My Worldwide Collection: An Ongoing Journey

Here are the next 3 pages for chile. really loving these American Bank Note Co. issues.

The next 3 pages for Chile. As you can see things are starting to get "interesting".
I started adding the various "types" described on the previously mentioned Chilean websites.
I will also be making a reference chart, or cheat sheet, to add into the album, describing the various types for the various issues. I'll post that when I get it done.

Once again life's little hiccups get in my way of my stamping. Nothing major, just working a lot of hours right now and not much downtime.

Chile cont'd:
Now is where things get "interesting". Starting with the issues of 1928-31, Chile began using the watermark shown in my first scan here. It's a repeated shield with a star in it. It's actually petty easy to see on te stamps, so that's a plus. But most of the issues from here until sometime in the 1950's, can be found with this watermark in 1 to 4 different positions.
Looking at the stamp from behind, in the normal upright position, the shield is either:
1. Upright (normal position)
2. Inverted
3. Sideways (top of shield to the left)
3. Sideways (top of shield to the right)

This is how these are designated on this website:
http://www.sociedadfilatelica.cl/SO...1928_31.html

I've decided to keep these designations on my pages as well. On this first page, I added small thumbnails of the watermark in all 4 positions, with the designation below it. From there on out, I just noted, beneath each stamp, which wmk position for each box (wmk 1, wmk 2, wmk 3, or wmk 4).


I was hoping since I had quite a few duplicates from some of these common series issues, I would be able to fill in more of the various wmk type. But, it appears it will be more of a challenge than I thought. Luckily, these Chilean issues are common enough so that I should be able to find enough of them to study and, hopefully, fill in more holes. For now, however, there will be many near-empty pages.

Here are some of the more populated ones I needed to create, based on Steiner, using AlbumEasy. You can at least get an idea of what I am doing.

Very nice work spain_1850

Thanks for sharing.

Dianne

Dianne, thank you!!
I just wish I had more time to add updates.

Just dropping by to share this set from Chile.

The centenary of the death of Bernardo O'Higgins.

Many sets, such as this one, are very inexpensive, yet beautiful IMHO.

Enjoy:

spain_1850.....you're right, these are beautiful stamps. So beautiful, in fact, that, after I saw your post, I got out my Scott catalog to get the Scott numbers and found a MNH set on HipStamp and ordered them. You were right about something else also, they were very inexpensive. Thanks for turning me on to these.

Continuing saga of an insanely great thread.

Hi Spain,
Really enjoying this thread Thank you. Picked up a few great Ideas for my album pages. The Chilean stamps are really outstanding designs I really like your Idea with the watermarks I am going to incorporate it into my album pages.
Thanks again

Ray

Spain_1850,

If you want your text to look closer like Steiner you should expand the inter character sizing spacing by 0.5pt.

The left is what you will get by default. The right has inter-character spacing increased to closer match Steiner.




Your Chile examples is how I would like pages to be done. I also put the distinguishing characteristics below the stamp in smaller text for stamps that look alike in same group.

Coastwatcher - That's awesome! Glad I could turn you onto them.



Shermae - Thank you!



Ray - That was one of my goals. To show others how I like to do things, and give them another perspective or a spark to try something new.



angore - To tell you the truth, I really had no idea you could control the character spacing like that. I guess I should spend some time going over the AlbumEasy manual again. I'll bet I'll find other things to try as well. Now, having read your post, I decided to make a "test" page with multiple lines of same text, each with slightly larger character spacing, starting at 0.1. Then I did a side-by side comparison to one of my actual Steiner pages, and it looks, at least to my eyes on my computer, that 0.2 will get me closer to what I see on Steiner.

This is one thing that has actually been bugging me for a while, but didn't realize how to fix it.

Of course, I can't go back and change all the pages I've eated so far, but from here on out, absolutely.

Other things I've had to "tweak" recently are the box line weight, and the page border weight and size.

Thank you for the pointer on this, it really helps.

Spain_1850, AlbumEasy added a feature in recent build to provide this expanded text feature. I did a test with Album Easy and noticed the border weights were a tad off too. I reported this to Clive.

From what I get from PDF conversions is the outside border is 0.67mm and the inside border is 0.12 mm. The space between is around 0.67mm.

If I design from scratch, I use Scribus and modify using LibreDraw.

angore - I am now up to date on my AlbumEasy. Hadn't really been paying attention to all the updates recently.

I haven't tried using either of those programs you mention. I'm really hard-headed when it comes to new apps and programs. Until recently I was still using Lotus for spreadsheets...haha! AlbumEasy is really, quite literally, easy for me now. I can, in a matter of a few minutes design an entire page with relatively little previewing or testing.

I have a formula for figuring out box sizes. And if I have to make boxes that I do not have a stamp for, and don't know the size of the stamp either, I just pull up the Steiner page with the same stamp, size the page in Adobe to 77%, which shows up on my screen at 100% actual paper size, and measure the box with a mm scale.

It use to be work to use AlbumEasy, now I kind of enjoy it.

Today I have a much-needed break from work, so I spent the morning doing my 2nd favorite activity.....shopping at flea markets!

I really wasn't looking to add more bulk to my accumulations, but when opportunity rears it's ugly head, I'm usually right there as a willing sucker.

I found these 2 decently filled albums this morning for a decent price, so they came home with me. One is mostly baltic countries (Bulgaria, Czech, Albania etc.., but there appears to be quite a few to fill spots in my albums, or soon-to-be-albums.

The other contains general foreign, countries A-I, with mostly filled pages. Didn't see anything majorly valuable, but again, will fill some spots and provide me with some fum looking for postmarks, etc...

Still working on Chile. But while I was straightening up my work area a little I came across a stock card with some old postage Due stamps from France, so I took a little time to investigate them. It seems I missed these while I was working on the France album.

Until I found these, I only had 1 stamp from the 1893 set, that being the 20c. With last nights find, I was able to add 9 to the set!

Here is my page: