My Worldwide Collection: An Ongoing Journey

Here's a sneak peek at a couple future projects.

I love postmarks and cancels, so any chance I can get to amass some interesting ones I take.

A few months back I purchased, from a local stamp club auction, a large box of unsorted, loose, mostly cheap stamps. After sorting them out I discovered I had a nice pile of this inexpensive, blue 2d stamp from New South Wales. There appeared to be many interesting numbered cancels, and immediately thought they would make a neat cancel study.


Also ended up with a nice little selection of this 12c stamp from British Guiana. Quite a few neat looking postmarks from small villages and such....another postmark study in the future.


Of course, like many things I have, I do not have any reference books for these projects and haven't had the time to see if there are any websites available.

All in good time.....

another question for you ...

I like your checklist idea ... just a page of colored numbers etc. Did you manually type all those numbers (in some cases it would be thousands) or is there a MS Word trick that will do consecutive numbers with commas? I realize you only have to do it once and save as a template .. but still ... several thousand numbers is a bit daunting

thanks!

edited to add: haha never mind already done more or less ... not so time consuming as I thought

Clifhiker - If there is a numbering "trick" for MS Word, Im not aware of it. But then again, I'm not very tech savvy as far as using these programs go.

I did indeed type them out, and as you pointed out, saved it as a template. Mine goes to 2000, which will cover most countries easily. Then you just copy and paste the range you need for each country and save as a different file.

The time consuming part for me however, is modifying each list to match Scott numbers. There are many instances where there are gaps in the numbers, and so need to be deleted to match. But you also need to add numbers and sub-numbers for the various types, shades and varieties.

Haven't figured a way to get around that yet.

I think I will simply print the number list big enough to annotate by hand (pencil and high-lighter) and then go back and update my Word copy when I get around to it ... that way I can carry it with me when I go to shows and update instantly.

You can use the Excel auto fill feature (1,2,3....whatever) to get consecutive numbers and then paste the cells in Word.

angore - Will have to remember that. Probably too late for me, but hopefully it will help someone to keep from having to do it the hard way, like me.

clifhiker - Absolutely, do what works for you. I use to take paper lists to shows. Now I simply save my files to my wife's Kindle, although I should probably have a tablet. One day maybe.

So, I was messing around tonight and decided to make a page for my duplicate Iceland stamps with the "Tollur" (customs), cancels. The ones occupying my regular album pages will remain there until I can replace them with a postally used, or unused copy.

Interestingly, I found out that these cancels are more commonly found on the higher values in the sets, but most of the ones here, on this page, are on lower values, and are actually valued in the Facit catalog, higher than a postally used copy.

Stamp collecting seems to be filled with paradoxes.

Creating and adding custom pages like this is brilliant.

Very interesting and enjoyable thread touching on many themes we all can relate to in one way or another.
1. Accumulations over time—like you, it is amazing how much you accumulate over time, sometimes it seems passively, in the sense that you have a difficult time years later even remembering that you bought this stamp, let alone from who or when. And then sometimes, a selection remains in the original envelope with return sender and postmark to remind you that 15 years ago or more you were buying like crazy.
2. Duplicates—-i'm Not talking the penny stamps; i'm Referring to early 20th century that you purchased more than once because you liked the design or color then, and then came across it later, forgetting that you already had it. Examples just off the top of my head include early North Borneo and Labuan, early Belgian Congo, Rhodesian doubleheads and admirals, early Ecuador and Chile, 1910 Argentina independence issue, pre 1930 Portugal.
3. I never bought an accumulation quite like you describe; indeed I would have no room for it right now and precious little time to sort through such a volume. I can barely touch the stuff I have sitting in boxes now. Nonetheless I concur with you the stress reduction that accompanies sorting and trying to organize at whatever pAce, even understanding that the job will never be complete. It would not be unusual for me to grab a glassine or envelope and pull out a few stamps I suspected might have an empty space in an album, look them up and try to place them—only to find that those particular stamps have been previously placed—-twice. Nonetheless, I am satisfied.
4. I enjoyed your description initially of the initial contact and "dance" with the seller. We have all experienced this. Like collecting,and sorting, acquiring sometimes requires patience. My philosophy is: if it was meant to be yours it will eventually find its way to you. When I collected historical autographs you might long after an item that for one reason or another slipped through your hands or maybe you actually never had a chance to buy it in the first place as it was described in a dealers catalogue that you read but by the time you saw it, it was long gone. Not always, but occaissionally, and maybe after a decade or more, magically that item has made a circuit and and now is sitting again right in front of your eyes for the taking.

Enjoy your collection. The stamps were the original attraction but sharing your stories and hearing those of others to me is the real joy of being a collector.

ClassicalStamps - Thank you. Creating pages like this is one of the driving factors for collecting. It sets a collection apart from others, because it is something that is uniquely yours, or mine.

funcitypapa - Great observations.
Accumulations are something, I think, every stamp collector deals with in some way.
As far as better duplicates go, I am guilty of buying, and re-buying many myself. Sometimes it irritates me that I forgot that I had a particular stamp and wind up buying a duplicate. But I've realized that better stamps seem to hold better value and are easier to sell, if necessary.

The accumulation I bought really got me focused on organizing my collection. Before that I really didn't have much motivation, just a bunch of stamps. It's like the perfect storm. Everything came together....The stamps, Steiner pages, the discovery of Showgard "seconds". It's like it was just meant to be this way. I just had to wait until now for it to take hold.

Again, thanks for sharing your observations.

A milestone!!

Since I recently received a new batch of mounts, I've been busy mounting stamps that had been set aside. Last night I was working on some MNH Austria and Belgium stamps. After mounting a couple hundred stamps from both countries, and tallying the numbers, I figured out I surpassed the 15,000 mark of mounted stamps in my albums.
Still have a long way to go however.

Also, I was bummed yesterday because I had to replace a hot water heater at my rental and while I was there my RHM catalog was delivered to my own house. BUT, it needed signed for and no one was here to sign, so I have to wait until Monday and go pick it up at the post office.

Nice page on the TOLLUR overprints ,I like your explanation on them and like to copy it onto a page for my album .

Floor, absolutely, be my guest. And thank you!

Milestones are funny things. I get immense satisfaction from them - I have a spreadsheet in which I enter the stamps I've put into one of my collections and each thousand milestone gives me a warm glow. And yet it's such an ephemeral thing!

I don't get nearly such a warm glow form understanding the differences between a tricky series of stamps and yet I feel that's a much more "worthwhile" thing to have achieved.

Having said all that, congratulations on reaching 15,000, my 1840 - 1936 collection is still a few hundred shy of that. Please keep updating us on your progress, this is one of my favourite topics

crispinhj - Thank you, and nice observations. At first, I wasn't worried about keeping track of how many stamps I had. But curiosity got the best of me when I started reading threads about the 100k "club" and started wondering if it was something I could achieve with what I already have.

Then I remember someone putting it into perspective saying that if you mounted 100 stamps a day, it would, obviously, take you 1000 days (about 2.75 years) to reach 100k.

Then I started trying to keep track and see how close to 100/day I could get. Not even close. With all the printing of pages, creating new pages, sorting, id'ing, etc.. It will take me considerably longer than that. Maybe 10 years?

I'll still keep track, but at this point I just want to enjoy the journey and share it with others.