2019 Accomplishments, 2020 Goals

Great new thread !! My goal for 2019 was to do FRANCE and re-do USA.....done. Another one was to was to eliminate certain Countries, either by selling them cheap on TSF (as I do not sell stamps on Ebay or the others), give lots of "dups" away (which I did), and try to enjoy the "sport" !!! One that I have not done is the re-do of the LQs and most important the SQs (Large Q and Small Q for those like me that hate acronyms).
Lastly I had a chance to meet 2 great stampers, Chris Beryllium Guy and Xavier hrdoktorx, in France during a trip to Aix-en-Provence and Marseilles in June - that was the cherry on the sundae !!

René

2020 goal: Get my albums organized! I'm determined to get my collection trimmed down to the stuff I really like, and not just an accumulation of everything I come across. I suspect I'll be offering some stuff up here in some manner in the new year.

My accomplishments..nothing very big
1. Expanded my British Commonwealth collection especially on Machins. Great Britain is the first country to span two binders.
2. Inventoried all my collection in Stamp Manage and contributed data back to Stamp Manage (over 4000 submissions to date)
3. Got a new 11W UV lamp and now can do tethered capture from my camera.

2019 Was the Year I returned to philately after a two year hiatus and I'm so glad I did!

- I renewed my vow to build a world class Ireland collection.

- To achieve the primary goal I have dusted off every speck of philatelic material in my stamp den and started prepping it all to trade or sell - except for the dozen or so other collections I decided to keep.

- I started a stamp blog and a trading webpage to aid me in achieving goal numero uno. I’ve made some wonderful trading friendships and completed some productive trades.

- I made an effort to become an active participating member of this forum and I also joined the fun StampBears group. These two online social groups really enrich my philatelic life.

- I launched Auction sales on my old “stamping grounds”, Stamporama.


I look forward to 2020 with great enthusiasm!

- My primary goal for 2020 is to start studying all the Irish material I have been squirreling away and to use my budget and any funds from sales to start acquiring the key items needed.

- Big goal - find a good used copy with a certificate of the only Seahorse needed to complete my “one of each major type” used singles Ireland collection. I plan to create an album for those issues and add additional pages for used examples of plate and watermark varieties. I’d like this album to be almost a reference work for every known USED SINGLES variety.

- Secondary goal - Work on my multiples, mint and Cover Ireland collection - to be separate from the used singles album. This will contain everything not covered in the used singles album and will be a really physically huge collection. I may split these up and create separate collections for each. In particular, I’d like to build a nice block collection - with imprint, plate number, plain block of 4, traffic light and cylinder blocks and larger multiples - full sheets where possible.

- If time - give a little bit of attention to my other neglected collections perhaps even making want lists to fill some empty space. 

- Continue to participate in my stamp social groups and strengthen and maintain those very important friendships.

Much gratitude for the chance to reflect on 2019. It’s been a wild one for me and for my collection.

Highlights:

- gave a talk at my local club on Stamp Collecting and the Internet, starting in 1995 when I rebooted my collecting and ending, of course, with TSF.

- Got into a real rhythm with organizing my General worldwide collection. Sorted and mounted my Germany, Czech and Netherlands stamps along with some smaller countries. Filled four binders as a result.

- Sold the house and moved to Vancouver Island in September, which prompted me to abandon my Canada and Worldwide collections and leave them behind. Kept Scandinavia and three boxes of worldwide auction lots I hadn’t really looked at. Made arrangements to sell the collection to a dealer when he’s in town next February.

- Got settled in BC and started going through the boxes. Realized I was going to build another worldwide collection. Decided to reclaim my old collection and ship it here when I go back to visit in January.

- After reading blaamand’s post about organizing his collection like a round the world trip, mapped out my trip from Victoria, across the Pacific and beyond. That’s the model for my new, one Vario page per country “highlights/favourites” worldwide collection.

Moving cross country was a great chance to seriously consider whether I wanted to continue in the hobby. I’m thrilled to know that yes, this is something I want to do and yes, TSF is the group I want to be part of.

So for 2020, it’s all about being a regular contributor here and building out that worldwide collection, pruning the junk ruthlessly and keeping the stamps I love.

If I got everything organized and sorted by the end of 2020 I’d be thrilled. But l would settle for dealing with one of the shoeboxes completely.

And the side project is building out the inventory / want list system that’s been in my brain for a while now. Maybe this is the year?

