What Did You Do Philatelically: Today Or Recently?

According to my spreadsheet, I have over 4200 scanned pages in my worldwide collection. I started scanning early in the collection so not a huge burden. I scan at 300 dpi as best balance (time, size). The goal would be to do some every day rather than long scanning sessions.

I also use Stamp Manage to maintain my inventory so that reduced the time to create inventory lists.

@NicholasC, Search Google for the LIMAYE INVENTORY SPREADSHEET, it is already built up for Scott International contents.

@Tiger Dude, I had found that before, but the links don't do anything for me. I figure they have been pulled. I can get the PDF for the Big Blue inventory based on 1969 album, but it's not trivial to get that data into spreadsheet form. It also has minor errors (at least two in the As), so I'm guessing more if I crawled through it all.

@NikolasC, I see that the a-z doens't download, might be worth asking about, tho I hae a version mostly fixed for the 1940s version. Many countries have series separated by releas dat in the old version and re-worked in later versions to be by Scott #/denomonation. I cut and pasted these into the right order, but maybe not everywhere yet because there are still some countries I haven't put enough stamps into yet to find all these places.

I'm shooting you a PM to see if you're interested.

@Tiger Dude, thanks for checking. I am definitely looking for the 1947 sequences. That said, I have two copies of the 1947 album and they actually differ slightly (I'll see if I can find that first example). Perhaps an early version and a late version were published. The one I plan to use was given to me by my Aunt back in the 1980s. I had mounted some stamps there, but when I went full bore into the world, I went with Steiner based pages for remounting. The only purpose for me with the 1947 album is to see how complete I am.

Update: For those interested, one of the 1947 versions of the International Part I that I have is missing the 2 highest values of the 1940 Albania Italian Occupation Air Post stamps and the 4 highest values of the 1919 set from Azerbaijan on the same page. The one with the missing values is not the one from my Aunt. Seems perhaps higher catalog value stamps were omitted, not sure if that would be a later version? Anyway, I'm sure there would be more differences if I cared to compare all the pages, but I have no plans on doing so.

For the last month or so I have been going through a couple of accumulations of stamps from Switzerland, mainly from the postwar period to the present. So no stamps of any real value are there, just lots and lots of definitives and common commemoratives. But as I have been amalgamating these and the stamps I already have I have been pulling out the many clear postmarks. It has been really fascinating to separate out a significant number of very clear cancellations. I am particularly interested in railway related cancellations, and have gathered quite a few of these too

I've spent a couple days cataloging and arraning my newest collection; The Philippines.
Starting from Alfonso XII.
No single digit Scott numbers yet, but plenty of double digit.
The baby stamps are just beautiful..... he..hem
I sure hope a baby did't look like that. No disrespect intended. I'm sure I wasn't photo material either. Just sayin'!

The baby issues seem plentiful and an inexpensive.

I got my wonderbox from Nordfrim today. I sorted through the stamps and put them in fresh dealer cards or glassine envelopes. I also perused through the stock books that were sent. Lots of Poland, Canada, CCCP, Denmark, Greenland issues. So it took me about 5 hours to go through the box they sent me, needless to say I had a very enjoyable afternon. For those interested it cost me $240 to buy and ship the box. I normally get kind of skeptic about what I get but for this box I am very happy with the purchase.

I am through the F countries relative to scanning in my 1947 International Part I at 300 dpi. I have a copy of the Limaye spreadsheet and I have started reworking it to follow the 1947 edition using the 2019 Classic Catalogue numbers. It's been quite challenging because of all the changes made to the 1969 edition of the album (spreadsheet originally based on that edition). Because I am a purist, I am sequencing the spreadsheet to match the order of the stamps on the pages for each country and keeping with the country / entity names as found in the album. Just with what I have done already, I have a new appreciation for how difficult it would be to collect the album. I wouldn't be surprised if I only had about 50 percent. I did a rough pass at the U countries and see that I'm near 70%, but that isn't likely to last.

Is there a reason you want to go to the added problem of having the spreadsheet order match the pages?

I would keep the stamps in catalog order and then have a column for stamp location.

For example for my Machins, if you look at column called "Al" you will see a number like 32.32. This means stamp is on page 32 row 3 position in row 2. Of course, you have to number pages.

I can sort by album order or by catalog order using the spreadsheet sort function.

I use Stamp Manage to catalogue what I have in my major collection.
I only use spreadsheets for quick lists.
Got all my Philippines sorted and the better ones in the stock book, and the extras in the manilla stock pages
Using Scott numbers. The ones without were just put in.

Hi @angore. To verify that the spreadsheet is accurate, it is easier (for me) to go in order of the stamps on the pages. I am identifying each new page boundary so I know what's what at least to the page number. I can always add page numbers later and then choose to sort the country section by catalog number (which makes it easier to fill out what I have since my Steiner pages are more or less in catalog order). The problem with sorting by catalog number is that the stamps with an alpha in the number don't sort correctly unless I change everything to text, which is not initially how the spreadsheet was designed. As an experiment I also added the absolute sequence number for the country. This can let me sort the entries back again to the original. All of this is specific to my edition of the 1947 album. If it wasn't clear before, I'll say again that I don't actually mount stamps in the International Part I. This project is all about knowing my coverage of that specific album. The one set of pages I don't have in the album that my Aunt gave me are the U.S. pages. I had previously scanned in the ones from the other version of the album that I have and that is what I used when working to complete the U.S. section (I created a topic about that a while back). I believe I have all U.S. stamps except for a small handful of postage due stamps, but I don't yet have a section for the U.S. in this spreadsheet. I'll do that eventually, probably after I finish the rest of A-B and C-F countries. This project will likely take me a year to complete since it is excruciating to deal not only with the original sequencing, but also the incorrect years for groups of stamps.

Count Update: I did a quick catalog of the F stamps. I am at about 78% complete. That's reasonable considering I have really good coverage of France (which includes French Morocco in this edition of the album) and that is about half of the stamps in the F section.

@NicholasC I cheat on sorting catalog numbers by having a separate column for numbering rows that bypasses issues with Scott numbers.

If I have a catalog number, I split it in 3 columns: prefix, number, suffix and then have a column where these are joined with a formula.

Hi @angore, interesting idea. However, for the 1947 album coverage checklist, there are many hundreds of spaces that call for one of two or more possible stamps. An example, "59 or 70" might be in the cell, or "41 or 41a" because of a color difference. I'll experiment a bit and see if I can get something workable.