New Member from South Florida

Hello Everyone,  

I am Paul Perger. I live in South Florida.

Last November I inherited what I thought was four stamp collections, but as I work through the boxes and boxes of Stamps, I am finding that I inherited more than I thought...

My Grandfather and his brother both started collecting stamps when they were young boys.  I never knew my Great Uncle, as he died during WWII in France before I was born.  His collection is rather small, as it was only curated over about 17 years. My Grandfather collected exclusively US stamps. His collection is significantly larger, and an impressive look at the history of this great country and its' postal system.

My Father also collected stamps, but to buck his father's trend, he collected exclusively World Stamps.  His collection is by far the largest and most organized.  I also knew he had purchased a large collection of Japanese Stamps from the widow of a friend of his.  What I didn't know is that Dad had also purchased a few other complete collections.

All in all, I shipped 58 U-Haul boxes full of Stamps, Binders full of Stamps, Smaller boxes full of stamps, plus 6 boxes of Philately supplies from Las Vegas to Fort Lauderdale.

For the first few months, I did nothing with them, as I was still grieving my father's death and opening those boxes almost felt like I was delving into his personal "stuff", but in January I started researching how to manage this collection.  My father had it all on Lotus 1,2,3 spreadsheets, but he used codes that were not the "normal" codes I have discovered, "MNH", for example.  I also could not open any of the electronic files I found, which frankly were so small, they could only have had a small portion of his collection anyway.

So, after some research, I purchased EZStamp, and several of the supporting programs to catalog the collections.

I promised Dad that I would properly catalog the collection and fully understand it before selling it off.  Neither of my sons want it, so I plan to work through it and sell most of it.  I will likely keep some of the more interesting stamps and have them framed as a memento to my Dad and His father.  He loved eagles and the Air Force, and Grandpa loved Space Exploration and Snoopy, so I am thinking of finding some stamps that fit into those categories and using those to honor their collections.

If you are looking for something, shoot me a note.  I'll start a list of Stamps to look out for as I go through the collection!!