What Did You Do Philatelically: Today Or Recently?

I merged 3 russian collections into one.

I've been separating out grilled from non-grilled stamps in a mass of stamps that arrived a couple of months ago. Part of trying to fill as many gaps as possible in my Switzerland albums. This has also involved a lot of peering at watermarks and control marks for the Standing Helvetias and Cross and Numeral issues, as well as sorting out the granite paper. All very tiring on the poor old eyes.

Drooling about an eBay stamp
which is still more than a week away.........

Moving some stuff around and came across this cover I picked up last year in Berlin at an antiques market. Paid 1.5 EUR for it, so probably my best bargain of 2024. Was told I might be able to get 100x for it on eBay, which seems a bit high to me, but either way I'd prefer to hang onto it as I do quite like it (and the way I found it - rooting around in a bin of old East German documents - is memorable, too)!

Been sorting, identifying and mounting Germany the last couple weeks and last night I realized I reached a milestone (for me). I surpassed the 70,000 mounted stamp goal that I actually set for last December.

I've been staying up late looking at Danish stamps in the dark!

In other words, I've been examining my Danish stamps of the 1960s and 1970s under a UV lamp to see which are printed on ordinary paper and which on fluorescent paper.

I've had a lot of trouble detecting varying levels of fluorescence in the paper of British stamps of the 1970s and 1980s, so I was expecting some hard work, but it couldn't have been easier. When exposed to UV light, the fluorescent paper literally glows in the dark, and the ordinary paper literally doesn't!

I am going through some mostly modern Phillipines that got damp due to storm damage.

Received in the mail a scotts specialized catalogue for 1840-1940, looked at my Oldenburg 1852 stamps under a loop and compared them to the German Philatelic Societies's handbook on forgeries, aaand used this forum and its helpful members to help me decipher the date and destination on an old cover.

Now that my new Facit catalogs have arrived, Iceland has been keeping me busy - trying to tidy up my Hagnar & Vario pages and cull duplicates. I collect mint and used singles, some covers plus I flyspeck so the stockpages are a better fit for me than printed albums. The lack of new issues makes keeping my want list updated a breeze!

Pulled my Canal Zone and US Revenue stamps out of stockbooks and placed them into Vario pages. Nothing big, only 30 or so stamps each but at least now I can see them.

Snowy and frigid out, home from work, what do I do??

How about a little kitchen table philately.

Trying to make some headway with my soaking duties, which it seems I haven't participated in for quite a while. So, decided to pull out one of the many small totes full of, mostly, 1, 2 & 3c Washington Franklins on paper.

Today I put together an Estonia page for my First Issues Collection.