You will - I do not even know where I am 

A question was posted in another forum today...What is the main reason you collect stamps? As I thought about a reply ("I'm a history geek", I decide was the reason), something dawned on me. I "officially" started collecting on my 12th birthday, in sixth grade. For that birthday, I received a bunch of stamps and a Harris Ambassador album. Although I was away from the hobby briefly during my college years, I've never left it entirely. Today is my 57th birthday, so it is the 45th anniversary of my stamp collection. The funny thing is, I'm still trying to figure out what I want to collect. I started out collecting U.S. and worldwide. I wanted everything. Then I focused on U.S. stamps and limited WW a bit (once I figured out what CTO's were, and decided I didn't care for them so much), unless something struck my fancy or a friend brought me something back from a trip overseas. I eventually started a set of Canada albums when I reached a point that the U.S. stamps i needed were out of my price range, followed by a set of Great Britain albums. Recently, I decide to pursue France, although I still don't know if I'll put parameters on it. I'm thinking the same thing with Russia/USSR, because I have a nice small collection of those. South American countries were tempting, but I've decided instead to expand Great Britain somewhat to include the Commonwealth. Again, I may put limits on it, but that's unknown still. I have a nice start on that, going back to stamps I saved at the beginning and have accumulated since. Beyond that, I think I'm going to begin purging myself of stamps that don't fit what I've decided to focus on. I have too much overstock, and I don't enjoy that so much. I see trades in my near future, and I hope to get one of the grandkids/nephews/nieces interested.

So THAT is my goal for 2020. That will be part of getting organized. Apologies that this post got so long winded.

Thank you very much, stainlessb.

LONDON 2020 !!! Planning is already under way.  Should be fun.

Great thread!
Highlights 2019:
- Mapped out a plan for organising a WW collection into regions. All areas organized in a historical timeline, with all 'Dead countries', States, Provinces, Colonies, Occupational issues etc organized with the country it belongs to today.
- Completed transfer of Brazil, Belgium, COGH, and others into detailed DIY pages.
- Studied the 'Small Queens' and other classical Canada again and made custom pages to suite - populating them ongoing.
- Bought too much stuff...
- Made more friends on this great forum

2020 goals:
- Try not to buy too much stuff!
- Complete ongoing projects: Canada, India, Ireland (by continued cooperation with tobben63 !)
- Continue creating DIY pages
- New projects TBC, Denmark? France? GB?
- Try to be more regularly tuned into this forum

Superior goal:
- Staying Stampy and Happy 

Terrific idea for a thread, angore!

In 2019 I made the decision to get my accumulation of stamps in boxes, envelopes, and old albums organized. I have been working through about five pounds of off paper worldwide, sorting out by country into envelopes that I keep in #6 glassine boxes. I’m hoping to complete the sorting during my two weeks off.

For 2020 I would like to wrap up the sorting and then identify the first few countries to begin migrating to Steiner pages. At this point, I will likely begin with France and Great Britain. One or two of the CTO Eastern European countries will probably also be worked on.

I would also like to focus more on acquiring single country lots for areas where my current collection is lacking. I’ll probably buy a few mixed lots as well just for the fun factor.

Dale

I will append that I subscribed to Gibbons Stamp Monthly, decided to not renew my membership in USSS due to their loss of USD$49,000 in a sca,, and made a donation to StampSmarter.com.

I don't actually recall having any goals in 2019, but I did set one for 2020.

The goal I set for myself in 2020 was to end the year with 40,000 mounted stamps.

When I set that goal, I figured out I would need to average 44, if I remember right, stamps mounted each day for the entire year to end the year at 40,000.

So, how am I doing midway through the year? Not quite as I expected.

But, given everything that has happened during the year I don't think it's too bad.

Right now, I am off my pace by about 2000 stamps, for 6 months.i was actually doing pretty good the first couple months, the Covid-19 hit and threw a wrench into everything. I haven't gotten sick or anything, but just the stress of it all has been enough to throw things out of whack.

When I decided on 40k stamps, it was just an arbitrary number, not really based on anything. So, duringbthe year I am discovering that 44 mounted stamps per day may not be realistic, especially when it takes 2-3 weeks for me to sort through and identify all the stamps when I start a new country. I'm guessing several thousand per country, at least for larger countries.

What I end up at this year will give me a better idea of a more realistic goal for next year though.

2020 is continuing much like 2019.  Haven't managed to do much "liquidation" (did give  a few away), US is still in boxes and untouched, while parts of Europe continue to keep me occupied