Anyone Doing The Same?

EdziuMM:

Among the advantages of collecting WW used stamps is the frequency of finding stamps needed to fill spaces in one's album. Even when mixtures or circuit books don't provide any needed stamps, there are collectable cancels to be found. There is always something new to add or start a new series. It has been a long time since I've not had stamps to mount, either in a country collection or in my cancels collection.

As sub-categories to my bullseye collection, I also maintain "objects cancels on stamps" and complete slogan cancels on stamps collections. There are fewer objects and slogans to be found, but every once in awhile one or two turn up.

As you said, lots of fun and satisfaction to be had, frequently at minimal cost.

Don

I fully agree!
I've been too busy last few days to give a proper reply, but this thread is all about what I've started to consider the best part of collecting stamps - the endless opportunities for nice postmarks

EdziuMM, You are not alone
I woke up in a hotel room in Brazil this morning, after some troublesome days at work offshore. Some think the Brazilian beaches outside is paradise:



Well, I was having more joy with this:







After having completed updating my Austria collection, this was the 'dessert', and probably the best part of the meal; to sort all the postmarks I found in the process.

So, EdziuMM, you're not alone. I'm also trying to find as many different postmarks as possible, preferably SOTN, but no requirement. And I am really enjoying it

EdziuMM,
We should meet to discuss this madness we are involved in. Guess that's why we have this forum so we can 'meet' and discuss.Exited to see that others are also sharing our interest!
What do you good people do if
- you have postmarks with similar names, but different zip codes? Do you try to get one for each zip code as well?
- you find a stamp you only have one specimen off, and this stamp have a postmark you also only have one specimen off....should the stamp go in the stamp collection of the postmark go in the postmark collection....

Don wrote:

It's actually much worse...a comprehensive database of Norwegian postmarks alone totals close to 20.000 postmarks, and that is just little tiny Norway! We are less than 1% of the world's population, so probably the total amount of different places and postmarks would exceed 6 figures. So, getting all the postmarks of the world is totally impossible. So what? It is also completely impossible to get all the different stamps. Same thing really, both are impossible tasks - but what a ride to try both

I've been delighted to discover in this topic that I really am among kindred souls! Huzzah!
First, thank you Blaamand for identifying for me my Norwegian puzzler.
Further, I'm delighted to see your desktop arrayed to keep your time philatelically joyful! Being retired has given me much more time to immerse myself in what my wife sarcastically refers to as "lick 'n' stick."
Our zip code system is a definite help in our kind of endeavor. Yes, I want postmarks from all of the different towns in America that bear the same name, and the zip code or a fragment of it can tell me which state it's in if the state is not otherwise identifiable. (I also want all of towns that may bear the same name in every other country, too). There are many dozens of town-names in the U.S. that appear in more than one state. So far, I believe that the most common town-name in America (where there is or has been a post office) is Riverside. 44 states have had post offices in towns called Riverside!
I have no other stamp collection, so I have no problem there.
Yes, Don, the minimality of the cost of used stamps can be just wonderful! A great part of my collecting is the result of nickel-and-diming. Last week, though, I did spring for $2 for a find in a circuit book. It was a stamp with a glorious cancel from the 1860's from Keeseville, N.Y.

Blaamand:

I usually fill the empty spot in the country collection and put a note in my Scott catalog to the effect it is a nice cancel and I need another copy so I can remove it to my cancel collection.

On another related topic, Blaamand and EdziuMM, do you belong to the Bullseye Cancel Collectors Club? (see link below). I used to and even produced its newsletter for a short while, but dropped my membership as I was following too many collecting avenues then and needed to refocus my resources. Lots of good cancels to look at, read about, and buy from the club's publication and auction.

Don


http://bullseyecancel.com/index.html

Don: Do the 2 below qualify?
Otherwise, I, too, used to belong to the bullseye club and to APS, but I too reached a point where I wanted to spend the dues money on stamps rather than on dues. I have stuck with my local stamp club, which I helped found aeons ago, because they're my old buddies & I can find stuff in circuit books.

EdziuMM

Those cancels, indeed, do qualify. Nice examples. I haven't seen the "Sales Abroad Make Jobs at Home" before. The "Janus effect" on the Netherlands stamp makes it a real prize!

