Whatcha Been Stamping?

Been so busy doing who knows what, that I haven't had any time for stamping. Haven't even have a few minutes to spare to keep an eye on the site.
Now, unfortunately, I will have to put all work on my collections on hold for at least 6 weeks as I was involved in a car accident and have to wear a neck collar until a factored C7 vertebra heals.

I'll try to get my fill vicariously through the boards.

I am working on building a shelving unit to store press sheets. The shelf will measure 48 in wide by 32 in deep. It is larger than need but easy to cut from 4x8 plywood.

Get well soon Mr. H

Today I finished laying out the last of the pages for Memel under French Administration. There will be one (or maybe two) additional pages for some gutter pairs and others, but a day away and then proof tomorrow, hopefully catching any typos, print, add mounts and then I'know exactly what I have left to look for- which will mainly be paper types and color variants. I think I have a near complete 'one-of'

i have quite a few dupes, so in days to come may be looking for trading partners to fill holes!

I need a few more pieces of wood for the shelving and then add some liner for the shelves. Unfortunately, Debby is passing through so rain (not much wind) most of the day and will not venture out to Home Depot.

I’ve been busy with my Canada collection. As with most country’s issues, it is tough to find many of the special commemoratives postally used. I was making a real effort from 1990s through mid 2000s to keep up with Canadian new issues and enlisted the help of family. We have a BIG extended family in SE Ontario centered in the Kingsville / Leamington area. So I decided to add a fun twist to the effort to get used copies. I purchased a bunch of inexpensive birthday cards and made up SASEs (Self-Addressed Stamped Envelopes) with Canadian new issues on them. I sent ALL the cousins birthday, Christmas, Easter, heck even Halloween cards and they returned stamps in the SASE’s and often kindly had them hand cancelled. We all had a good time with the project and I was able to get postally used copies for lots of elusive issues PLUS elusive recent USA!

Working on these Canadian stamps this week brought back heartwarming, happy memories of all those wonderful cousins, aunties, uncles and friends. Makes me yearn to go visit everyone! Anyhoo, I actually made up a reference page with all of those addresses and everyone’s significant dates - birthday, anniversary - and shared them with the family. They were so popular that years later many family members still used them for reference. Ahhh good memories!

FYI - I, of course, ended up with many really good duplicates - if interested, those will be offered in my auctions during the next month or so. Nice stuff!

Some of the stamps from those days - the really unusual mountains issue;



Happy stamping everyone!

Sounds like you had a great Sunday Joan cursus !

I have suffered from exhaustion since our return from the UK and helping my daughter move/babysitting etc. I missed the Tel Aviv Stamp Fair and after 11 days I still haven't fully unpacked !! The stamps are still lying untouched on the desk but they will get some attention today.
Once normality returns I will start to prepare most of my collections for sale//giveaway/auction including the British Cinderellas. At TSF there will be a few giveaways once I get going and no doubt some sales or auctions too as I prefer to pass on to those I know. 

Assuming there will no escalation of the War and the Postal Service will still be operative !!!!!!!!

Londonbus1

TimG

do you store them all on Vario pages?

Today I'm continuing my collection reorganization, working to complete Australia, one of my larger collections. I've chosen to record the stamps I have in various older Scott Catalogues I purchased this summer. Each stamp I own is highlighted. I adopted this idea from a stamp club friend. It allows me to more quickly process a lot of stamps. I'm then reworking some labels and moving stamps from 8 slot sheets to 7 slot sheets. I find the sevens offer better options for different stamp sizes. The eights are good for older stamps, but the upper row is more challenging when stamps become vertically tall. Here are some images of what I've been doing.

I have been perfing early Austria, and with several varios with notes. I started to sort into my existing Vario pages only to realize I have quite a few stamps in the wrong place....

So I have made a description and labels, all printed out and cut down to try and put everything in order. Today was only the Franz Joseph Heller issues. Once done I will go back and do the same for earlier (Kreuzer). 

And I need to layout some pages as well. 

I do have France Semeuse to compile and will fit that in whenever my eyes need a break from looking at perforations.... Also whether the background is solid, patterned, numeral color, and with/without lacquer bars.

and so it goes, on and on

Good job!!

Not doing much stamping at this time of year. Too busy with other things that actually produce a bit of income.  Catching up on reading for the most part. I do get to look in on the Forum to at least keep up with current collecting conversation.  Cooler weather will bring me back to stamping.

David

Following up on doing the same with the US and Canada, I am now duplicating pages for my Australia collection so as to have a page each for mint and used stamps. Started with 1966 (for reasons) and am now up to 1994, where the self-adhesives start to appear. I don't have (m)any mint stamps from these later years, but is an opportunity to sort out variations - I didn't have a good magnifying lens when I first mounted these. I know a lot more now than I did back then.

Listening to Mark Knopfler while doing so - bonus points for anyone who knows which of his songs has a philatelic theme...

Slowly continuing to work through scanning my remaining backlog, and adding gaps in my Belgian collection, as well as valuing my entire collection for insurance purposes (using Scott 2018 and COB 2022) - slow progress there!

Also adding some donations from forum members to my Angola and Portugal stamps - thanks Antonio (kiko7pt)!