What Did You Do Philatelically: Today Or Recently?

Noocassell: Apologies, I thought I'd replied to your comment but it apparently failed to post!

"I find identifying Machins can sometime be as much fun as pulling out your own teeth." - Indeed, I've put this task off for faar too long!

I haven't even thought about sorting my USA collection yet. Far too daunting, and a lot of the newer self-adhesive 'stickers' do nothing for me. It must have been fun for you, presenting to such a large audience though!

I've not seen the Deegam catalogue, but that level of shade identification would be well beyond me!

When I referred to 'shades' earlier, I should have said 'colours'. It's hard to explain about colour blindness - my daughters when young thought it meant I only saw in black and white!!

Give me a 'blue' stamp, and I can't tell if it's aquamarine, turquoise, cobalt blue, light blue etc. Similarly, for 'red' colours; brown, russett, old gold and some greens or similar colours. It's not that I can't always tell the difference when side by side, but if I only have the one stamp I know the colour family but which colour?

shermae -




That certainly is a pertinent question. A bit surprisingly, there is no answer to that question that one could buy.

I have some recent color Scott catalogs, and they mention names of colors in their catalog, but in a 1500-page catalog volume of stamps in color, there is not even one page that shows, for each of the color names they use, a 'color chip' next to each color name; e.g. gray green, dull green, greenish blue, brt pink, brt rose lilac, brt olive green, chestnut. I don't think they use hundreds of color names, so such a chart could be done on one or two pages. Very mysterious!

I did look at the Catalog pages on machins, by the way.

There's also the Wonder Color Guide and the Stanley Gibbons Colour Key. Neither of them include RGB, HSL, CMYK, or any other kinds of 3-dimensional color values.

So, this all seems rather oldschool to me, and not much of a help to people with one of the 7+ kinds of colorblindness who would like to enjoy collecting stamps a bit more than they already do.

I do have a Wonder Color Guide. I could use a color identifying app on each color chip in that, and get the RGB values and write them on each chip. Of course, I could not sell it or even give it away without getting into some kind of trouble.

I should mention here that RGB (red, green, blue) and HSL (hue, saturation, lightness) are schemes to measure transmitted light, like from the Sun or other stars in the sky or from a computer monitor. For reflected light, like from wall paint, color prints, or postage stamps, it's more common to use the CMYK color scheme (cyan, magenta, yellow, black).

In conclusion, shermae, I don't have a good, legal answer for your pertinent question.

I could use a color measuring app to get the values from a stamp color gauge or key, and write the numbers on each 'color chip' for my own use.

Another issue is that the human eye-brain combination can see about 1 million different colors (100x100x100, 100 for each of the R,G, and B components, even though they are usually given values from 0 to 255 each). So, in reality, 1 million would be a very very large catalog of 'color chips'! The Pantone chart is 30x30.

Organizing myself, double checking for any miss placed stamp on the countries envelopes and continue "gluing" stamps to my albums!

ElBlondie
Um, wait, what? Yeow!

If you want to collect Machins with minimum headaches, collect per SG Concise.

I bought a HUGE stamp collection today. More than an entire carload full (I drive a four-door sedan). The Collection is predominantly covers- thousands of cashet covers and thousands of FDCs. I look forward to sharing some highlights and seeking expertise in some instances.

Philatelic reading....

Cataloged over 400 Norway stamps. Created a Post Horn definitives sorting chart and Scott-Facit cross-reference to assist with the cataloging process. On to putting them into the album.

Robert

Robert, if you think your Post Horn sorting chart and Facit cross reference would be valuable to others facing the same challenges, please do share a copy here (in the World thread). This sounds useful.

My answer is pretty much the same for any day… Sorted precancels, set aside precancels to sell, looked at precancels on eBay, lost track of my perforation gauge 15 times, lost track of my tweezers 24 times, lost track of my scissors five times, lost track of my ruler twice, broke a nail getting an album out of its box once, growled every time the phone or doorbell interrupted me. And finally, wished I had my fakes catalogue a dozen times. Long story.

Today is sorting time.

3 huge stockbooks filled with recent japanese stamps, lots of duplicates. I need to sort this mess, list the stamps and make an album out of this. One day will not be enough.

It will also allows me to make some swapings

Most Spanish "nationalist" issues can easily be found in unmounted mint blocks of four. This holds for cheap stamps but also for the more expensive wartime issues. One very cheap set that I could not find complete and in acceptable condition - there is one seller on several platforms that offers a set of questionable quality at a ridiculous price – is Edifil 914 – 918. These are the 1940 reprints by the FNMT of five of the "cifras, Cid e Isabel" series. The original set was printed during the civil war by Hija de Braulio Fournier of Burgos. This has the printer's name at the bottom of the stamps. The 1940 FNMT reprints do not have such an imprint.

Returning to León after three decades, on Thursday, I had found a stamp dealer located between my hotel (Parador de San Marcos) and the Basilica of San Isidoro that I failed to visit during my previous stay in León. I had intended to visit this dealer hoping he might have part III of the Edifil specialised (bronze) catalogue. I also brought a list of blocks of stamps I would be interested in.

After visiting the Basilica of San Isidoro, I popped into the stamp shop. The dealer told me he did not keep the specialised catalogue in stock. He, however, did have a superb set of blocks of Edifil 914 – 918.

I went to the room auctionrun by the umbrella organisation of stamp societies in my region. All I really wanted was a packet of arrow stickers foruse in presenting and highlighting features of displayed stamps. Somehow I came away having spent over £100 on stamps.60 mint unused first class stamps for Christmas cards and mail, a beautiful SG Plymouth album with linen hinged pages in perfect condition, some 19th and early 20th stamps century, and 4 GB mid Victorian stamps I hadn't got. I also noted that hawid mounts are fetching a significant anount even used. Good news As I have a 5 or 6 pounds weight of them to sell. A good daysphilately even if I did spend more that I planned.

Feeling excited.

Went through my U.S. collection. Down to 39 stamps needed to fill (non completely blank spaces) 1947 international part 1 excluding postage dues, officials, newspaper, and offices in China.

11 large bank notes
8 small bank notes
15 Kans. Nebr.
handful of others

Sad part? many of them are somewhat common