My Worldwide Collection: An Ongoing Journey

This is a great page, I really like the way the information is presented and it adds greatly to the interest.

It really rang a bell with me as I've been thinking of doing something to link location and stamps with a large accumulation of Belgian railway parcel stamps stamps I have and something like that looks exactly what I've been mulling over for ages, without coming to any very satisfactory conclusion.

Thanks again for sharing!

Spain, I have read your post and am subscribed to it. I must say I have enjoyed reading every new entry in your story. The information has been so helpful and inspiring. Even though I am not doing a WW collection I am planning on buying the Steiner CD as well and following your lead with the mounts and presentation.
Thanks for sharing your story!
Willie

Spain,

I've been following your foray into World Wide collecting. It's an interesting read.

I really like what you did with the Ship Local Stamps. Excellent presentation.

I'm looking forward to your future posts.

Dan

very nice page with the Ship Locals! Any chance of a closeup of the stamps? Thanks!

Thanks for the positive words everyone!



crispinhj - I for one would be interested to see your treatment of the Belgian railway issues. I have a a ton of them that I would like to do something with, especially concerning the station cancels. Please post some pictures when you are ready.



Willie - That's awesome! I know the Steiner pages aren't for everyone, but it's nice to see that something here has inspired someone in some way. That was my intention. Thank you.




Thanks Dan. Never tried pages like that. They present an interesting challenge.




Thanks!, and absolutely! Here you go. Initially I had my doubts about the genuineness of the 1/2R. But I did read that there are no known forgeries of the issues with the saw-toothed perforations.

After a slight detour around my collecting, to make some home repairs, I was finally able to sit and do something stamp-wise.

Brazil continued:

This country, especially the early issues, is proving to be quite challenging. I got the RHM catalog, which is good, but translating from Portuguese to English (with Google), then trying to figure out philatelic equivalents to some of the words....uggghhh!

But, here we are nonetheless. Moving on from the Southern Cross issues, we start to get to the Liberty heads....Oh yay!

This first page, I had to create for the small Liberty head issues. Steiner only provided 3 spaces total. But with the help of the RHM catalog, I managed to stretch the 2 issues out to a whole page of shades and perf varieties. Unfortunately, most of the spaces are still empty. I thought I had a decent selection of duplicates, but I guess not.


From there I went into the Liberty Head & Sugarloaf Mountain issues. Again, I thought I had to decent supply of duplicates to go through, but it turned out that most were the common, unwatermarked varieties. This page is for those common ones. Unwatermarked, perf 11-11 1/2.

I did discover how to distinguish between the 1894 and 1897 varieties, that are listed in Scott as sub-numbers. So I included a couple small graphics at the top of the page, highlighting the difference.

Like I said, these are the common varieties and even though I will end up with several more pages for the perf varieties, watermarked issues, etc, they will largely be empty.

This is a really good tread spain_1850. Have used most of my day at work ( don't tell anybody) reading your tread. I'm on my way to collect Europa, but rest of the world accumulate in my shelves to.
Look forward to follow this tread.

Tobben

Spain_1850,

I admire the level of detail you are going into for a Worldwide collection! Are you going to do this level of detail for all issues? (e.e. Inclinados, Liberty Leads, etc.?) Quite an effort!

I do have one question on a comment you made:



RHM does distinguish the 1894 and '97 issues as you described. I didn't see any corresponding sub-numbers in Scott. There are sub-numbers for the design. E.g., Scott 112 and 113 have design numbers A41 and A41a respectively. These refer to different designs, not issues.

Here is what I interpreted as Scott 112 and 113. I've circled the difference:



I occasionally get Scott catalog blindness. Did I misinterpret something?

Dan

Robben - Thank you for the kind words. I'm glad you are enjoying the thread. Sometimes I do the same thing. I'll pour a cup of coffee and go back and find some of my favorite threads to reread.

Dan - This is the sort of detail I would like for all countries. However, much of it will not be affordable more practice. The secret is finding that fine balance between general space filling and specialization.

