What Did You Do Philatelically: Today Or Recently?

Been pouring a lot of time (120 hours and counting and about 75% done) into a new database for Stamp Smarter. Hopefully folks will find it useful.
Don

51- are you adding new countries/listings, or...?

I am a classic example of a collector who is good at finding and sourcing materials I want, but terrible at actually moving them from stock cards/glassines into my Vario albums. So I have boxes upon boxes of stamps that have not been "curated." For some areas of interest, e.g. French Colonies definitives, complete sets are extremely hard to find for items issued before the 1940's so I buy lots that have various singles for the sets I am building. Many of you I am sure collect in an identical manner.

During the past 2 weekends I invested a lot of time consolidating the single stamps together that belong to individual territories/issues. I am nowhere close to the endpoint, but have made a ton of progress. Discovered some complete sets in the process as well as nearly-completed sets for which I am creating entries in my wants list. Also unfortunately found a number of clunkers that will have to be "upgraded." Especially disappointing was a group of key values from the 1917 French Morocco definitives that were purchased as MNH. I noticed yesterday that only one of the values is MNH- the others are VVLH but I didn't catch it when I received the stamps in April. And of course the one MNH stamp was of relatively low value, not the 2Fr!

Shame on me- I know better. The best way to detecting very light hinging is to hold a stamp to tangential daylight yet many times I look at stamps in the evening when I open the mail. Bad practice. Still, I'm energized by making a lot of progress and plan to do a lot more this coming weekend.

I've been sleuthing the backstory to this cover:


Details in the U.S. Covers forum here:

https://goscf.com/t/55091

I'm currently working on some stamps from Czechoslovakia. Quite enjoyable and relaxing filling in the spaces in my Czechoslovakian collection.

Yesterday...a new Irish issue so a trip to the Philatelic Bureau in Dublin.
The Womens Rugby World Cup was not on the 2017 programme published in January and collectors first became aware that a single stamp would be issued as the competition is being held in Ireland.
So some mint stamps and FDC picked up yesterday and the "used" stamps will be delivered on Monday or Tuesday.

This week I helped spread the fun a little further. I helped my son broker a deal for two binders with KP pages and about 2K bureau precancels. So that's two of our kids that I've introduced stamp collecting to. Still working on the others... My oldest daughter has been collecting German and Irish stamps for about 8 years now. My youngest son now has a good start on and interest in US stamps.

Jeff

My primary activity over the past siz months has been creating mostly replacement pages (over 130 so far) to add minor varieties or mount setenants that Mystic splits. I am mostly done up through 2006 except Liberties and Great Americans.

This week I have:
1. Written emails to 2 dealers looking for opportunities to provide pro bono service.

2. Read and posted on Stamp Community Forum and The Stamp Forum

3. Bookmarked the past 3 or 4 Richard Lehmann articles in Forbes magazine about philately

4. Bid on some stamps at StampoRama

5. Attended my first meeting of the Milwaukee Philatelic Society and won 93 Hungarian stamps at their auction. Also got to meet some really nice people who love stamp collecting as much as I do. It felt like coming home!

6. I received 3 packets of stamps in the mail today - won at the HipStamp or StampoRama sites. I will be placing them into the Vario pages in my stockbooks for topicals and Worldwide.

I will be doing a presentation on my blog, Revolving Door Philately, and have secured permission to use the laptop projector from the I.T. guy where I work. Really looking forward to this.

I went to the local monthly show and picked up a Scott's International Part 1 with about 1,500-2,000 stamps, with the intent of using it as a feeder album for my WW collection and getting another serviceable binder as a bonus. Or maybe I should look at it as buying a binder and getting some useful stamps as a bonus.

Added two binders to my WW collection. Finished cataloging a batch of pre-1940 Germany stamps Soaked and pressed Japan kiloware.

I plated a couple of Three Cent stamps.
First is 97L4. This stamp is a perfect example of an adjacent stamp making plating easy. I circled an engravers slip that's noted by Dr. Chase with plate position 96L4.

The other stamp is 27L2L. This shows a scratch that runs across the lower left part of the white oval. I know this position because I already have one that was plated by ClassicCoins when he identified that stamps color for me.

Great to see what all of you are up to these days.

I have done nothing at all past 2 weeks, so it's starting to itch very badly.

Just read through some old SCF posts and rod222 suggested that owning the CD-ROM of the 2009 Scott Catalog would make life easier, so I bit the bullet and found one for $10 on ebay! Also, booked an appointment with a gentleman in my town who has a U.S. stamp collection for sale. Looking forward to this very much. Put binder labels on my Lighthouse Vario binders. Finally, did a bunch of cleaning up in my study, filing envelopes with interesting cancellations and stamps from U.S. and Canada and sorted out the remaining Hungarian stamps I won at auction last week.

Entered 10 stamps from my collection into my new database program, StampMate; it took about a 1/2 hour as I was learning the program's ins and outs. Also, joined Chapter 5 of the American Topical Association and purchased James Barron's "The One-Cent Magenta".

Been working on about 110 or so 24c 1861 covers... Finally scanned the last group and uploaded them into Frajola's census now I have to get sailings on them and a bit more info and then the next step is to show them by date to show shade progression.