What Did You Do Philatelically: Today Or Recently?

The really fun stuff lately has been mounting hundreds of stamps over the past week or so, including adding 283 stamps to my People's Republic of China collection on Scott Specialty pages. My Part II coverage went from weak to really good through around 1957. After that, coverage is weak again, but I'm not looking to expand. I also added a bunch to China proper and Republic of China (Taiwan), but I haven't yet done a recount to know how many were added since last time I counted (which is coming up on 2 years).

My Christmas present to myself came a couple of days ago. Finally finished this set with U.S. #191:

I won't let rain on the parade rain on my parade. Today I soaked a year's worth of stamps on paper while watching the Pasadena Rose Parade.

Happy New Year!

Took out my American collection, after it spent the better part of 5 years untouched in the Bookcase. I recently purchased an collection from a friend and to my surprise, I filled many holes. I also made of list of the stamps I still require.
Though many of the earlier ones, I will never be able to acquire I am hoping to fill some holes this weekend when I attend a local stamp show.

Dianne :)

I've been working on a better organizational strategy for my U.S. stamps that I decided were worth keeping in dealer cards versus glassines or stock books. As I was doing this, I came across a few "nicer" items that I didn't realize, or had forgotten, that I had. Here they are in order of value (lower to higher):

First is this off-center MNH Scott #893. I know, not a very high value stamp, but I didn't actually have one in my Scott National. I have a block of 4 and I think a pair somewhere that I didn't want to break up, so now I can put this in its rightful place with the rest of my better MNH singles. Cat $11.


Second is this on-piece used Scott #1901a 1870s Bicycle with Bureau precancel PNC1 with plate #5. This is one of the two more rare numbers. Cat $50.


Last is this Scott #832g top plate block. It's a shame that it is hinged and has creases on the perforations up the top middle. Otherwise it seems a nice example. Going to mount on its own page in my best U.S. album. Cat $400 (never hinged).


I hope everyone comes across these kinds of forgotten items from time to time.

I started working on custom album pages for US Philippines using Album Easy. The current album is an old Minkus.

Finished creating spreadsheets for my world collection in August 2025.

In January 2026, after adding the backlog of stamps for the past 4 months, spreadsheet total came to 188,692 different. My fuzzy cutoff year is 1965.

Well, yesterday I mounted pre-decimal Machins, and today I mounted Decimal regular perf Machins on the Basic Pages from adminware which I modified.

I went to the UT-Dallas Wineburgh philatelic library last week to try to find info on Clear Creek and first Montgomery, in Morgan County, Tennessee. There were a couple of surprises:
I always thought a county seat in TN had to have a post office. Nope. Both Montgomerys were county seats, and it was nearly 50 years before a county seat there had a post office.
There doesn't seem to be any postmarked material from the Clear Creek, Morgan County post office, which was open from 1840-1846.
The family connection: my family donated land for the first Montgomery's courthouse and jail, and my ancestor was the postmaster of Clear Creek.
Found a lot of other interesting stuff about Tennessee postal history, and the librarian was very helpful. Will definitely be back!

Still sorting a lot of 3k Machins off paper.

I NEED to sit and sift through various small groups of purchases from past shows. Things got away from me after my mother passed away, and now the clutter is an issue!!

I picked up boxes of Ultra-Pro sleeves for covers and ephemera, so there's NO EXCUSE... well, there IS, but not a GOOD one!

;-)

Thinkstamp... Congrats on reaching 188K! You are probably 95% complete though the 60s... Do you have any tips for us who are counters? ;)

landoquakes

My best suggestion is if you have a computer and can work with spreadsheets, make a spreadsheet for each country.

I always wanted to know what I have.
I tried manual counting but that was too much like work. And even though I tried keeping up with the count, over time, I was never quite sure if I added in all new items all the time or not. So, in 1990 I quit counting. In 2016 I saw the several benefits of having spreadsheets. I decided I would work on making an editable listing.

It took a lot longer than I thought but I was not in a rush. I worked on listing as stamps were added for a country. When I got to less than 50 countries, I pushed a little more to finish.

To correct a possible misunderstanding, I am not 95% complete.

Some countries go beyond 1965.

I do keep noticeable shades and varieties, both Scott listed and not listed.

If a stamp has a beautiful or SON cancel, I keep it.

In US and possessions, I collected postal stationery as well as pre 1940 covers. But no 1st days.

I find maintaining an inventory a must since I will end up buying what I already have.

I just found this interesting thread, and decided to post! I spent the majority of this morning looking over Hip Stamp, finding and "want-listing" future topical stamp purchases. Also, I worked on my inventory documents, and posted on these boards a couple of times. Finally, did some note taking on the web, looking up various details.

I am a beginner, for the most part. Finding new topical material is very fun, and exciting! I'm up to close to 900 sets, and ready to start a fourth 64 page stockbook.

Thanks for reading my post! With the upcoming blizzard hitting multiple states (myself included) please stay safe!

I have acquired a box of glassines with stamps from all over the world. They are common but have been able to get some better copies of what I already had in addition to a few I did not had.

Since I use mounts, it is a breeze to upgrade,

My first "Mesopotamia". Scott lists the "occupation" stamps separately from Iraq in Vol 4 even though Iraq even appears on the overprint. They must have been listed somewhere else given all the numbers have a N prefix. Gibbons lists under Iraq.