New member from Indiana

Hello,

I am Bill, now hailing from Indiana by way of Chicago and then the suburbs.  I have been collecting stamps since the age of 8 or so.  I don't remember exactly how it came about, because I was always interested in cars, trains, and building things.  I suspect it wasn't love at first site because one of my earliest recollections is putting stamps in an album - by licking a mint stamp and mounting directly to the page to get it done quickly!  HAHA  I was strongly discouraged of this practice by my Father, and thus began mounting with Harco Blue Ribbon mounts ... Better memories (getting fuzzy at age 70) I have are going to Marshall Fields (downtown Chicago) a few times a year and after visiting the toys on the 4th floor, went to the 3rd floor to peruse the stamps in the large glass cases and seeing the Zeps I could never afford, and noticing the different and very colorful UN stamps - which I could afford - except for that one #38 which was over $100!  HAHA  I also remember being about 10 years old or so and walking from my Grandparents house down 26th street west of Kedzie to a local stamp and coin dealer whose name now escapes me.  He was an older, skinny, cigar chomping guy who struck me as more interested in coins than stamps, but he was very kind to me and nurtured my UN collection and always gave me a deal - and a stamp for every page!

I suppose I went through all the same phases that most do; getting a stamp on each page, then girls became the major life focus, the Army draft, my new family, career taking off, then slowing down and retiring and rediscovering the stamp collection.  In my case, before it had been packed away, I had morphed the collection from a rudimentary Minkus US album to the 6 volume Minkus US and Plate Block albums and then on to a big Scott National with a place to mount virtually every stamp before it was temporarily abandoned.  Since I had already accumulated a fair amount of modern plate blocks, I manged to get a couple of new Scott albums for those too.  It all ended up in a couple of large plastic tubs for decades, but were occasionally filled with modern stamps because I actually never stopped buying new US issues.  And as my career took me to many parts of the world, I would occasionally find a post office and bought them out - especially when in Canada.

Which brings me to the present, or I should say the past 6-7 years where I found my collection had really ballooned into quite a horde - decades of post office visits forced me to purchase 40+ years of supplements to bring the albums up to current status to accommodate mounting it all.  Now I find that I have 6200+ pages comprised of predominantly US, UN, and Canada stamps. All stamps and blocks are professionally mounted using custom cut black mounts in 41 Scott National and Specialty Series albums on pre-printed pages and supplements when available and blank, mostly quadrilled handwritten pages for additional mountings (primarily variations, special issues, and related topical issues). Post cards and stationery are mounted with transparent corners on pages separated by glassine interleaving.  My current project is mounting UN "themed" issues from countries all over the world.  This started out as a special interest collecting stamps commemorating the 50th anniversary of the UN and being one who always "picked up" related stamps along the way, managed to get another specialized focus.

I actually found this site while trying to figure out the best (and most accepted) way to collect the modern self adhesive issues.  As I mentioned before, I get the annual yearbooks from the US, and when I received the 2021 album and stamps, I noticed that the stamps are badly cut, presumably with scissors, and most have missing or severely damaged perfs.  In the past, I have not opened these yearbooks, preferring to keep them sealed, but this latest one was tossed on the snowy porch and was wet.  I opened the package to get everything out of danger and after examination, saw that the stamps were not of collector quality.  I wrote to the post office to alert them to my situation, but have not heard back from them.  I am now debating whether I should open all the other albums to see what condition they are in - I kind of don't want to know!  At any rate, is it possible that because of self adhesive stamps, cut or missing perfs are not an big deal?  It goes against my views that it would be, but since many of the stamps come imperf on one or more sides anyway (I'm not sure what these "mini booklets" that the stamps come on are called), it has become acceptable and/or necessary.