Whatcha Been Stamping?

Oops just got your reply after I posted my last message.

The thing I like about the prices is that if you think the intial 'offer' is rather high is not to bid on that but be prepared to wait a couple of auctions and then if it hasn't sold the price will have come down quite substantially. You can also return an item if you are not satisfied with it (for any reason) and you will get your money back.

I stay with them because there is normally a very good selection, no postage costs and as I've said above they will accept anything back. It is also very convenient for me 'cos I live miles away from anywhere (in Northumberland) so I need a site I'm comfortable with and one that I trust.

After a long hiatus, I bid and won some auctions on eBay over the past couple of days. I will now begin the long wait (a month or more, usually) for the packages to start arriving here in Thailand. When they do, I'll add some nice mixes of classic Canada, Sweden and Switzerland to my general worldwide collection. Would you believe that I only had ONE stamp from Switzerland (Scott #549 portraying the south rose window of Lausanne Cathedral, issued in 1974)? My old collection had much more and I'm often surprised at the gaps in my new collection....

Tonight, I'm looking to add a few individual stamps -- going after a Cape of Good Hope triangle and a Canadian Blue Nose. I'd love to add a US #1 and #2 back into my collection (in 1997, I had a 3-margin 5c Franklin on cover and a rather ratty 10c Washington that I sold at the big show in San Francisco, Pacific 97). Alas, they may be slightly too much for this English teacher's budget to handle right now....

Well, I've been doing a few things....

While on family vacation for the past week or so, I have been mainly "soaking and sorting". I received a few modest collections from friends, and I have been going through that material and trying to get it organized. A lot of it is on paper, and other stamps are stuck down fast to album pages. Nothing else for it but to soak it and see what happens.

I have also been slowly working on replacing my PB blocked images. Yesterday, I replaced the images on the TSF Donation Lot thread and the Classic Austria. My goal is to do one or two threads per day, so that it doesn't become overwhelming.

For today, I am also planning to open the "personal giveaway" stamps I received from Manish Mohan (theamateurphilatelist). Can't wait to see what treasures await! Manish made a trip to the big street market that he posted about to acquire some stamps to send to me. I think that is a great story in itself.

Anyway, that's what I've been stamping!

An approach that is highly recommended.

Of late, I've gone through all of the posts made by the 259 members who have been absent from the forum the longest and have replaced all of the Photobucket images which are recoverable with those now residing on the TSF Image Host. Unrecoverable PB image links and broken links to other hosts were removed. I still have a way to go but at least I'm making progress.

Thanks to smauggie and Ryan for the distractions they recently posted (auxiliary markings and Aden Mosque), I've been able to take an occasional mental break so that I'll still have the will to fight the blocked PB image replacement fight.

The above quote was in connection with Universal Philatelic Auctions (UPA) here in the UK. Well having received the usual post-auction email about unsold lots in their latest sale, I ended up placing a bid on one of them. This was only my second time bidding with UPA (both being on unsold lots). The lot in question was reduced by 20% on the original estimate and that was the figure I submitted.

I won it and it arrived a couple of days ago, again with no postage and handling fee. The lot only comprised two stamps, both from the Hong Kong QEII 1962 Annigoni portrait definitives. These were the glazed paper varieties of the $2 and $10. The latter is a scarce beast (reflected in a high catalogue price), as it was produced in the final weeks before the series changed to a different watermark.

Although the glazed paper doesn't show in a scan, here's the $10 anyway:





Unfortunately, the $2 wasn't what it was claimed to be. And that's the trouble with bidding blind in a postal auction (there wasn't a photo of the lot, not that it would help with identification anyway). I only bid based on the lot's description of condition as 'very fine'. (?)

So folks, I have contacted UPA about the problem, which they have acknowledged. Although I'm confident they will rectify the matter one way or another, it is frustrating. I guess I should be grateful that it wasn't the $10 that was wrongly identified; this is only the second used copy I have seen in about 30 years.

So all I need now is to get a mint copy. That shouldn't be a problem; it's a mere £2250

I bought a few revenue lots.  Working on them, especially Wine stamps.

It is amazing the amount of time many of us spend organization while using tools like Microsoft Excel. I know many of us have quite extensive catalog listings.

Yeah, a few of my early spreadsheets were quite of the "everything including the kitchen sink" approach. Way too detailed to be of practical use at all where, after the initial period of creation I would soon find myself procrastinating against updating them. 

My current "simplified" version of the Stamp Issuers list is basic but has a lot of information. Once I get all of the issuing entities in there (plus separate sheets for Unlisted Nations and Local Posts, etc.), the only thing I need to do is add/update the counts of the number of stamps. Everytime I add an issuer name, it gets a "!" in the catalogue column rather than a checkmark or "X" so that I can keep a running total (at the top) of the number of issuers. If I own items from that entity already, that column also gets a "1" as does the column marked ASAD, the abbreviation for my "A Stamp A Day" blog once I publish an entry about the issuer. Takes a little bit to set up but then it will be very easy to update when I obtain new stamps and add new issuing entities. I enjoy knowing how many I own -- not just how many stamps but how many entities and how many I've already written about.

