My Worldwide Collection: An Ongoing Journey

I agree with floortrader. Nice progress.

Regarding your page on the 1898 Imperial Penny Postage, there is a good article in the current, 2nd quarter, issue of BNA Topics about those stamps (BNA Topics by BNAPS, British North America Philatelic Society). If you are of a mind to do a little specializing as you go along, this issue was produced from several plates; has more ocean color variations than given in the Scott catalogue, and has a lot more varieties depending on location of the red dots, for the islands. Under-inking and over-inking present more fun. Best of all, the stamps are fairly common and good copies should be available for a few dollars each.

Climber- Thank you!
Actually, there have been several areas/issues for Canada I thought would great specialized areas, as I've been going along. That one being one of them. I'm not sure I am going to get heavily into any one area, from any country though. That's kind of how I got to collecting worldwide. After specializing in several areas over the years I always ended up hitting a wall, so to speak, where I could not afford the things to further my collections. It'll happen in specialized area.

However, don't get me wrong. If I happen upon a group, collection or stash of items, from any country, that might warrant looking into in a specialized way, I will happily add them to my collection.

I'm going to be cutting off from Canada. The first file of Steiner pages stops at 1940, so I think that will be a good place to stop for now. Here are the rest of my pages for those years.
I still need to research the small queens, so there will be that project as well.

So, for now I will be adding....259 (pre1940)
And my worldwide total is...20,478














I ended up with a small selection of revenues, but not really enough of any of the different types to warrant a separate page for them. I am not sure if I will ever acquire enough of them for that, so I decided to just make some pages to mount a representative selection of these. I just included a heading for each type and a date (that I hope are correct) with some blank boxes. I left enough extra boxes in case I do get some more to add.

If I ever get to the point where I have enough of any one type I will make an individual page for them, with more information added. I kind of like this approach since now they are at least mounted instead of stored in an envlope where they cannot be seen.

I also spent part of today going over the latest circuits I got from APS. Managed to find some France items to fill some spaces in the France album.

Here are a few of them. Also have some MNH sets (not shown).

So, today I decided to get a batch of Austrian, general revenues, in order.
Like the Canadian revenues, I only have a representative selection, that are spread out over several years' issues. The actual sets are much larger and contain many more denominations. This is another area that I think would be fascinating to specialize in, but......

I made extra spaces for everything because I fully intend to try and expand, at least a little.








This is one of my favorites. I love the detail!

spain,

I like the route you took with the revenues from Austria and Canada. Seems like a good balance between presenting the ones you have while still not leaving too much open space on the pages.

Dale

Dale, thank you. I had been mulling this over for a while before I finally decided on a solution that works for me. Now I need to work on a solution for mounting all the cancellations and postmarks I have squirreled away. As you can imagine they would be no where near as structured as lining up a set of stamps. They would be more random and haphazard, so I will need to find a way that is both organized and flexible.

Updates!! Where do I start

1 - Right after posting my pages of Austrian revenues, I ran across 2 more lots of these on ebay, and I expect I will be able to break at least a couple of the individual sets away from my initial pages. I should have enough of some to make actual pages for year sets.

2 - Also while looking through ebay for the Austrian revenues, I accidentally found 6 other lots, to bid on, containing worldwide in general. Not big lots, but containing some fun stuff. I've gotten 3 and awiting on the other 3 right now.

3 - While I wasn't looking I noticed my backlog of material, for countries I have already established albums for, is growing again. So, now I am going back to those countries to process the backlog before moving forward to unexplored countries.

4 - I realized I REALLY do NOT need to buy any more large, or even semi-large, random lots. I do need to focus on whittling down what I already have, which is a problem for me because inexpensive lots seem to find me and most of the time I cannot resist.

For now, here are some scans of the cool stuff found in the lots I recently got off the BAY.

I never really had much "better" material for Newfoundland, so I was quite pleased to find this set in one of the lots. Always liked the Caribou stamps.


