What Did You Do Philatelically: Today Or Recently?

....thought I would share some images of my progress with France. Lots of work - and I have only arrived at the 1870 Bordeaux issue so far! But it is pure joy to make my new set-up according to Maury on Vario pages, like this:



...and because I also like the more traditional look of a more simplified collecting-style on 'proper' album pages, I also create digital/virtual pages like this:



So, the 3 series contained on this single simplified page is in reality arranged more specialised with shades and varieties etc, requiring 4 large Grande Vario pages with 8 lines each. I like the opportunity to collect more specialised and still be able to present a 'simplified' version - or summary if you will - of that same collection.
Anybody else making both a simplified and advanced version of the same collection?

Thanks for looking

Some beautiful France there Blaamand!

I am taking a break from French Colonies and working on getting my Australia pages laid out. Working on the database for it now, gonna take some time to get all the catalog correlations done (Scott, Gibbons, Michel, and Brusden White for pre-decimal and Seven Seas for decimal era).

Thanks Gene.
I'm looking forward to have a look at your Australia pages when completed, good luck with the database!

Blaamand

How do you do the white letter with black background. The text looks too gray to just be reverse printed.

Have managed to rein in my stamp buying in recent months, but picked up a range of French Colonies on old stock-book pages at auction. A mixed bag thus far - I seem to have a complete run of uncatalogued Chad from 1972 - but some interesting material too, some of which I'll post for expert advice.

angore - it is simply reverse printing on white paper. I guess the seemingly grey is due to the poor scanner available to me while I am offshore, the scanner seems to distort everything in the image into a blur.

GeoffHa
Am doing inventory of French Colonies at this time since France is complicated and am waiting for Winter to spend many hours on them, using Maury - Scott - and the color charts from Brinette, already mentioned.
My last run was Belgium Congo (not a Fr Colony !) but it is "French" all over and found some early interesting stamps.

Blaamand, keep on practicing on France Stamps and after we will have the benefits of your experience Practice makes perfect....

In general, French Colonies are pretty simple, especially when compared with the British Empire. No watermarks to not see, few perfs to count. Some of the same drawbacks, in terms of omnibus sets. And the stamps look good, especially post-WWII.

Agreed, particularly if using Scott. It gets a bit more complicated if using the specialized catalogs that are listing all those long fr.col series of 1910-40's with different printings, paper types etc.

I guess we can say the same about mainland France as well, basically pretty simple No perforation varieties or wmk's (almost non-existing) - what a delight Seems to me many have a struggle to differentiate the early General Colonies issues with those almost similar of mainland France. I see these mixed up in a lot of France or colonies collections for sale, even in high-end/expensive collections.

French colonies are simple...til you get to the Maury catalogs and then you discover a whole world of varieties not listed in Scott, Gibbons or Michel.

Just have to winnow out the French Colonies counterfeits

I purchased for 3 hole punched protective sleeves. This type is smaller than the standard sleeve you see sold everywhere.

I was looking for a way to mix pages in sleeves and pages not in sleeves without the sleeves being so intrusive to the appearance. Since all my pages are 3 hole punched this looked like a good option. This would also just hold sheets that are a tad too big on a page.

The downside is you have to remove the sheet from the binder before removing the sheet from the sleeve.

I purchased the Office Depot brand.

Just about finished the catalog correlation between Scott, Gibbons, Michel and Brusden-White for the Australian Federation Postage Dues. All totaled including for shades listed In B-W and not in the others, this makes for about 300 different stamps in total. (NB this does not include the hundreds of plate varieties listed in B-W which I have chosen not to include, that is too specialized for my interests at least for now)

Now to start correlations for the Roos.

Angore I use those to hold my page layouts I make in Excel and insert between my Vario pages. Check on Amazon you can often find them in bulk at a much cheaper price per sleeve.

I put the 5000th stamp into my WW collection. A small milestone (or maybe more of meter-rock or inch-pebble, perhaps).