Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Could i get some advice on this subject. I am wondering how sacriligeous it is to break apart stamp packs to retrieve the mint stamps to put in a stockbook? Also breaking open, tearing apart carefully the pages of a prstige booklet to get the blocks of four or joined pairs for the same purpose?
I have done this for sets that i have duplicates of but am tempted to do the same for the rest. I know that for resale the booklets are best left in-tact. But at this point i have no intention of selling my collection, (probably would not get much anyway).
Arty
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The great bulk of modern stamps generally have so little value, and will never have any significant value, that I see no point in preserving what is nothing more than packaging. I know that some collectors who try to assemble "complete" collections might disagree with me, but to me collecting is a very personal thing, and I do what I have to in order to please myself. "Rules" are made to be broken.
Bob
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Arty, depends. If you want to save or collect booklets, prestige packs, etc., do; otherwise, as Bob says, collect the way you want. In the absence of a financial reason, or for posterity's sake, your collection should please you.
David
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Arty,
There are many factors for decieding just how you collect (preserve) those little treasues.
Your intentions or reasons for entering the hobby are the main ones.For pleasure,for investment,preservation,education,and a variety of untold reasons.
As Bob points out,recent stamp issues are not investments in the monetary sense, yet they are investments of interests in the choice of how and why you collect a particular area of philately.
If you are enjoying stamp collecting,you are doing it right.
If you start counting the "money" you expect to make "in the future", then you are trying to invest,not collect. A bad choice is common stamps. If you intend to invest,buy only one stamp a year that costs as much or more than you currently spend on an intire years issued stamps.
(( this guaged on average collector buying).
But as a hobby,,haveing fun,,enjoying all the aspects of the hobby, and collecting the way that suits your interests and budget are a plus ,not only to your satisfaction of doing it the way you precieve it to be the right way,your way,is paramount to takeing stamp collecting to totality.
Seeing as all formats are listed in the Scott catalogue,you can safely say you are collecting in the correct way.
Booklets can be saved in--
mint,used,
single,pairs,strip,block,pane,complete booklet,folded,unfolded,different outer covers,plate numbered stamp,plate numbered panes,used on cover,FDC,.
All of these formats are in the listings.So whichever way you deciede,it's the right way.
Or collect all of the above for a "complete collection of any given stamp issue".
Then there are the collector interests, such as pane position,especialy used stamps,trying to reconstruct a pane of stamps in used format.
Have fun,,dont worry,be happy.
TOM
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Thanks for that. I will take your advice on board and do believe that i will take those stamps from the stamp packs and place them in a stockbook until i can afford a pre-printed Australian Decimal album to display the mint examples of each. Some that are in sheetlat form i will of course keep intact and put them into an appropriate album. The costly part now it seems is obtaining the specific albums and catalogues i desire. As a coin collecting friend told me a while ago, i need to narrow down my field and stop being a bower bird. It has worked in my coin collecting. Once again thanks fellas(guys), must remember that the bulk of members are American, not everyone can decipher Australian terminology.
Regards
Arty
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One last thing Arty, buying expensive albums is only one approach: consider creating your own pages or buying used albums and using them entire or stripping the pages you want.
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A point that hasn't been mentioned: Post office packing materials are rarely of archival quality and the stamps should be removed from their packages.
Albums versus home-made pages versus stockbooks versus used albums is of course an endless discussion among collectors. Things to consider:
• Why spend money for stamps that you may not even like?
• Pre-printed albums are for basic collections only, and do not accommodate color and perforation varieties, multiples, used and mint copies of stamps, interesting cancellations, postally used covers and FDCs, exploded booklets, etc.
• Of what value and use is a completed, pre-printed album page? The goal is completing the page, of course, but afterward? I personally find my completed album pages a bit boring, and rarely look at them.
• Creating your own pages is a more satisfying task than simply mounting stamps, and can be modified if necessary to include more items. Stockbooks make it possible to move items around to accommodate new items, and to add notes and other information on paper to display next to the items. (Using stock books also makes it easy to remove items for scanning and for display in exhibits.)
Food for thought.
Bob
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My two cents worth. I computer make each and every page and this allows me to design each page according to what I may "currently" have. Since I save the file I can always change the layout as I see fit. I enclose each page in a clear acetate sheet available at Walmart, Target, etc and then put each stamp or collectable in crystal mounts and attach these to the page with REMOVABLE double stick tape. I've done over three hundred pages and it's been fun and rewarding. Here is a sample of 4 pages ..... Perry
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Crystal mounts? I assume that you don't actually mean the original "Crystal Mounts," which were about the worst stamp mounts ever made. I once purchased an auction lot that was mounted in Crystal Mounts. Most of the them had shrunk significantly, permanently "jamming" perforation teeth, rippling the mint stamps, and badly glazing their gum. I should have returned the lot, but I was a rank amateur with auctions and kept the stamps.
Bob
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Hi Arty,
You mentioned above that you were wanting to purchase catalogs as well as albums etc, as an Australian collector I have found the Australasian Stamp Catalog very good and relatively inexpensive. I think it was about $40 when I bought my copy a couple of years back.
Regards ... Tim.
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How about "Show Guard" mounts .... Crystal mounts was just a figure of speech. Perry
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I thought that was probably the case, but Crystal Mounts are still around. I saw a package a couple of years ago, in an auction lot as I recall.
Bob
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Some of us do not realize that different countries collect in different manners.
I was recently baffled by a trade partner wanting horizontal and vertical pairs or strips from booklet stamps of U.S.
Seems the stamp album of his country list them that way.
Not just the multi image issues,but single image booklets stamps also.
We do need to take this into consideration when offering help and suggestions.
I guess the asking party needs to say which country or geographic area he/she is from,or what cat./printed album they are useing,or the responder could inquire the same.
It is not always the terminology aspect of regional dialect or language,but the source of the information of that very region.
It was the 5th entry that let us know that Arty was Australian,before we changed to a more helpful commentary.
BTW - Perry-- nice page layouts.I do the same,but with vario stock pages- w/2,4,5 and 8 pocket pages.No hinges,no mounts,no printed or home made pages,no extra costs,no extra work.
TOM
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Tom, great point. I was not aware of that collecting approach (multiples of booklet singles). Perhaps the manufacturing is different, too, as for US booklets, that approach offers little help in IDing a booklet from sheet, whereas UK coils look like sheet stamps and, so, perhaps a coil pair becomes a more convincing example.
David
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Harley,
The whole point I found in making the pages was the "fun" in doing so ..... the expense is not important as it's the collecting and displaying that makes it fun for me. Usually it cost more to mount them than the stamps are worth, er, oh well!
BTW: Your stamp is in the mail ....
Perry
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OK, I'll "confess" something: When I pass on to the Great Bourse in the sky, assuming I can get past Security, my relatives back on earth will look at my stamps and covers and say, "What the ___?!"
They will be confronted with six or seven thick binders of stock pages, several stock books, and two Lighthouse albums. They will encounter perhaps 90 or 100 home-made album pages, most of which will feature stamps and/or covers. They will find thousands of stamps and hundreds of covers loosely organized by theme -- WWII, the Vietnam War, Aviation and Airmail, Aviation Postcards, and "Eclectica". Some binders will contain completed exhibition sheets, although some of the items they once displayed will no longer be there. Some will contain items that might in some distant future be included in revised or new exhibits.
Anyone wanting a quick evaluation of this collection will have years of work ahead of them, because a record keeper I am not. However, this accumulation, this "mess," is representative of the way I work.
As I said earlier, I no longer use proprietary albums, mainly because I find them pretty boring and useless except as places to store stamps, and stockbooks provide better storage, especially if they are somewhat organized. But it's not as if I never go into my various ringbooks and stockbooks: they are the source of material I use in creating exhibits, web pages, club presentations, and even posts to this discussion board. Sure, it sometimes takes me a while to find a particular item, but that always gives me an opportunity to review my collection, and I often "find" stamps or covers that, I realize, I could incorporate in an revised or new exhibit. Some such items can and haved formed the basis of new web pages.
In a nutshell, when I work on my stamps I do so in the context of creating a presentation for my own benefit and that of others. For me, creating album pages for my entire "accumullection" would be not only impossible at this late stage in my life, but pointless as well.
Bob
(Message edited by Bobstamp on November 17, 2009)
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David,
UK coils are made from sheet stamps.
Older issues,, the watermark sideways IDed it as coil.A right side up was sheet,and upside down was a booklet.
Newer issues,machins, have a perfectly straight cut of the perfs-top and bottom.Mint are fairly easy to tell,but used-with wear and roughed up perfs are another thing.
Other countries use back numbers(usually every 5 th stamp. Mint are normally saved in strips of 5 with the back number on the 1st stamp.Used,singles must have back number as proof of ID.
Sweden uses the back number on coils,but also an astrix on the last stamp of the roll-also a collectable version,and costs more .There's only one per roll.
But yes,pairs are better for IDing coils,but also preserves the perfs(between the pair) for better ID of perf size.Also imperf coils need be in pairs or strips for a better ID.Some could have been cut from sheets to fool the unwary.In this instance,measurements of the stamp image,margins,heighth,and spaceing between stamps may come into play for IDing.
Most WAG booklet stamps have one or two straight edges,in the U.S, and sheet stamps perfed on all four sides.The SA gummed booklet and sheets may have one or two straight edges,but the new,20 stamp panes can also have the same thing.The mint can usualy be IDed by the size or images in the salvage.Sheets are a bit different than booklets.
So booklet pairs/strips should not have any salvage,except where the tab (in older issues) has a plate number,or modern may have info and images of the issue.
There are instances where both sheet,pane and booklets are identical in all respects.The forever vending booklet of 2007 is one of these.This is one of those times when an entire mint vending booklet is needed.As used it cannot be Ided ,for sure,as either pane or booklet.The other 12 varieties are distinguishable by the micro print and color/size of the yeart date.The only two easy ones are the ATM panes.Larger perfs and two different year dates.
OOPS,,,looks like I got carried away again.A short post turned into a desertation,a book.
Sorry about that.
TOM
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Reading these interesting messages, I just had to put my two cents worth in. Looking at this from a dealer's angle, and looking at my own stock just gives me a massive headache.
I collected from 1929, at age six, until 1992. In foreign I only collected the part I Scott album, 1840 to 1940, the first hundred years, and accumulated 26,013 stamps in three binders. When I sold my first stamp from this collection, it was quite traumatic, but I got over it quickly once a few stamps were gone. I still have the collection, and still selling out of it. As for US, I had a great personal collection complete mint in all the commems to the yaer 1955, and almost complete in all the other stamps, except for the great rarities. I sold just about all my US stock in 2004, including my personal collection. I kept all the plate blocks from 1941 on, also the sheets, and booklets.
I used the finest mounts, called Visa-Trays, these were little individual trays that set into a black mount, so you placed the stamp in the tray, and then slid it into the mount which you affixed to the album. If you wanted the stamp, you just pulled out the tray, and the mount stayed in the album. Many times the mount cost more that the stamp. For my US stamps, I used Elbe Governor albums, with gold edged pages, the top of the line.
No one in my family is interested in my stamps or postcards, so I have to make arrangements for their disposition after I am gone.
The postcards are no problem, for they are going to the Lyn Knight Auctions, but the foreign stamps, OH, this is a problem. Had some dealers come to my home, and some asked me what the catalog value was for all the stamps. With that question, I knew that they were out of their mind.
I cannot even catalog my personal collection, for it would probably take a decade or more to do so, and that is working around the clock. I have about fifty albums. I also have shoe & plastic boxes, and boxes, and boxes filled to the top with stamps, some by country, and many unsorted. I have a low figure that I want for everything. Although it is a dealers stock, there is very little duplication.
I gave some of the stamps to Dutch Country Auctions that starts today,and ends on the 21st.(www.thestampcenter.com) and I think that I know who I will leave everything with to auction off after I am gone. Whatever my estate can get, so be it, but what a mess for my kids. If I can reach 90, maybe I will try to clean it up a bit.
My suggestion to you collectors is, try to maintain an orderly collection, and get rid of material you do not need. DO NOT LET IT ACCUMULATE!
Richaard
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There is a very interesting article in the new Linn's by Lawrence Block (the crime writer, who is a collector). Like Mr. Block, I am a worldwide collector, except I'm a little crazier because I go beyond 1940. He talks about how he has a place in his album for the unique Sweden Orange Tre Skilling Banco stamp and how that does not bother him in the least that he will never own it and the space will remain blank. I feel the same way. I love the hunt for stamps and filling in the blanks. If I have a cover or multiple or selvedge version, I just put it onto a blank page at the back of the book. I just don't have enough time to print my own pages.
Bob
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01:28:57am
Hi everyone,
Could i get some advice on this subject. I am wondering how sacriligeous it is to break apart stamp packs to retrieve the mint stamps to put in a stockbook? Also breaking open, tearing apart carefully the pages of a prstige booklet to get the blocks of four or joined pairs for the same purpose?
I have done this for sets that i have duplicates of but am tempted to do the same for the rest. I know that for resale the booklets are best left in-tact. But at this point i have no intention of selling my collection, (probably would not get much anyway).
Arty
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re: Breaking Stamp Packs & Prestige Booklets
The great bulk of modern stamps generally have so little value, and will never have any significant value, that I see no point in preserving what is nothing more than packaging. I know that some collectors who try to assemble "complete" collections might disagree with me, but to me collecting is a very personal thing, and I do what I have to in order to please myself. "Rules" are made to be broken.
Bob
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Auctions
re: Breaking Stamp Packs & Prestige Booklets
Arty, depends. If you want to save or collect booklets, prestige packs, etc., do; otherwise, as Bob says, collect the way you want. In the absence of a financial reason, or for posterity's sake, your collection should please you.
David
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08:31:41am
re: Breaking Stamp Packs & Prestige Booklets
Arty,
There are many factors for decieding just how you collect (preserve) those little treasues.
Your intentions or reasons for entering the hobby are the main ones.For pleasure,for investment,preservation,education,and a variety of untold reasons.
As Bob points out,recent stamp issues are not investments in the monetary sense, yet they are investments of interests in the choice of how and why you collect a particular area of philately.
If you are enjoying stamp collecting,you are doing it right.
If you start counting the "money" you expect to make "in the future", then you are trying to invest,not collect. A bad choice is common stamps. If you intend to invest,buy only one stamp a year that costs as much or more than you currently spend on an intire years issued stamps.
(( this guaged on average collector buying).
But as a hobby,,haveing fun,,enjoying all the aspects of the hobby, and collecting the way that suits your interests and budget are a plus ,not only to your satisfaction of doing it the way you precieve it to be the right way,your way,is paramount to takeing stamp collecting to totality.
Seeing as all formats are listed in the Scott catalogue,you can safely say you are collecting in the correct way.
Booklets can be saved in--
mint,used,
single,pairs,strip,block,pane,complete booklet,folded,unfolded,different outer covers,plate numbered stamp,plate numbered panes,used on cover,FDC,.
All of these formats are in the listings.So whichever way you deciede,it's the right way.
Or collect all of the above for a "complete collection of any given stamp issue".
Then there are the collector interests, such as pane position,especialy used stamps,trying to reconstruct a pane of stamps in used format.
