Friday, 29 November 2024

BBC = Beautiful British Colonials

I'm seeing quite a few complete sets of British Colonials posted online recently. As I complete Long & Noble Crusade 2.0, it's nice to sit back and enjoy someone else's collecting, sorting and arranging. I'll likely never have complete sets' high-values come to me, but here they are for reference:
































Wednesday, 27 November 2024

What's Wrong With Stamp Shows, Part 2

When I initially published this post on this topic in April, 2023 my optimistic self was likely hoping for a sea-change, well maybe a wave or two, but tonight I can see there was nary a ripple.

I can safely say that after listening in on the Collectors Club panel tonight on Zoom. Two dozen or so well-meaning people clustering around the topic of 'The Future of Stamp Shows'. A lot of angst expressed, a few ideas tossed out, little change in the offing. A lot of rearranging of the deck chairs on the proverbial impending iceberg cruise ship.
  • Widen the show format to include coins, ephemera, postcards? 
  • Call it a collector's show? Because stamp collectors and all collectors have 'the gene'.
  • Have a no-rules exhibition with...no rules. Absolutely no rules.
  • Who knows what a vermeil is and why does anyone need one? I looked it up and have no idea.
  • What about an online exhibition or bourse? Young people do not attend in-person events.
  • Fees for exhibitors can run into hundreds or a thousand-plus dollars.
  • Does everyone have to be a secretary-treasurer? We are overtaxing ourselves with too many organizations administrating a static number of collectors.
The best moment of the program that I saw occurred when one attendee asked what happened to Graham Beck? You know, the YouTube guy I mentioned in last April's post? No-one seemed to know for sure. I watched Graham's final video in which he said his videos were too much work and required an unsustainable amount of effort. Another attendee made a remark about the content not being sound, never mind the popularity of the format. 

I found Graham's approach quite entertaining and quite enjoyable. Unlike the future format of shows discussed in this program.

It's understandable that someone has to plan, organize and be responsible for a stamp show. But that should not include sticking with the same-old, same-old. Let's be on the lookout for nothing old, something new, something borrowed from which to take our cue.

Monday, 25 November 2024

The Punk Philatelist

 


Finally, I've found another one of the few stamp websites that isn't all about ancient and obscure bits of paper that cost an arm and a leg - The Punk Philatelist. Part of Punk's manifesto reads:

Punk Philatelist is out to prove that stamps and other philatelic stuff are not just dusty things for old people to collect before they die, but a fascinating and vibrant expression of pop culture. Based in Melbourne, Australia, Punk hit the internet in 2015 with a manifesto:

How the hell has it come to pass that the cool young people are wearing gingham dresses and crocheting and trimming their beards with scrimshaw knives, while remaining oblivious to the joys of the wonderful olde-schoole world of philately?

The site is colourful and conversational, with a great sidebar full of links. You can also watch the team in action on their YouTube channel: Stamps Aren't Cool.

I shall return...often...to read more.

Saturday, 16 November 2024

Mawkish, Cloying, Treacly

There is a tendency sometimes to make things overly sentimental, schmaltzy, saccharine. Overly sentimental, desperately trying to attach some deep meaning or historic life-lesson connection to everyday pursuits or hobbies.

I got watching this Silk on the Web video. I'm listening to it right now, albeit in another tab, while I'm blogging this. He inherits a small glassine envelope and a pair of stamp tongs from his grandfather. Of course that got me thinking back to any gooey, overly-sweet, nostalgic moments or memories I similarly had from my early years of stamp collecting.

As the title of this blog says, my brother, sister and I would "work stamps" with my Dad. It was his term, of unknown origin, which in no way implied it was work. Not labour, maybe a labour of love. A way to connect with his kids. "You can't go wrong with British Colonials, you know." Something to do on a snowy afternoon before Al Gore invented the internet. (He did, you know.)

His approach must have been semi-serious, but I did not feel that working stamps was overly stressful or scholarly, much less work. I still enjoy seeing each stamp I encounter, even if I don't keep it or need it. I really enjoy sorting through them. Who knows what will turn up next? And, among my (so-far) five Traveler albums, not my original one because I opened the binding and added binder rings to expand it. 

