What Did You Do Philatelically: Today Or Recently?

I have spent the last 2 and 1/2 weeks sorting and hinging stamps from France. This time I actually took the time to catalogue my spares as I went along. This will make it much easier for trading. As soon as I get my scanner operational I will post some pages.

Dianne

A couple of weeks ago I was in Portland, OR for work and had time to visit the Uptown Stamp Show shop. I've not had opportunity to visit a brick and mortar store in years so I don't know what is a usual format. Uptown has an inventory organized by country and Scott # that I am familiar with from the annual local stamp show, but of 10 or so stamps on my want list I only found one in their inventory (I was looking for more modern foreign stamps of topical interest). However ...

When they buy a collection they go through it to glean items for the card and vault inventory, then the albums go on a shelf (there must have been 100 or so). One can sit down and go through the books, paying $0.10 for each stamp they want. They've placed a white label on each album's spine or cover so one can initial which albums they've already been through. They also had a bunch of "bankers boxes" where they put albums rotating off the "pick shelf" for more space, loose leaf sheets, perhaps some glassiness, covers, and other stuff (I didn't have time to check any out). One can go through a box of course, but they are priced to sell as a unit, most or all were $100 - $150.

I'm definitely going to find an excuse to visit Portland again soon (Uptown Stamp Show is 140 miles from where I live). The staff was very accommodating to the "dime collectors" and were happy to answer the many questions I had.

Spent the day translating German to English from the Zeppelin Post Katalog.

Me and my 7 yr old daughter attended our first stamp show over the weekend - the plymouth show in michigan. They had a youth seminar and gave her lot of disney stamps.She also wanted some fish topicals from ATA booth.So now we are going to start a book of topicals for her.Originally she has been doing worldwide beginners collection book and she got started with at least 100 countries so far. I hope she stays on it.

'
https://rmspecialstamps.com/collect...de-theatres/

I sent a MNHOG set of five stamps showing Renaissance-era theaters to a young girl with an interest in live theater.

If she nibbles at the bait, I've got FDCs and minisheets at-the-ready.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey (who was very pleased with the selection & terms & service at the APS Stamp Store)

Last Saturday I had a day trip to Portland, OR for work, 238 miles west of where I live in eastern WA.

After the work assignment I visited the Uptown Stamp Show shop which I wrote about before, as far as I can tell this is one of the very few brick & mortar philatelic shops in the northwest. After they purchase a collection and go through it for their inventory they put the albums on a shelf and customers can pick out stamps @ 10 cents each. After a while picked over albums and sheets go into a banker's box which are priced around $150.

One thing I've been looking for is a used album as I've decided to move my, modest as it is but growing, non U.S. collection out of Vario pages and glassine envelopes in 3 ring binders and into an album. There was a sign that one could ask for a purchase price for the U-Pick albums. There was a set of 4 Harris Citation's (all one collection) I was looking through and I asked for a price on the one I found most interesting … the shop owner explained that it had only been on the shelf since April 11 and had barely been gone through, probable had a couple of thousand stamps, and would be $40.00. I bought. It contained countries A – I and when I got home I went through it more thoroughly: 4,857 stamps, not a lot of BOB, probable only about 200 duplicates (the previous album owner tucked duplicates under the hinge mounted stamp), and mostly new material for my collection. The Harris Statesman album was $10.00 with 1,014 stamps, not that good of a buy in retrospect but worth it to me for the binder.

I've been watching the Citation and Statesman albums on ebay and compared to prices there I'm pretty happy with my purchase, and no shipping cost.

I have been cataloging and re-organizing my collection. I decided to display my world wide collection in a geographic manner, rather than alphabetically.

@ Scribe3



This is what I"m doing and it makes so much sense. I am in the process of finally moving my non U.S. collection from Vario pages and glassines into a Harris Citation album I recently bought used. It was part of a multi-volume collection so it doesn't have the full compliment of A-Z pages anyways, I'll largely mount on blank sheets.

I'm still deciding on a final system but the current categories are: North America (i.e. Canada, U.S. is in separate albums), Central America, South America, Caribbean, Great Britain (including the Chanel Islands), Scandinavia, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Oceania (South Pacific, Australia, and New Zealand). I'll need to put the two Antarctica stamps I have someplace but since it is a continent maybe it gets to be its own category.

I finished up going back through all my Machins to check SG number, bought the adminware's Machin pages PDF, and ordered an 11W UV light recommended by Mark.

Simple answer: Organized my "new" Tazawa collection.

Came cross SCF about two months ago in my quest to obtain info re Japan's Tazawa series beyond that included in Scott. My first encounter was a posting by "floortrader" from December 2012. However, it was the varieties matrix posted by "Unechan" (October 2017) that was the "spring board".

So last weekend I removed all the Tazawa series stamps from my album. Soaked off the hinges. Checked each stamp for watermark, perforations, and print type (rotary vs flat plate). And in the process discovered a entire new (beyond Scott) aspect to my growing Japan collection.

Am now working through various paper types. And printing new Steiner pages to house the growing collection.

Thank you to all who contribute to the SCF on a regular basis. Despite collecting for more than 50 years have learned much in the last two months. (Including diplomatic ways to respond to the question, "Don't you already have one of those?")

Jim in So Cal

Yesterday I ordered a Linn's Stamp Identifier and a Stanley Gibbons Great Britain Concise catalog.

Still working on the musty stamps I posted about earlier. Having great success so far.

I spent seven hours and a bit of money at WESTPEX today. My haul:

One postage due for my MNH U.S. collection
Three 19th-century mint postal cards for my "One from Everywhere" collection
Two cinderellas for my Esperanto/IAL topical collection
Nine more stamps and a 10-stamp pane of topical interest
Two more cinderellas of topical interest
Nine unused picture postcards
One used picture postcard
One cover (an interesting piece of mail art)
Five packs of Vario pages

I had an amazing conversation with the Chief Marketing and Consumer Officer of the USPS.
It was a chance meeting on an airplane recently with Jakki and we discussed stamp collecting, this very forum, the UPU and Informed Delivery. She was fascinated with philately and was very welcoming to any and all feedback. She even sent me a hand written note a few days later (on USPS stationary of course).
I was very impressed with her and how she represented the USPS.