Have fun,,dont worry,be happy.
TOM
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02:19:47am
re: Breaking Stamp Packs & Prestige Booklets
Thanks for that. I will take your advice on board and do believe that i will take those stamps from the stamp packs and place them in a stockbook until i can afford a pre-printed Australian Decimal album to display the mint examples of each. Some that are in sheetlat form i will of course keep intact and put them into an appropriate album. The costly part now it seems is obtaining the specific albums and catalogues i desire. As a coin collecting friend told me a while ago, i need to narrow down my field and stop being a bower bird. It has worked in my coin collecting. Once again thanks fellas(guys), must remember that the bulk of members are American, not everyone can decipher Australian terminology.
Regards
Arty
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Auctions
re: Breaking Stamp Packs & Prestige Booklets
One last thing Arty, buying expensive albums is only one approach: consider creating your own pages or buying used albums and using them entire or stripping the pages you want.
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re: Breaking Stamp Packs & Prestige Booklets
A point that hasn't been mentioned: Post office packing materials are rarely of archival quality and the stamps should be removed from their packages.
Albums versus home-made pages versus stockbooks versus used albums is of course an endless discussion among collectors. Things to consider:
• Why spend money for stamps that you may not even like?
• Pre-printed albums are for basic collections only, and do not accommodate color and perforation varieties, multiples, used and mint copies of stamps, interesting cancellations, postally used covers and FDCs, exploded booklets, etc.
• Of what value and use is a completed, pre-printed album page? The goal is completing the page, of course, but afterward? I personally find my completed album pages a bit boring, and rarely look at them.
• Creating your own pages is a more satisfying task than simply mounting stamps, and can be modified if necessary to include more items. Stockbooks make it possible to move items around to accommodate new items, and to add notes and other information on paper to display next to the items. (Using stock books also makes it easy to remove items for scanning and for display in exhibits.)
Food for thought.
Bob
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re: Breaking Stamp Packs & Prestige Booklets
My two cents worth. I computer make each and every page and this allows me to design each page according to what I may "currently" have. Since I save the file I can always change the layout as I see fit. I enclose each page in a clear acetate sheet available at Walmart, Target, etc and then put each stamp or collectable in crystal mounts and attach these to the page with REMOVABLE double stick tape. I've done over three hundred pages and it's been fun and rewarding. Here is a sample of 4 pages ..... Perry
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re: Breaking Stamp Packs & Prestige Booklets
Crystal mounts? I assume that you don't actually mean the original "Crystal Mounts," which were about the worst stamp mounts ever made. I once purchased an auction lot that was mounted in Crystal Mounts. Most of the them had shrunk significantly, permanently "jamming" perforation teeth, rippling the mint stamps, and badly glazing their gum. I should have returned the lot, but I was a rank amateur with auctions and kept the stamps.
Bob
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12:16:39pm
re: Breaking Stamp Packs & Prestige Booklets
Hi Arty,
You mentioned above that you were wanting to purchase catalogs as well as albums etc, as an Australian collector I have found the Australasian Stamp Catalog very good and relatively inexpensive. I think it was about $40 when I bought my copy a couple of years back.
Regards ... Tim.
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re: Breaking Stamp Packs & Prestige Booklets
How about "Show Guard" mounts .... Crystal mounts was just a figure of speech. Perry
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re: Breaking Stamp Packs & Prestige Booklets
I thought that was probably the case, but Crystal Mounts are still around. I saw a package a couple of years ago, in an auction lot as I recall.
Bob
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04:00:19am
re: Breaking Stamp Packs & Prestige Booklets
Some of us do not realize that different countries collect in different manners.
I was recently baffled by a trade partner wanting horizontal and vertical pairs or strips from booklet stamps of U.S.
Seems the stamp album of his country list them that way.
Not just the multi image issues,but single image booklets stamps also.
