What Did You Do Philatelically: Today Or Recently?

Reports of the death of ikeyPikey's hobby have been much exaggerated.

My initial reaction was that APS's biggest challenge has been the loss of membership through death so if members stop dying all would be better but wanted to be sure.

'
The APS membership retention rate is almost exactly the same as Costco's well-celebrated membership retention rate (despite several price increases), which bodes well for both of them.

If I had to chose between them, my money is on Costco solving the how-to-stop-our-members-from-dying problem.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

I'm busy working through a shoebox-worth of New Zealand that I have accumulated over the past 3-4 years, from all the box lots and albums I've been buying.
During this time I pulled out anything I thought I might need, or might yield some watermark, perf. varieties.

Initial sort was into definitives vs. commems, then a sort of definitives by type.

Now busy straining my eyes checking all the perfs. on the early stuff. Victorian New Zealand is just crazy for perf., watermark, paper and colour varieties. (I'm using the Gibbons commonwealth 1840-1970, 2017 edition). Its a lot of work, but the difference between the CV of the varieties is often 10 -fold. Luckily lots of them have fairly clear cds, which helps a lot in deciding between the wmks.

Busy re-housing the collection in a second 64-page stock book.

Tonight, I've bought on ebay 3 lots of 1917/20 Pro-juventute stamps, for a fair price. Thus, getting closer to complete this wonderful stamps series. Looking back to get the stamps.

I just bought this little collection and build the shelves to house it.




Selling this is my "Summer" project.

Little! Just a few pages to go through in those 49 binders it looks like :)

55 but who's counting.

Wow Ken! Can't wait to see some lots on ebay !

Bought another three boxes at auction. Sold a box-full of older stuff on ebay, an album at a time.

Sorting a box of modern GB FDCs ready to list on ebay. Not too hard, as I don't collect FDCs.

Moving my Ecuador stamps to 1960 from multiple albums & loose into one good album with mounts. I'm learning two things in the process -
Ecuador has a bewildering and interesting varieties of surcharges and overprints.
Modern hinges are evil. From one album, hinged in the 1940s/1950s, the hinges come off cleanly & easily 90% of the time. From the other, hinged within the last 15-20 years, the hinges come off with ease - never.

gmot ---- another thing that's bewildering is why no manufacturer has duplicated the quality of those 1950's hinges. They really were wonderful.

ddaann- I tend to think the market is too small but I can't be sure. One wonders why Subway didn't go further in building a new product, unless there just wasn't enough money in it?

I began to classify these beauties, all used of course, do not have money to collect mint stamps.

(image taken from Adminware, very lazy to scan now)

Perhaps they were making too much money selling mounts & pricey stock sheets to cannibalize their own income?

Perhaps they could make a better return on other investments? (deeper inventory, wider inventory, warehouse climate control, index funds ...)

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey