What Did You Do Philatelically: Today Or Recently?

I worked on my Pierre Gandon collection today and discovered that this recently acquired cover (postmarked 12/22/1958 and featuring the Roseate Tern stamp of his 1955/1957 airmail/bird series) is actually the less common perf 13 variety, Scott #C41a, which was a happy discovery! Too bad the stamp is such a mess (yes, the upper left portion was torn off when the envelope was opened... oh well).

(I'm still trying to decipher exactly who designed and engraved this particular stamp... I've found proofs signed by no less than three different artists, including Gandon! The stamp itself is unsigned, and the Maury catalog just leaves the names of the designer/engraver blank).

For some strange reason, I decided to print out Steiner pages for Argentina. Previously, as part of an experiment I did with the major countries in South America, I created pages to follow the circa 1947 Scott International Part I. But, I have so many other stamps in the classic era and I need a place to mount them. While Steiner pages are great, there are some inconsistencies between the classic set of pages and the worldwide pages. I wanted to follow more closely with my 2019 Scott Classic Specialized Catalog, so this meant going with the pages in the worldwide section as it had more of the perforation varieties that are now major numbers. The pages were a fairly good match match, but I still had to modify most of them to get what I wanted. So far, I have printed pages to cover Scott #1 through Scott #275. Argentina is a difficult country to collect, at least for me, with all the perforation and watermark varieties on some of the classic stamps.

Tell me about it. I further torture myself by collecting watermark orientations too.

Robert

Lately I have been I have been working on my US back of the book material in particular revenue stamps both federal and state. I have also been adding to my reference library enough so to justify building another book case.

Jeremy

Rather eclectic itmes been working on - mainly acquisitions.

A) My philatelic interests are moving more and mroe to postal covers/fdcs/postal stationery. Acquiring a few first flight fdcs and postal covers from the Levant from the period of 1920's through 1980's with some focus on Palestine. I find it very satisfying the story a postmarrk, stamps, and handwriting tell on a cover. And who knows, you might end up with a scarce or rare stamp on it.

B) Continue to get some recent US issues, getting the Eli Seigal 2 ounce stamp pane, some flag coils, World Stamp Show postcards the USPS sells + what I can get form Oneco PO.

C) Rattlesnake Island Post has released it stamps for 2025 and new catalog. Going to get those plus from the postmaster one or two postal covers from 2005- 2009.

I would (very happily) like to report that I now have an empty bag that once held 1000 hinges. Yes! 1000 stamps identified, inventoried, hinged, and safely stored. May not seem like much, but it's the first real sign I've had that my huge hoard is finally being whipped into an actual collection!

I have been going through my dad's collections and there is just too much stuff - postal cards, common postal history, postal stationery, etc. He seemed to bid minimums on auction lots and often won.

I collect worldwide but will avoid countries (one in Latin America) where are too many watermarks, It just takes too much time especially when one is not familiar enough to spot on cancelled stamps.

Spent a few minutes last night going through my list of non-US sellers that won't ship here for the foreseeable future.

For the past month I have been slowly re-working my Great Britain collection. I had originally mounted up one stamp of each basic type with the intention of one day going back thru my duplicates for further specialization. That one day has come and I've expanded 2 pages of definitives thru KGVI to 10 pages, following the SG concise catalogue. Separating and matching up stamps by color has been the most challenging aspect, I've spent more than a couple of hours agonizing over various shades of red or green. I am now up to the Wildings and have sorted up to 2d so far. Not having that hard a time with the watermarks as some have made it out to be. I'd say I can id about 50-70% by eye, the rest with a little fluid. Yes, there is about 5% where I can't id the watermark successfully. I have noticed with the 2d my success rate of finding inverted or sideways watermarks has fallen, with only 2 inverted Edwards crown and 2 sideways crowns - out of 300 stamps. So far I've soaked about 400 stamps looking for additional graphite line examples and found none. I'm still debating whether I have the ability to identify the phosphor set. It might save time and headache to just go out and purchase it!! I am not taking paper types into account as the concise doesn't cover that apsect. I'll be working on the wildings for the next week or so, then I'll take a break before heading into the Machins for a winter project. I have 3lbs of mixed Machins on and off paper to start looking for additional varities.

I'm busy rearranging my WW collection from one big A-to-Z arrangement housed in huge 3-inch binders into 16 1-inch binders housing regional and single-country collections: Africa, Asia/East Indies, The Balkans, British Isles, Canada, France, and so on.

Not only are the smaller binders much easier to manage, I'm enjoying viewing my stamps a lot more when arranged in this way. Why didn't I do this years ago?

I converted some collections in binders to 3 ring binders and cut pages a little to fit. They are much more useful.

I've been soaking a large gallon bag of Great Britain mix to separate the wheat from the chaff. Finding some very common stamps I've discovered are not in my albums; that is about to be remedied. The massive amount of dupes will be sent to my niece's home-based school for collecting, counting, history, art and number education projects; I'm confident those kids will love these. While soaking, have been going through a large sorted accumulation of Germany that I bought at NAPEX this year (with another Netherlands collection to follow). Many of these dupes will be traded for needs in my ISWSC exchange circuit, which generally arrives more frequently than I expect.

Gibby01 - The Machins are a project for a lifetime, not a winter. :)

classic_paper - smart move.

vagonbrei33 - I too celebrate getting to the bottom of a thousand hinge pack. Congratulations!

Transferred my entire collection of unmounted Machins onto stock sheets for further study early this morning.

Then, transferring my WW collection to Steiner pages resumed later today after about a four-year hiatus, but got off to a ragged start. First, the Steiner .pdfs on my hobby room computer were corrupted. It took about 15 minutes to find the Steiner CD and another five to copy them back onto the computer. Then, my laser printer ran out of toner, and another ten minutes were wasted fumbling around with that.

Finally, I printed up the pages for my small Indochina collection and mounted all but one. That last stamp was a bit wrinkled; it got a soak and is now in my Thor press for correction. Tomorrow it'll be in the album.

Added 25 stamps to my Bahamas thru 1959 collection. Also upgraded a large handful of others going from MH to MNH or used to MH. Some of the used catalog higher, so I'll do parallel pages at some point.

On Sunday I went to the Ft. Orange stamp show in Albany, NY. This show is a bit out of my area (1.5 hour drive + tolls) but combined the trip with a visit and dinner with my son who is in college a few miles east in Troy. This was my first time attending this show and I was surprised to see 18 vendors. I spent the majority of my time at two tables. One dealer had mostly worldwide material, 102 cards and by the page at $1,2,3+. I picked up some Germany and Italy material on 102 cards and some pages of Danzig, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and GB. Of his US material I grabbed a half full page of W/F flat plate perf 10 1916-17 for $1 because it had a 12 and 20c I needed. Got home and found all the stamps were perf 11. Learned my lesson, I had a perf gauge with me but failed to double check before I purchased, but only lost a buck. The other dealer had an 8 foot table full of binders at 10c a stamp. I pulled over 200 stamps there, mostly Canada, Italy, Newfoundland, Mexico, and Space. Was some good material as long as you were willing to put the time in to dig for it. I also purchased 7 covers out of a dealers $1 boxes. Overall spent about 4 hours at the show, everyone was pleasant, it was worth the trip.