We do need to take this into consideration when offering help and suggestions.
I guess the asking party needs to say which country or geographic area he/she is from,or what cat./printed album they are useing,or the responder could inquire the same.
It is not always the terminology aspect of regional dialect or language,but the source of the information of that very region.
It was the 5th entry that let us know that Arty was Australian,before we changed to a more helpful commentary.
BTW - Perry-- nice page layouts.I do the same,but with vario stock pages- w/2,4,5 and 8 pocket pages.No hinges,no mounts,no printed or home made pages,no extra costs,no extra work.
TOM
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Auctions
re: Breaking Stamp Packs & Prestige Booklets
Tom, great point. I was not aware of that collecting approach (multiples of booklet singles). Perhaps the manufacturing is different, too, as for US booklets, that approach offers little help in IDing a booklet from sheet, whereas UK coils look like sheet stamps and, so, perhaps a coil pair becomes a more convincing example.
David
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re: Breaking Stamp Packs & Prestige Booklets
Harley,
The whole point I found in making the pages was the "fun" in doing so ..... the expense is not important as it's the collecting and displaying that makes it fun for me. Usually it cost more to mount them than the stamps are worth, er, oh well!
BTW: Your stamp is in the mail ....
Perry
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re: Breaking Stamp Packs & Prestige Booklets
OK, I'll "confess" something: When I pass on to the Great Bourse in the sky, assuming I can get past Security, my relatives back on earth will look at my stamps and covers and say, "What the ___?!"
They will be confronted with six or seven thick binders of stock pages, several stock books, and two Lighthouse albums. They will encounter perhaps 90 or 100 home-made album pages, most of which will feature stamps and/or covers. They will find thousands of stamps and hundreds of covers loosely organized by theme -- WWII, the Vietnam War, Aviation and Airmail, Aviation Postcards, and "Eclectica". Some binders will contain completed exhibition sheets, although some of the items they once displayed will no longer be there. Some will contain items that might in some distant future be included in revised or new exhibits.
Anyone wanting a quick evaluation of this collection will have years of work ahead of them, because a record keeper I am not. However, this accumulation, this "mess," is representative of the way I work.
As I said earlier, I no longer use proprietary albums, mainly because I find them pretty boring and useless except as places to store stamps, and stockbooks provide better storage, especially if they are somewhat organized. But it's not as if I never go into my various ringbooks and stockbooks: they are the source of material I use in creating exhibits, web pages, club presentations, and even posts to this discussion board. Sure, it sometimes takes me a while to find a particular item, but that always gives me an opportunity to review my collection, and I often "find" stamps or covers that, I realize, I could incorporate in an revised or new exhibit. Some such items can and haved formed the basis of new web pages.
In a nutshell, when I work on my stamps I do so in the context of creating a presentation for my own benefit and that of others. For me, creating album pages for my entire "accumullection" would be not only impossible at this late stage in my life, but pointless as well.
Bob
(Message edited by Bobstamp on November 17, 2009)
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12:19:28pm
re: Breaking Stamp Packs & Prestige Booklets
David,
UK coils are made from sheet stamps.
Older issues,, the watermark sideways IDed it as coil.A right side up was sheet,and upside down was a booklet.
Newer issues,machins, have a perfectly straight cut of the perfs-top and bottom.Mint are fairly easy to tell,but used-with wear and roughed up perfs are another thing.
Other countries use back numbers(usually every 5 th stamp. Mint are normally saved in strips of 5 with the back number on the 1st stamp.Used,singles must have back number as proof of ID.
Sweden uses the back number on coils,but also an astrix on the last stamp of the roll-also a collectable version,and costs more .There's only one per roll.
But yes,pairs are better for IDing coils,but also preserves the perfs(between the pair) for better ID of perf size.Also imperf coils need be in pairs or strips for a better ID.Some could have been cut from sheets to fool the unwary.In this instance,measurements of the stamp image,margins,heighth,and spaceing between stamps may come into play for IDing.