I'm also a sucker for varieties, and these Nicaraguan issues are suppose to be loaded with overprint, and under print, varieties. These will make some interesting pages when I ever get around to doing the countries. These were also foud in one of the lots I just received.

Had a bit of a scare recently.

About a week and a half ago my computer failed me. It was D-E-A-D, DEAD! Wouldn't even power up. This was the third time something like this has happened with the old dinosaur (about 10 years old). Previously, I had the power supply go out and then the hard drive crashed. I was hoping this time would also be another power supply and NOT the hard drive again. I went out and bought a new power supply, but it didn't fix the problem. We decided to take the plunge and just get a new computer, a laptop, and HOPE we could salvage the information from the old hard drive.

Long story short, we got a new HP laptop, and I bought a USB adaptor to hook up to the old hard drive and was able to copy all my files over. I was really not in a good mood for over a week, thinking I was going to have to start my stamp collecting journey ALL OVER AGAIN! At least all the computer work. But I'm back at it now. It took a while to set the new one up with all my old, familiar programs. Some don't seem to be too Windows 10 friendly, but I'm getting there.

To make this stamp related - The new computer was a big set back, financially, for me. And my stamp budget will likely be hovering around zero for a while. But that's OK, as it gives me more time to work on my backlog.

One good thing that has come out of this is that the laptop is portable and I can take it downstairs, to my stamp room. Previously, the computer was upstairs and my printer/scanner was downstairs. Really a hassle. Much more convenient now.

Lately I have been updating some albums already established, and adding new (to me) stamps to them. Right now I am working on Austria. Along with adding some random stamps here and there I will be working on specific projects as well.

Today I was able to add 4 new stamps to this page of private perforations, so I made an updated page and transferred everything over. Eventually, when I get enough of these, I will be able to create individual pages for each set.

Hi spain,

A computer dying is not a fun experience. I had a laptop hard drive crash about seven years back. Luckily the machine had been giving some warning signs so I was able to move off my files before it finally died a couple days after I had finished grabbing my stuff.

My current desktop PC has been humming along like a champ. I hope to get at least a few more years out of her. She's been a great machine.

Still, glad you've made it back.

Dale

Dale, thank you!

Funny thing was my wife was worried about financial files and I was worried about stamps. Luckily, the hard drive was the last thing I replaced so it should have good life left in it. Will still need to see about retrieving some more stuff. I will be making a habit of backing things up now, instead of being lazy, as in the past.

I;m always looking for a way to incorporate duplicates into the albums. While working with Austria I decided to investigate the various perforation varieties of the Franz Josef, Kreuezer issues, of 1890-96.

I found this page to be useful.
https://www.stamp-collecting-world....re_1890.html

Based on the lists provided I was able to create pages for almost all the perfs listed. Some pages are empty, some are sparse, but I did manage to incorporate enough duplicates to at least have representative selections. Still a ways to go though.

Here are a few of the pages I actually have some stamps on.






I am planning on doing similar pages for some of the other early issues that I seem to have plenty of duplicates for, as time permits.

Very nice - you're certainly more diligent than me! Coincidentally was working on Austria pages for the same period a couple weeks ago, and made the opposite decision to include no perf varieties. Now I feel lazy :)

I tend to oscillate on this one. In principle, I prefer to have a core set, which makes for a more attractive display. That can take two forms: the perfs that were first issued for the set; or a sort of "best of". The undistinguished Kenya page below is the former. But I have one or two where, perhaps because I've got a better run, I keep the perf varieties together, as with GVI Ceylon (I see one or two of these have higher CVs, which means I need to re-measure!).

Geoff, I hadn't really thought of that option, but it is certainly a good idea. In this case neither the website I linked to nor my catalog reference gives any indication what the original perf gauge is. Only that they were printed in many differing gauges. But I do like the idea of having a "base set". Some of these perforation gauges do seem to be more common than others, based on how big some of my piles are, and those could be used for the basic set and not look "mismatched".