where the name 'Traffic Light' comes from. Harrison and Sons had printed these colour controls in the sheet margin for years. During the period from 1973 through 1979 stamps printed in double-pane sheets with a central (vertical) gutter margin also had the 'traffic light' printed in the central gutter in row 2.

Above block comes from rows 2 and 3 of the sheet. This first issue only had a traffic light in the gutter of the 3p stamp.

NICHOLAS C --Thanks for the heads up about the new paper at Staples . I will be there today because they have a huge sale on Binders for my Steiner Pages will try to get the new 65lbs paper .

Hey floortrader, hope you found the paper. I also bought more binders due to the back to school sale. I can post the paper package label if you need it.

After putting it off for as long as I could, I got back around to Germany. I have Scott specialty pages for Germany to 1949 and am using those for used stamps. I'll be putting my MNH and MH for that same era on Steiner pages. I'm also weeding out stamps with faults to save room in my stock book, only keeping the faulty ones where I have 3 or less.

I'm continuing my project to place all my loose stamps stored in glassines, stock books and elsewhere, onto Steiner pages. Eight years running now. I'm currently going through duplicate British Commonwealth stamps, determining the Stanley Gibbons catalog number, and mounting them on Steiner-like custom pages following the SG catalog. Last night, I was introduced to "blitz perfs" on wartime New Zealand stamps.

Robert

With Poland about 95% mounted in albums, the remaining 5% ae varieties, I decided to take a break and concentrate on migrating a 1911-1964 MH/MNH Belgium collection which I won on auction about a year ago to my collection on Steiner pages, and filling loads of gaps while replacing the used stamps with MH/MNH.

Pretty much finished what I have for Germany to 1949 as far as used vs. unused. Had to move dozens of used Semi Postal from Steiner into Scott specialty, but then I backfilled with whatever unused I had. I also did the used vs. unused for Federal Republic from 1949 to 1959. Both sets are on Steiner. Looking to do the same for Democratic Republic.

Dove into the soak box. The water was fine! workingstamps.blogspot.com/2023/09/standing-up-my-soak-box.html

Since spring of this year, I have been cataloguing my Hawaii collection via a website so I can view my collection online without having to open binders. Also, some items are "rare" and fragile, so the less handling and exposure to light will hopefully preserve the condition for the next custodian of the collection.