My Worldwide Collection: An Ongoing Journey

I haven't bought too much new stuff lately, so I forgot how much fun mail days can be.

Today, I received, from the APRL, the RHM catalog for Brazil. Now I can move ahead and make some progress. It's actually 2 volumes, but I'll probably get most of the use out of the first one.


Then, I did pick up some small lots from ebay.

When I was putting my Belgium album together, I noticed Steiner included pages for the Hexagonal Telegraph stamps, but I didn't have any of the stamps. So, I had to have at least a representative selection to justify printing the pages.


I also got a small Venezuelan collection (just 4 pages). Found them by accident. I was pretty sure I didn't have any of these old ones, so I picked it up as well. Not sure when I'll get around to making the Venezuela album, but I'll have a few oldies when I do.


Sorry for the poor quality pictures. I was just too lazy to drag stuff upstairs to scan, and went ahead and used my cell instead.




I must be tired. I just noticed the RHM catalog I pictured is actually vol. II, and I intended to shoe vol. I.

Here are the pages I created for the Southern Cross issue of Brazil. They are basically based on the listings in the RHM catalog, rather than Scott. So I had to completely retool the Steiner pages for them to include individual groupings for the various perforation varieties.

For Steiner's pages this issue occupies, more or less, 2 pages. The RHM listings now occupy 4 pages. I also used the color descriptions from the RHM catalog, rather than Scott.

I know I said earlier I wasn't going to post pictures of blank pages, but here I will, for the purpose of showing how I treated this set.

I don't have many stamps to fill the many holes, right now, so I will probably be on the lookout for some to study. In fact, the few I do have may even be in the wrong spots since I don't have multiples to compare shades and colors with.





I do need to ask anyone here, who has more knowledge on these issues than I, about a couple 100R stamps I have. They are both perf. 13.5 x 14, and are the "redrawn", typographed stamps. I don't see any listings in the RHM catalog that match this perf combo. Any ideas?

Here are my Belgian Telegraph stamps I posted the other day, now mounted on Steiner pages. I don't have many, so I cropped the pages. I will definitely have to look for some more. I really like the hexagonal shapes.

Here is one of those reasons I like the clear mounts. The stamp "boxes" are hexagonal shape, on the page. I cut the mounts rectangular, just to the outer edges of the hex-shaped boxes, but the stamps themselves are centered within the box. The fact that the mount is not cut to the shape of the box doesn't matter. If these were black mounts, I'd either have to carefully, cut them to shape, or the rectangular mount would cover the hex-shaped box.

Spain,

Don't feel bad as you have 7 more telegraph stamps than I do. Nice lot.

Nice treatment of the Telegraphs, 1850.
I'll follow your method, I only have one at the moment, saw a mint set the other day around $15 US, as I recall.

Your page print looks crisp, are you using inkjet or Laser ? If laser, non genuine toner?

love those telegraph stamps!! I believe I have some on cut squares from postal cards ... will go look!

oops was mistaken ... I do have two of the hexagonal stamps (damaged sadly) ... they were in a lot with some cut squares which is how I made the association.

Even if you're using clear mounts, not cutting to the shape of the space/stamp still gives an odd look. Cutting to shape wouldn't use up any more of the strip.

I agree with Spain_1850's decision not to cut to shape. I don't think it has anything to do with how much of the strip is used. Trying to cut to shape, in my opinion, would have a much greater potential for creating an odd, irregular look if not precisely done with each stamp and would make the mounting process infinitely more time-consuming.

mirman - I probably wouldn't have any either, except I had to put something on the pages..lol

Rod - Thank you. $15 sounds like a good deal to me.


It's a cheap Epson inkjet. One thing I've found that helps is to re-align the print heads whenever I change the ink cartridges.



Geoff - You make a good point, and I actually considered it first. But then I remembered how awful some of the ones I've done in the past came out. I'm atrocious at cutting angles. I also thought, since these are top load mounts, the bottom of the mount would wind up being too short and the stamp may come out too easy. If it moves now there is plenty of mount to still hold it.

rusty - That was my main issue as well.

There's experience talking.
Anyone using top loading mounts (my preference) knows the difficulty, when mounting odd shaped stamps, triangles, upside down triangles, hexagons, circles etc

Stamps moving in a mount is not a good look.
I really liked the clear large square mounts, and will adopt same.

Mounts and odd-shaped stamps just don't go very well. Aswell as looking better, hinging also allows you, should you be inclined, to get away from the line-by-line arrangement and come up with some interesting geometric constructions. I did this with a bunch of Portuguese Colonies stamps of the arms variety.

GeoffHa, Can you show those pages Im interested in how people display their stamps, and different styles
of album pages.

Sadly, my Portuguese stamps are longush gone - I'll see if I can unearth any other efforts!

Rod - I haven't had too much experience with odd shapes other than these and triangles, but I'd imagine the difficulty magnifies as the shape gets weirder. I know I will eventually run into circular shapes and have no intentions of trying to cut circular, top loading mounts. Hopefully by the time I get to those I will have an idea of how I will proceed.

Geoff - I do agree hinges give you freedoms that mounts do not. But, I would think it would be just as easy to arrange mounts in geometric patterns, maybe? I don't have experience with either so it's just a guess. If I were focusing on a smaller area or country, I would probably give the free form pages a try. Maybe even a special set. However, with thousands and thousands of pages to eventually print out and precious little time I have to be rather judicious with this project.
Don't get me wrong, I really appreciate insights such as yours. It's great food for thought.

Stamp collecting is full of happy little accidents.

Recently I won a small collection of early Venezuelan stamps, on old album pages. Not many, about 50 stamps total. I posted a picture of the page I was actually interested in, a few posts up. It was the early imperfs I was after, and the lot was cheap.

A couple days ago I was pulling stamps off, id'ing them and filing them away for later, when I came across a page that had a couple, unknown to me, packet stamps. After doing some research, I found out they were printed by Waterlow & Sons, for use by Captain Robert Todd and his steamship mail service, operating between Venezuela and St Thomas.

You can read a bit more about these stamps here:
http://www.mostlyclassics.net/phila...alStamps.pdf

I didn't give them even a thought because I was only interested in the Venezuelan stamps. The only catalog I have that even lists them is the Facit catalog, under Danish West Indies, of all places.

Here is the original picture from the ebay ad. I just glossed over this page.


Now, what to do with these? After doing my research I found that there are more than a few different varieties of these, most of which seem to sell for around $75 each. I doubt I will make this a specialty. I also doubt I will accidentally run into any others. And since it doesn't look as though Steiner offers pages for them, I decided to just create my own.

But, since I only have the 2 stamps, I decided to get a little "creative" and get out of my comfort zone. So I added a brief description/history of the packet service, spaces for just the 2 stamps and a map showing the route the mail service operated (red lines). I also decided to use Danish West Indies as the page header, since they are listed in DWI of the catalog. Eventually, when I get around to creating my DWI album, this page will be stored there.


I think it came out alright, since I am not use to dealing with graphics on these pages. I may experiment with similar pages in the future.