What Did You Do Philatelically: Today Or Recently?

Got voted into the Texas Stamp Dealers Association!

Went to the Ann Arbor Stamp show this past weekend. Bought some great items from a dealer all the way from New Mexico.

Started making my Album pages with AlbumEasy have been working on designing them for a while now, just printed and mounted my first few pages. For my Southern Africa firsts Collection, Doing South Africa first (Part 2) then will start on the Rhodesias (Part 1)

I made up stamp information pages and Im going to put those'on the facing page behind the album page, they on normal copy paper will change that to Ivor 120gsm paper.
My album pages are 160gsm Card. Please any constructive comment are welcome.


Stamp Info example Facing Page

Album Pages

Congrats txphl.

Thanks @Perfin_RK - I've been an IT guy for almost 30 years but had wanted to be a stamp dealer for a long, long time. And one more thing I learned today - AlbumEasy. I really like the idea of the info page on the back - and great layout!

There's no wrong way to collect: I've bought collections in glassines, stock cards, manila pages and the always popular loose stamps on cigar boxes (Romeo y Julieta, Montecristo, Nub...) I acquired a collection where the hingeless Lindner pages and binders for Hungary were worth MORE than the actual stamps they housed - but an impressive collection nonetheless.

Last month, I renewed the work (started a year ago) on creating a catalog for the Belgian Postal Cards known as Publibels.

Thank you txphl, there are a couple of AlbumEasy threads here just do a search and you can get some more info.

I did the Info page in MS word. I did the graphics in grey scale so as not to distract from the actual stamp page, which I think makes the stamps stand out more.


Ray

Not much stamping done recently except browsing through interesting posts here

I have to modify my bookcase for my albums to accept wider spacing of shelves. It just involved drilling some additional holes but one shelf had to get smaller. Now with 3 nice shelves, I added more albums and moved pages around to balance out pages per album.

When you have a pause period, I always try to organize something.

To my surprise at a recent family gathering one of my many nieces mentioned to me on her own volition that she thought stamp collecting is cool. I asked her if she collected and she replied that she does but does not have many stamps, and no supplies. I recently gifted this enthusiastic young collector with about 1,000 world wide turn of the 20th century up to the WWII era stamps, an ancient Scott's world wide stamp catalogue, one Lighthouse binder and 25 Lighthouse 8s pages, as well as a perforation gauge and stamp tongs. There is no doubt in my mind that she will one day be a fine philatelist which makes me quite happy.

If you care to send me your address, I'd like to send a packet of stamps from Australia, via your vetting. Its a joy to see the young ones getting into it.

Rod, Thank you so very much. Email sent.

I finally finished sorting out a recent purchase of a large number of 6d stamps from 1st South African Republic (ZAR). These are listed as Transvaal in the catalogues. This in turn has led me to do a major sort out of all my ZAR 1st Republic and 1st British Occupation stamps, which has taken up the last 5 days almost solid.

There are 5 different printers, who between them used at least 15 different papers, each representing a different printing. The papers range from very thin, little better than cigarette paper, to stout almost like thin card, and the quality of printing is very mixed as well. I think I've got better than 80% accuracy on the paper ID, and the next step is to get a decent digital micrometer (repeatable accuracy to 0.005 mm) and check the paper thicknesses to really get a handle on it. The final job will be to get plate positions for them. That should keep me occupied until the New Year!

Attended a small, local, monthly stamp show & only spent $20. I purchased 14 FDCs, 1-FF, an 1851 cover SC#25 or SC#26, (need to put under the 20x) 1-FDC Ceremony Program, 1-letter envelope (M,1983) and $1.50 in loose postage, including PB of 4 official stamps. Catalog value of the items $45+/-. (Then I went to a local Poker room & came back with more stamp $$$.00)

My U.S. collection is spread over several different albums. I was going through my U.S. definitives this week and recording the album location of each series. I noticed this stamp tucked into a stock page.

It's Scott 3770 with plate no. V13222. It must been rather scarce as the Scott catalog value is $200. I believe it was from 5-pound accumulation of U.S. definitives I purchased 10 or so years ago. Sadly, my example has some minor damage to the edges.

Robert