Turks & Caicos Islands - Just Sharing

Wow, beautiful!

Very nice. I like the black cactus stamps and ships especially. Great presentation.

Great job, again, Andy.

Congratulations Andyrich74.

It's a nice sense of accomplishment to complete the main numbers of a country through 1971.

Yours are all mint too. Good work.

Andy I am curious- for the collections you've been showing us, do you use top-load mounts or split back? And, how do you lightly moisten the mounts so they stick while making sure no moisture ever reaches the stamps?

Split-back. And I just dump the stamp and mount in a cup of muddy water or black coffee as a package and slap it on the page. :-) Any excess moisture I let the neighbor's dog lick off. (Please folks, this is a joke.)

True answer is it depends on the stamp. For the more common stuff, I just cut the mount, fix the stamp in, lick it and stick it so to speak.

For stamps that are maybe a bit more scarce or harder to replace; cut the mount to size, check the sizing by laying the stamp on top with stamp tongs, or by using a previously mounted stamp as a gauge for size/consistency, or by using pre-cut mounts that I chop to size in bulk with a guillotine and then set the mount, let it dry fully and insert said stamp, again with tongs. I've actually used latex gloves on occasion, but only for the older US stamps that I've moved away from.

All that said, I am seeing the up-side of top-load now; having been a devotee of Showgard split-backs forever. The split backs do tend to want to warp a bit when you pull them up after mounting and then to want to retain that shape, whereas top-loads are much easier to work with using tongs to place stamps and center them in to said mount.

This is a really great display. Thank you for sharing. Congratulations for an excellent job of presentation.

Great read Andy, thanks. And you have a good eye for getting your stamps centered and square on the Steiner page boxes. I just suck at mounts in so many ways, so still see Vario as my future . I do like the idea of strips of top mount as a distant second.

Which country (-ies) do you think you may show us next?

Since I do my own pages, and they tend to change as my understanding of the issues change, I hinge the mounts. :)

Hinge the mounts

Nice pages! I really enjoy seeing people's completed pages, especially ones as consistently presented as these.

Thanks all, much appreciated. Fun to track down what aren't exactly mainstream "countries."

Shermae, probably Vatican City, as that's complete to 1970. Scanning is just not much fun though.

Billsey, Want to see photos of the Lithuanian stamps I sent you in your albums when you get them there. :-)