The Joys Of Transferring Stamps

floortrader: I continue to be amazed at how you find the time to do all the philatelic stuff that you write about. Myself, I'm somewhat like Don (51studebaker) in that I also go hot & cold with "stamping," except for keeping up on my philatelic reading.

My Heirloom albums arrived on Christmas Eve eve, which allowed me to spend much of Friday night mounting my newly bought mint stamps and deciding which ones will be transferred from my Minuteman album. Before I knew it it was 2:30am and it seemed like only an hour had passed. It was great revisiting the stamps I collected as a kid, especially now that I'd decided to buy mint versions. I learned a lot more from stamp collecting than I did in school back then, and remembered what most of them commemorated 40+ years on.

Wallyum - Welcome to the forum - and congratulations on your new albums!

I have just completed transferring Italy from stock books into Lighthouse Signum Classic with Vario Grande pages. Also did the change from using Scott to using Sassone and Michel as reference. What a joy! However the job is quite time consuming - I am glad I do not need to think about using time on hinging - I admire the ones that is hinging or mounting everything - that must be even more time consuming.
Now I have only another 900 areas or so to transfer into my new albums...

I just wish I had the time to really work on this. Working 45, 50 sometimes 55-hrs/week in a retail job doesn't leave much free time since I am one of those that really needs 8hrs sleep to function.

But I do what I can here or there. Current projects are

1) reehousing the Canada collection/accumulation I inherited from my late father a few years back into a Vario-F stockpage-based album, with space for extra varieties drawn from the info posted in the amazing blog "Canadian Philately - The Stamps and Postal History of Canada 1851 to Present" http://canadianphilately.blogspot.com/

2) Re-orgainizing my French Colonial albums and creating paper inserts to provide issue information, cat number and the like (having had my main stamp album page spreadsheet with all the layouts for my albums crash on me and lose most of its data, I have to start all over again..bleh!)

UPDATES ....First jkelley01938 ,wrote "you'll be dealing hundreds and hundreds of useless stamps most of which are meaningless"----really I never thought that, I have millions of stamps ,yes millions and never looked at them as meaningless, to me they are a escape and a quiet time away from everybody and everything .
A second point about the modern U.S. material ,have you tried to purchase used copies of those "meaningless" stamps ,around Chicago stamp bourses ,those commomoritives are selling for half of face to almost full face if you can find them . To drive this point further I just "discover" used plate no. coils .That means stuff I purchased at auction for hundreds of dollars will sit on the floor in boxes while I make a album and try to buy a few hundred coils at less than a nickel each and have fun mounting them .
STEVE ----as mentioned above I try to set some quiet time to work on stamps each day . Too much has gone on in my life to not set a side time . Sort of something I learn in Bible College many many years ago ,there in the Bible it says something like this ----BE STILL and know I am God -----so the stamp hobby gives me that .....lol Happy New Year !!

Blaamand,

I know you have a huge number of stockbooks, so the decision to switch to Varios must not have been easy :-)
Please share a few pages of your 'new setup' :-)

ClassicalStamps - thanks and you're absolutely right. It was a tough decision to make - so I needed two years to gather motivation/courage to get on. And now that I've finally started I guess it will take at least 5 years for the transfer! The first obstacle is the shelves that I custom-made for my stockbooks, they are only a few millimeters from housing the Lighthouse Classic Signum Grande, so I will have to tear it all apart and start over....

I'm presently on travel and unable to share any pictures, but for sure I can share some later on. Therein is another challenge I did not foresee - the Grande pages are bigger than A4/lettersize and are too big for a normal scanner bed!

Floortrader - ha ha, I didn't see that one coming....getting close to a religious experience while working/relaxing with your stamps....I like it

DJCMHOH - that loss must have been quite confusing
From a positive point of view - the loss opens up for a fresh start. Wishing you lots of energy and motivation to carry on!

These exchanges have all been most enjoyable--and even philosophical! May I, though, introduce a practical question? Early in the discussion sdtom advised getting reinforcement rings for a new album. My albums are Scott Internationals, which I first owned in my boyhood over a half-century ago, at least one purchased with savings from my newspaper route. I've never been able to find reinforcements for the pages' post holes (those I did turn up were too small and wouldn't fit over the posts). Does anyone know where appropriate sized ones would be available?

JRAEBURN-----Don't use post hole reinforcements, they create problems. Use those cardboard spacer strips that are made for the Internationals .