New UK Member - Hello

Hi



I have been collecting for many years, starting as a young boy. Over those years other pursuits and interests have pushed philately down my priority list. Marriage, family, my interests in building and restoring classic cars, to name but a few.



Over the last few years however, I have started to inherit collections from extended family members as they know I collect and they have lost interest. This has matured into buying collections at blind auctions over lockdown. I strip the stamps from the old albums, collate into country, and then catalogue using a set of old 2006 Stanley Gibbons catalogues I bought of E-Bay for a few quid. It satisfies my latent OCD tendency during the dark winter nights. I don’t collect in pursuit of the complete collection, or for financial gain. I simply find it relaxing to sort and catalogue, and get a bit of a thrill from finding something uncommon in amongst the common stamps.



For a bit of fun I have then transferred my stock books into an Access database and just recently build a viewer that displays where the stamps originate. The scale of the bubble represents the amount of stamps from each country.







I joined the forum because I occasionally come across stamps I can’t identify, and could do with some help from a knowledgeable group – don’t let me down !!



Paul94 – Stafford, England