I have PDF copies of the Scott Catalogue (just upgraded from the 2009 version to 2013; I am planning to purchase paper copies starting with Vol. 1A of the 2019 edition as they begin publishing them now that I've found a distributor who will ship each volume to Thailand for less than the price of the book itself!).

For actual inventorying, I now employ the following system:

• First, I scan any new stamps.
• I then use the scan (bigger size -- my eyes aren't what they used to be) in order to look it up in the catalogue.
• Once I find the stamp in the catalogue, I highlight the entry and the column for Used or Unused. I can add a note with further details if I want. It all gets saved in the PDF. If I had a paper copy, I would use the same approach -- highlight marker and write notes.
• On my computer, each country/entity has a separate folder inside a main folder ("My Collection") and individual folders for each letter of the alphabet. Once I know the catalogue number, I rename the image file with "ENTITY NAME - CATALOGUE NUMBER - YEAR". If I have duplicates of a particular stamp, I add a (NUMBER) and I can also add a notation for (M) or (U).  For example, a stamp image might be named "United States - 1 - 1847" for the first copy and "United States - 1 - 1847 (2)" for the second copy; "United States - 1 - 1847 (M)" and "United States - 1 - 1847 (U)" if I have one used and one unused, or other variations thereof. This keeps the stamp images in catalogue order within each folder and each name is unique. If I put images from different countries into the same folder (such as sorting topicals, for example), they remain in alphabetical and catalogue numerical order.
  
• Finally, I will eventually add them into my inventory software. I find databases are much more satisfying than mere spreadsheets, particularly when they update the values each year. After trying most, if not all, of the various stamp inventory programs on the market, I chose StampManage a few years ago. I like it for many different reasons and have found many ways to customize it as I went along. But each person will fill differently.

. . 

Re: UPA - Universal Philatelic Auctions (Based in the UK)

Since posting the above, I got an email a few days ago about a problem I had with a lot, that I had won about three weeks ago from their unsold lots listing. This was only my second attempt at bidding on one of their auctions.

Here's just to emphasize UPA's service:

I had notified them that one of the two stamps I received, was not as described. The stamp is listed at £11 in Gibbons.

Maddie, who is the lady who deals with sale problems, consulted with Andrew the owner. The outcome is that they will credit my account with £14.80 (a curious amount). So, this equates to 28% off the original invoiced amount, should I win any further auction lots. I was also told to keep the problem stamp as it wasn't worth their while processing such a return.

A generous gesture I think and a lesson on good customer relations.

As an aside to this, I have been reading feedback from buyers based in Canada and the USA, who have been using UPA. All have had positive experiences, boosted no doubt by zero postage & handling costs and zero buyers fees. There does seem to be a problem getting hold of the printed catalogue (a large beast) delivered to the USA in time for the auctions. But as the poster pointed out, the delay is not with UPA (who send them out at least a month in advance), it's USPS sitting on these magazine type mailings.

My inventory file is a simple flat file in Excel.  

I use the filter feature to view what I need to view. I do have catalog prices/costs (hidden using group feature) but they do not change significantly enough to really worry about.

I track which album it is or would be in, a page number (not shown in this view), inventory, want, and trade status along with many stamp particulars.

I was out of town so no stamps to play with but I had my computer with me so continued the work on my inventory file such as adding the recently released one. I am an early riser. Later, I went into the woods to clear some existing trails for our UTV since they are getting overgrown with foliage.

I've done little stamp-related activity for the past 10 days apart from the periodic check on the Forum to take care of housekeeping chores.

I'm back home now and hope to get back to my collection but first I need to get the "Articles of Distinction" competition started and write an article for the Newsletter.

Haven't had much time lately for stamping as I've been trying to rejuvenate my lawn, building a heated shelter for a feral cat that has adopted us, preparing for my daughter's wedding this weekend, and writing an article about a Civil War patriotic cover for the next issue of the newsletter.

I have, however, made a number of ebay acquisitions, most of which pertain to air mail-related events. I also picked up a pristine booklet of 1 cent Ohio prepaid sales tax stamps of the first design type that were printed by Reserve Litho.

Lastly, I've been enjoying my recently acquired ability to remove self-adhesives from paper using Pure Citrus. Here are two plate number singles of the 5 cent non-denominated definitive coil stamp (non-profit) that was issued on February 10th of this year (Scott 5172) that arrived in my mailbox this week. I rarely get a plate number single on mailings so to get two in one week is quite extraordinary.

I started a new country collection on Steiner pages and decided to experiment with clear rather than black mounts even for some used ones so there is a more consistent appearance. As a test I order 2x size  "split back" mounts and cut in half to reduce cost.  The test is about retention as well.  The perforations do seem to disappear.