Greetings from Northern Arizona

Thanks for the responses to my introductory post!

To 1840to1940:  Yes, I do use albums.  I started out with a Scott International Junior published in 1930 (blue cover similar to the one in your avatar), but was dissatisfied with the lack of spaces for some complete sets I had acquired.  So, I went to an auction at an APS national stamp a few years back, and I bought a set of three Scott International albums with brown covers, which are more complete in terms of the spaces for stamps issued.  I have a set of three albums:  1840-1900, 1901-1920, and 1920-1929.  They were also published around 1930, like my Int'l Junior.

To tomiseksj:  Thanks for your greetings and for upgrading my TSF status.  I will have a look at the different ongoing topics and see where I can best fit in.  I have a nice quality scanner at home, so I will be able to send some images of stamps from my collection.  By the way, my avatar, Canada Scott #65, is a scanned image of an actual stamp from my collection, not just an image I found on the internet.

Hi again, everyone!

First of all, just wanted to say how much I have been enjoying TSF these last couple of weeks. I have already learned lots about forgeries, how to use an image storage website, etc. Learning is one of my favorite things to do, so it seems I have come to a good place for it. Thanks to you all!

As a follow-up to my original personal intro posting, I wanted to post a photo of my all-time favorite set of stamps, the Canada 1897 Queen Victoria Jubilee set.  I don't have any real in-depth, research-oriented comments to make about this set, other than to relate my own personal experience about it.  Since these stamps are generally not inexpensive, I never came across any of them in my early collecting days, and I only discovered them for myself about 12 years ago or so.

For me, it was "love at first sight"!  I couldn't believe that I had been collecting stamps for so long and had completely missed out on the existence of these beautifully designed and executed stamps.  I immediately started a decade-long quest to put together a set for my own collection.  I settled on collecting unused copies (so that the design would never be obscured), and decided to go for previously hinged or no-gum stamps to make them more affordable--NH copies of these stamps are seriously expensive, I learned.

I also figured out pretty quickly that like so many other 19th century stamps, it was a challenge to find clean, sound, well-centered copies of these stamps.  Nothing like a challenge, I thought!  I looked through many hundreds of copies of each denomination on the APS Stamp Store until I settled on purchasing a couple.  About a year ago, I finally completed my set, with the addition of the $4 stamp.  So, no great revelation here, but here is the pride and joy of my collection.

Now I just need to decide what will become my next collecting passion, but I still love looking at these!