What Did You Do Philatelically: Today Or Recently?

Went to a local stamp show on Saturday and bought a lot of stuff that I didn't need! I will post some pics later, but filled some holes in my Berlin collection before veering totally off track and picked up 2 fancy post cards (WWI Red Cross and Haufbrauhaus), a small French colony collection, and a stockbook filled with classic Swedish and Swiss stamps. So that should keep me busy for a bit...

I am getting to the end of my project of remounting my Great Britain collection. I grew unhappy with the SG Windsor albums I was using and have been downloading pages from a CD I bought many years ago- based on the Concise catalog. With the collection on standard 3-ring pages I will be better able to create my own specialized pages without resorting to having them done at a print shop. I have been very happy so far with the result. The CD pages stop at 2001, I have stamps up to 2009 so will need to create my own pages to fill the gap. Spent a few hours yesterday cutting mounts and transferring stamps. Very enjoyable, especially to see something rather nice taking shape.

I finished some pages for my Mystic album to include minor varieties. A couple of pages from the Prominent Americans group. I have modified the Mystic style by moving the subject to above stamp (in this set, I made it bold as an experiment) and had details below the frame.





For some reason, if I crop the page in Epson's scanning utility, it gets the color wrong. I will study this for later.


Giving booklet singles their rightful spot in an album along with the gum varieties.

Very nice Angore - soon I will show you my AlbumGen pages, bought through EzStamp - Am making a special version for my early Canada Stamps
Rene

I finished inventorying a Singapore lot off ebay. I was please by the purchase since it had minimal duplication and mostly pre-1995 issues. I saw only a few with flaws. I discovered the power of Stampworld's search feature (topic, denomination, year range) in the their online catalogue to find stamps (gets me the issue) so I could locate in Scott's. The Scott values said I really made out (ha).

Yesterday, I attended the Annual meeting of a specialist Society and surprised myself by signing up for membership. I have always been wary of joining clubs, societies etc. For most of my collecting life, I regarded membership as a luxury. Now I am inclined to think that Stamp Collecting is in a state of crisis and it is almost a duty to join forces with other collectors.
Stamp Collecting is not merely about putting stamps in an album. Nor is it about investment.
It is a very practical way of preserving history. Stamp Collectors are an endangered species and we are as much in need of protection as polar bears, the Amazon Rain Forest and Honey Bees.
We are NOT nerds and geeks.
We are action heroes. We are fighting to preserve something.
My new role model is Indiana Jones.

A letter with stamps came in from APS today.

Starting the process of laying out pages for my Tunisia collection. Getting all the catalog number cross-references set up in Stamp Mate (Scott-Michel-Yvert-Maury) then once that done will start page layouts.



Image from Stamp Mate for 1953 issues. Scott, Michel (already put into source database when downloaded, Specialized (for Maury #s) and Catalog (For Yvert #s). Don't have Gibbons for Tunisia/French Colonies so for now that is blank.

What's nice is that with all this data I can go shopping on Delcampe or other non-US sites and search by relative catalog numbers for Michel/Maury/Yvert quickly without hauling out catalogs.

DJ

I can scan Gibbons's Tunisia pages for you, if that would be helpful. Twenty-year old pages, though. Let me know.

Geoff

I picked up this little trophy for best display (on the subject of South West Africa provisional postage due overprints) at one of my local Phiatelic Clubs

Geoff - thanks but I am gonna do that at a later time. Not that Gibbons isn't an important catalog, but for French colonies it's not as common (outside the UK) as a point of reference for me as Scott (since I am in USA) Maury and Yvert (the most commonly used on Delcampe) are.

I like it.

The original format - looking at the stamp - and then down to the description - and then back up at the stamp - gives me cervical carpal tunnel syndrome.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Congrats, Tim.

Yes, well done Tim. I always enjoy when you share your exhibit material on here.

I won two lots at the recent Kelleher auction. I have not bid in a stamp dealer auction ( ebay buyer) for some time. Between the 20% buyers premium and the high postage and handling costs (5x what I normally pay), they must make postage a profit center, I can see why ebay is be popular for buyers.

As a buyer, I have often avoided sellers that have high shipping prices. If the want to make money, raise the price.