Trying To Learn About What I Have

Just got a big box of stamps from my 97 year old father. He collected as a kid and was taken under the wing of a dealer. He was raised in funeral home and in the depression it was not uncommon for funeral payments to be made in trade. This is where a lot of the stamps came from. He collected mint blocks. I have no idea what I have. According to Scott's, many are from the mid to late 1800s. Maybe I can learn something here.

Welcome.
Sounds intriguing. Please consider posting some images of the some of the blocks. If you have any issues uploading, let me know.
Don

Welcome!

Dale

Welcome! There really is no stamp university to learn in some comprehensive. You are mostly on your on to explore. It is like going to school and they say "Here is the libraries (forums, web sites, etc). Use the search tool and good luck!"

It is more like driving around and exploring various places.

Cbrace55,

Enjoy having fun with stamps! That is the name of this game.

Collecting for the enjoyment of collecting, whatever that might be, is the name of the game. Don't hesitate to ask questions especially if you need basic information and especially more advanced sources of information for any possible topic. You should be able to find folks on this board a little further along on their collecting journey glad to share experiences.

My personal bias is a used stamp loses the story of its journey in the postal service when it is removed from the cover it transported to its destination. Collecting postal history adds a whole new aspect to your journey in our hobby.

Wishing you many enjoyable future days in our hobby. Russ

Welcome, cbrace.

I second Don's suggestion to post some scans of the blocks, especially ones that appear to be early from your reading of Scotts. We love pictures!

It's great BTW that you've apparently already located a Scott catalog and are getting a little familiar with it. Another valuable resource is https://Stampsmarter.org Take a look at the "Id US stamps" in features.

You've made it a lot farther than most people new to the hobby: you got access to a catalog (Scott, in this case). You'd be surprised how many people are either ignorant of the existence of such things, or can't be bothered with spending time or money to get one. So, sincerely, good for you.
My suggestions would be catalog in hand, move the stamps from the box they came in, into a stockbook, ideally using tongs (both readily and economically available on Amazon and numerous other sites). Alternately, you can use glassine envelopes for the same purpose. That will make sorting/organizing/identifying much easier, and will give you and anyone else a convenient way of weighing the strengths and seeing the gaps.

Just looked closer at the blocks and they seem to be 20s and 30s. May I post some pics of blocks and some loose stamps? Lots of post cards from 1800s

We always welcome pictures. However, please: make sure they're in focus, that you use good lighting, and that you don't spam the thread with pictures (that is, don't post 20 pictures each of one stamp or block; post five pics of four each, or two pics of ten, for example).

Hi Cbrace,
I recommend only posting 2-3 images as first post. This will make sure the resolution, lighting, etc is good enough for the community to offer helpful information.
Don

Still trying to upload pics.

One of our members (Partime) wrote an addition** help file on uploading images. It is located here https://stampsmarter.org/Learning/SCF/help1.html

If you still have issues, let me know and I will help.
Don

**Beyond the SCF help file here https://www.stampcommunity.org/tuto...g-images.asp

Having a hell of a time uploading

I just sent you an email.
Don

Those are the early ones, for sure. Be sure to use a different filename for each file that you upload every day. (Tomorrow, you can repeat the names, if you want.) If you have an early block, then upload one of those for us to view, even if from 1920's or so.

Also, remember to crop out all of the unnecessary space around the stamp.