Don

Crispinhj wrote:




My ideal is to do one previous stamp-issuing entity to a page for each present-day country. But my binders are already bulging and to cut down the number of pages necessary for my system I sometimes double (or more) up on a page, especially if I'm not likely to get a great number of stamps from one entity. Below is an example for Benin. My ordering of and on pages is from present into the past in temporal order. If I fill such a page, I'll then start another of the same if I get more stamps to mount.
It's fun for me! I really enjoy doing it.

@Edmund - guess it makes it less complicated for you when you are only collecting the postmarks. I share your fascination for postmarks, but I could not bring myself to stop collecting different stamps as well.

Interesting with so many Riverside's in US. My question was more intended for cases with one and the same city/town using different zip codes within the city. Example given my little hometown Arendal have several different postoffices, all with Arendal as the placename but different zip numbers. Another example is Vienna, Austria. When sorting my Austrian postmarks, I found about 50 different old Vienna postmarks, from Vienna 1 - Vienna 147. Do you collect these as well and count them in your register?

Lovely page from Benin, with forerunners from two different previous entities. I'm doing something kind of similar but still different. Example given for Czekoslovakia, I am trying to collect a complete set of Austrian stamps with readable Czech postmarks, so in other words a 'complete forerunner' collection. And similar for Hungary, Italy, Croatia, Ukraine and all other present countries that were once part of Austria. And for countries once part of Turkey, India and so on. And in addition I'm doing as you do - to collect postmarks from different places on forerunner-stamps. Naturally anything even close to completeness is impossible, but that does not matter. The main thing is that it is very interesting. Even the most common Indian 1d red stamp can be valuable to me with the right postmark e.g as a Bangladesh forerunner.

It's a good concept you are doing by simply filing one page for each area at a time, and it is looking great! Simple and elegant. Naturally you need a register to control it as all the postmarks will not be in alphabetical order. I'm using Vario pages and paper tags for IDing the place names, so its easier for me to shift around on the stamps as the collection expands. I'm aiming to maintain everything in alphabetical order by simply inserting pages as required in between.

And I am lucky enough that my brother is collecting postmarks as well (he was actually the one that opened my eyes for this interest) - so now we are not only trading different stamps with each other, we're also trading different postmarks! Which means I am keeping duplicates when I find them..

Absolutely endless endeavour

Good idea! I do something similar, but rather than a note in the catalog I write a Placename-tag with a note saying which stamp in my country collection has the relevant postmark, and put that tag in my postmark collection (without the stamp itself, which is in the country collection!). But it can get even more complicated! In addition to being a unique stamp in your country collection (e.g from Austria) and unique postmark (e.g. Puma, Croatia) , the same stamp can also be a unique forerunner from Croatia. So, I could need that particular stamp to take part of 3 different collections And if the postmark should happen to be a TPO or Paquebot cancel, well?

Don - thanks for the idea, but I am not member of any club.

Collecting slogans? I actually started pulling aside slogans while working on Canada recently....but then I wisely came to the conclusion that I have already spread my interest about wide enough

OOPS, I misunderstood the question about zipcodes.
No, I don't try to get all the zip/post codes that one city may have.
BUT, if a postmark does identify by name a particular district/area/quarter/neighborhood within a city I will collect that separately. For example: I have an example postmarked Berlin; I also have one for Charlottenburg, Berlin; and so on. The same applies to identified rural postal stations, etc.

Ok, I understand, and your approach makes sense. They did the same thing in Vienna in the 19th century as you explained for Berlin, so we'll find lots of classical Austrian stamps with postmarks from various streets etc in Vienna. And similarly was done in Paris and probably lots of other cities - which makes for countless postmarks even within one city

What about numeral postmarks - anyone collecting different numeral pmks as well?

[quote][What about numeral postmarks - anyone collecting different numeral pmks as well? /quote]

Blaamand:

I don't collect the more traditional numeral cancels, but I have started a collection of Germany's briefzentrum cancels. There are 99 of of these cancels and I probably have about 1/3 of them to date. These cancels are fairly accessible with a good supply of German stamps from the mid-1990s forward.

Don