My approach is to expand beyond, say, Scott listings and venture into specialization when the opportunity arises. Most of the time that will either be if I already have something interesting or if I have enough duplicates of something to increase my chances of finding specialized items.

For example: when I put my France album together, I really wanted to do something with the Sower issues because I had a ton of them. I didn't have a clue what was possible until I got a Maury catalog. With this catalog I was able to go rather in depth and, with all duplicates, was able to find most of the listed types. I always look for an angle in order to utilize duplicates.

With the Brazilian inclinados I would love to expand my pages, per thecRHM catalog, but the truth is I only have a few copies, and no duplicates. They are a bit pricey for me right now for me to focus on, so I chose to have a basic page......for now. If, however, I acquire some over time I will certainly make a new page for them.

That's the beauty of the AlbumEasy program and the simplicity of the Steiner pages. At any given time I can whip out new pages that fit right in with the rest.

As far as the Scitt listings go for the 1894-97 issues, I guess I should have clarified that I was using the Scott's Classic Specialized, which goes into slightly more detail, especially with regards to minor varieties and sub numbers.

Spain_1850,




Ah, that answers my question. Thanks! I use Steiner pages as well. they're great when you want to drill into an area beyond the regular catalog listings.

I'm looking forward to reading about your journey into Worldwide collecting!

Dan

Thanks Dan#128515;
I'm gonna try to make some regular postings. However, this time of year starts to get real hectic, for me and the family, with the holidays. I may not get as much stamping time between now and the end of the year.

Brazil continued:

I've been spending much too much time on the Liberty heads and Sugarloaf Mountain issues lately, and I don't even really have that many of them! I've decided to circumnavigate them until I get a better grasp on the subject. Trying to decipher the RHM catalog and then relate it to both the Scott catalog and Steiner pages is a bit of a headache.

So, I was able to mount a few more pages beyond that era. They're pretty sparsely filled right now. But hey, that's what this topic is all about. The journey from sparsely filled pages to filling those pages.

You will also notice one of my "workarounds" on 2 of these pages. Whenever I can, I try to make pages for listed varieties and shades, if they are not already included on the Steiner pages. But occasionally I miss one. In such cases where shades are concerned, I "stack" mount them. But I don't just hinge one over the other. I hinge them caddy corner within the box. I don't know why I ever started doing this, it's just my way. To each there own.

Here is something that is a bit of an experiment for me.

One thing I've noticed while working with Brazil is that there are A LOT of different watermarks and while I love my Steiner pages, they are lacking in watermark identification, especially for difficult areas such as this.

So, I thought it would be great to have graphic representations, of the various watermarks, right on the page, where needed. This will help in placing the stamps in the correct spots, especially when I do not add catalog numbers to them.

What I did is:
1 - Scan the watermark graphic from the RHM catalog and save it as a file.
2 - Then I opened up Microsoft Word with a blank page of the same size. Knowing the size of the graphic image, I can figure out where, on the Steiner page, I want it to show up and plot the coordinates using either mm's or inches (whichever is your preference), from the top and left hand edge of the paper.
3 - In the case of the example below, I placed the graphic 6" from the top and 1 3/8" from the left edge.
4 - Then I just re-feed the Steiner page back through the printer and VOILA! Out comes a perfectly placed (hopefully) watermark image.

I kind of like the results, but will have to get better at plotting. Some of the pages I tried this on came out a little "off".

Example:

Great Idea.
I have been doing it for about 18 months, with both Australia and Brazil.
I scan a page from Scott, and add that.
Not as professional as your pages

1933 page 25.



I also produce "cheat sheets" for the difficult issues with multiple Wmks.
Assistance from Jerry Bodoff, SCF forum 2014

Awesome idea about the "cheat sheet", especially for those issues. Looking ahead I think that series will present more of a headache than the Liberty heads. Can you recommend any webpages to help aide in their identification?

I came across this page, with some downloadable spreadsheets, which looks useful.
http://www.brazilphilatelic.org/ide...k-alikes.htm