Post by twopencepostage on Jun 30, 2020 22:50:05 GMT
Hello All.
Somewhere around the year 1977, I stumbled upon a dusty box in my parent's attic. When I opened it up, I found a stamp album called "The New World Wide Postage Stamp Album", published by Minkus in 1953. It was about 70 percent empty; however, several of the pages were well-populated with stamps from all over the world. Other pages had just one or two hinged to them. All of them have remained pressed in this book for nearly 70 years, so they look to be in nice condition (albeit the hinge marks will be present on a lot of these if they are removed at some point). In addition, there were about six other smaller boxes with similar stamps in them that were never hinged, also from all over the world (some used, some never posted).
I showed the box to my dad and he said most of the stamps were circa 1920-1950, but some were from the 1900s, or possibly older still. My dad said he collected these in the late 1940s and 1950s. He entrusted them to me in the 1980s and eventually asked me to take ownership of them. I pressed all the non-hinged stamps into a binder with clear plastic shelves designed for stamps. I also added hundreds of newer stamps, mostly circa 1950-1985. One last cool thing about the original collection: my grandfather worked as a statistician for the Union Pacific Railroad and U.S. Post office from the 1930s to the 1950s. His job was to track how postage flowed across the country. As such, many cancelled stamps would simply fall off the envelopes, so he took those and gave them to my dad (they would have been tossed in the garbage if he did not). He also had access to non-posted stamps that could not be used for various reasons. So, that's where many of the stamps from the original collection came from. Pretty cool!
So, I'm now just getting into stamp collecting again. I've always known just how technical this field can be and how hard it can be to determine a very rare stamp from one that is very common, even though they look identical. I also respect how rare the most valuable stamps actually are, so I fully expect to find that most of the stamps I own now are nothing more than slivers of history that are really cool to have, but are not of huge value. That said, as you all might expect, I think there may be more than a few "winners" in this collection too (dare to dream, right?). I'm hoping experts on this forum can help verify if that may be so.
Look forward to meeting all you and learning more about not just my stamp collection, but about your collections as well. If any of you can help me distinguish if one of the few green one cent Franklin stamps I have from the 1920s are among the elusive Scott 594 or 596 variety, please know I'd be greatly appreciative, for obvious reasons.
Cheers!
Pete
(Chicago Area)
Somewhere around the year 1977, I stumbled upon a dusty box in my parent's attic. When I opened it up, I found a stamp album called "The New World Wide Postage Stamp Album", published by Minkus in 1953. It was about 70 percent empty; however, several of the pages were well-populated with stamps from all over the world. Other pages had just one or two hinged to them. All of them have remained pressed in this book for nearly 70 years, so they look to be in nice condition (albeit the hinge marks will be present on a lot of these if they are removed at some point). In addition, there were about six other smaller boxes with similar stamps in them that were never hinged, also from all over the world (some used, some never posted).
I showed the box to my dad and he said most of the stamps were circa 1920-1950, but some were from the 1900s, or possibly older still. My dad said he collected these in the late 1940s and 1950s. He entrusted them to me in the 1980s and eventually asked me to take ownership of them. I pressed all the non-hinged stamps into a binder with clear plastic shelves designed for stamps. I also added hundreds of newer stamps, mostly circa 1950-1985. One last cool thing about the original collection: my grandfather worked as a statistician for the Union Pacific Railroad and U.S. Post office from the 1930s to the 1950s. His job was to track how postage flowed across the country. As such, many cancelled stamps would simply fall off the envelopes, so he took those and gave them to my dad (they would have been tossed in the garbage if he did not). He also had access to non-posted stamps that could not be used for various reasons. So, that's where many of the stamps from the original collection came from. Pretty cool!
So, I'm now just getting into stamp collecting again. I've always known just how technical this field can be and how hard it can be to determine a very rare stamp from one that is very common, even though they look identical. I also respect how rare the most valuable stamps actually are, so I fully expect to find that most of the stamps I own now are nothing more than slivers of history that are really cool to have, but are not of huge value. That said, as you all might expect, I think there may be more than a few "winners" in this collection too (dare to dream, right?). I'm hoping experts on this forum can help verify if that may be so.
Look forward to meeting all you and learning more about not just my stamp collection, but about your collections as well. If any of you can help me distinguish if one of the few green one cent Franklin stamps I have from the 1920s are among the elusive Scott 594 or 596 variety, please know I'd be greatly appreciative, for obvious reasons.
Cheers!
Pete
(Chicago Area)
to TSF, Pete 
..Ludovico
We're delighted to have you join us! 