Most WAG booklet stamps have one or two straight edges,in the U.S, and sheet stamps perfed on all four sides.The SA gummed booklet and sheets may have one or two straight edges,but the new,20 stamp panes can also have the same thing.The mint can usualy be IDed by the size or images in the salvage.Sheets are a bit different than booklets.
So booklet pairs/strips should not have any salvage,except where the tab (in older issues) has a plate number,or modern may have info and images of the issue.
There are instances where both sheet,pane and booklets are identical in all respects.The forever vending booklet of 2007 is one of these.This is one of those times when an entire mint vending booklet is needed.As used it cannot be Ided ,for sure,as either pane or booklet.The other 12 varieties are distinguishable by the micro print and color/size of the yeart date.The only two easy ones are the ATM panes.Larger perfs and two different year dates.
OOPS,,,looks like I got carried away again.A short post turned into a desertation,a book.
Sorry about that.
TOM
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re: Breaking Stamp Packs & Prestige Booklets
Reading these interesting messages, I just had to put my two cents worth in. Looking at this from a dealer's angle, and looking at my own stock just gives me a massive headache.
I collected from 1929, at age six, until 1992. In foreign I only collected the part I Scott album, 1840 to 1940, the first hundred years, and accumulated 26,013 stamps in three binders. When I sold my first stamp from this collection, it was quite traumatic, but I got over it quickly once a few stamps were gone. I still have the collection, and still selling out of it. As for US, I had a great personal collection complete mint in all the commems to the yaer 1955, and almost complete in all the other stamps, except for the great rarities. I sold just about all my US stock in 2004, including my personal collection. I kept all the plate blocks from 1941 on, also the sheets, and booklets.
I used the finest mounts, called Visa-Trays, these were little individual trays that set into a black mount, so you placed the stamp in the tray, and then slid it into the mount which you affixed to the album. If you wanted the stamp, you just pulled out the tray, and the mount stayed in the album. Many times the mount cost more that the stamp. For my US stamps, I used Elbe Governor albums, with gold edged pages, the top of the line.
No one in my family is interested in my stamps or postcards, so I have to make arrangements for their disposition after I am gone.
The postcards are no problem, for they are going to the Lyn Knight Auctions, but the foreign stamps, OH, this is a problem. Had some dealers come to my home, and some asked me what the catalog value was for all the stamps. With that question, I knew that they were out of their mind.
I cannot even catalog my personal collection, for it would probably take a decade or more to do so, and that is working around the clock. I have about fifty albums. I also have shoe & plastic boxes, and boxes, and boxes filled to the top with stamps, some by country, and many unsorted. I have a low figure that I want for everything. Although it is a dealers stock, there is very little duplication.
I gave some of the stamps to Dutch Country Auctions that starts today,and ends on the 21st.(www.thestampcenter.com) and I think that I know who I will leave everything with to auction off after I am gone. Whatever my estate can get, so be it, but what a mess for my kids. If I can reach 90, maybe I will try to clean it up a bit.
My suggestion to you collectors is, try to maintain an orderly collection, and get rid of material you do not need. DO NOT LET IT ACCUMULATE!
Richaard
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President - West Essex Philatelic Society www.wepsonline.org
17 Nov 2009
01:08:23pm
re: Breaking Stamp Packs & Prestige Booklets
There is a very interesting article in the new Linn's by Lawrence Block (the crime writer, who is a collector). Like Mr. Block, I am a worldwide collector, except I'm a little crazier because I go beyond 1940. He talks about how he has a place in his album for the unique Sweden Orange Tre Skilling Banco stamp and how that does not bother him in the least that he will never own it and the space will remain blank. I feel the same way. I love the hunt for stamps and filling in the blanks. If I have a cover or multiple or selvedge version, I just put it onto a blank page at the back of the book. I just don't have enough time to print my own pages.
Bob
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