I have 'inherited' three stamp collections. One from my Dad, one from my maternal grandfather including my Mom's, and one from an overseas penpal. I always thought my Dad's was THE stamp collection. The one by which all other collections were measured. It was not. I've realized that I have collected many more, nicer stamps than he had, although he certainly bested mine when it came to age, including one set his father bought to commemorate my Dad's year of birth. My penpal's collection was interesting, based on only a couple of countries. My grandfather's was full of old, small definitives from many years ago. Some unhelpful person had valuated then removed some of the higher catalogue-value ones. My Mom's little cardboard-cover album contained what she once told me were my grandfather's doubles - the ones he didn't want. She stuck them in her album with some sense of duty, it seemed. Something they worked on together as the attenuating ash dangled dangerously from the end of his lit cigarette.

Silk on the Web promotes not the monetary value of our collections in the above linked video, but rather the enjoyment, the pride, the relaxation, the educational, intangible benefits of stamp collecting.

In an upcoming post, I'll include some non-sentimental photos of these collections I've 'inherited'. Like any stamp collections, they are kept or disposed of based on the emotional connection to the person who curated them. And it doesn't have to be for any of those mushy, melodramatic, dreamy reasons.

Saturday, 2 November 2024

Stamps as Interior Decor

I had accumulated a sizeable ziploc bag of damaged stamps: rips, missing perforations, corners, thins, heavy cancels etc. Some that are horribly damaged I safely dispose of by folding them in half and dropping them into the recycle box. (That's to ensure I don't look in the box and think the stamp just fell in there!) 
Saving them for something, I found that something this week. We had bought and successfully assembled (that means the unit was assembled and upright without both of us arguing and having to go to counselling) an IKEA unit for our family room. I was generously allotted three shelves. Matching IKEA Drona black fabric storage boxes fit on each shelf for stamp stuff, train stuff, archives stuff. In front of each storage box is my creative craft project using the damaged stamps:
Dollar Tree had some very basic black 8x10 photo frames with patterned edges. I tape-runnered the damaged siimilarly-coloured stamps to patterned cardstock and placed them in the frames:


Not only is my semi-organized stuff now virtually invisible inside the fabric storage boxes, but the storage boxes tend to disappear visually behind each frame of damaged stamps! And the stamps don't even look all that damaged!

Friday, 1 November 2024

100 Bucks o' Fun at the Kingston Fall Stamp Festival

Last weekend, the Kingston Stamp Club held its Fall Stamp Festival at Crossroads United Church. My first stop, as always, was the club consignment table. Their system is effective and after perusing tables full o' goodies, I was checked out with my consignment items in my reusable shopping bag and perusing the bourse (displays). I stopped at an Oakville dealer's table for some needed mounts and hinges:
Roy Lingen of Verona had a full-price box of baggie mixes as well as a half-price box. Here are my finds from the full-size:
And from the half-price box - half a hundred dollars. Yes, that's 1,000 copies of a New Zealand bird stamp.
Roy directed me to Janet MacDonald, a fellow customer and someone who has followed my blog on Kingston history. Turns out Janet and I like Roy's sale items, Janet writes a column for the Kingston Stamp Club newsletter, and we share eclectic interests. I found Janet and her husband Hugh perusing a nearby dealer's items and we had a brief chat. Janet said she made a pledge to herself not to buy any on-paper material. I said I did that, too, before breaking my own pledge. Soak on!

The stamp show finds should keep me sorting over the coming winter months!
 

Wednesday, 11 September 2024

Long & Noble Crusade 2.0

After albumizing two-plus rows of glassines full of 'Keep' stamps in my first Long & Noble Crusade beginning March of 2023, we're now in L&NC 2.0. After sorting the 'Save' stamps in June of this year, they formed only one row in 2.0. So that's progress. Wanting to winnow that row further, I'm doing a 'need and checked' review through all four Traveler albums of mine. Normally sorting by continent, I merged all the glassines into alphabetical order like the albums. Starting at 'A' this week (top photo).
With album open, I arrange the glassine contents (Checked for duplicates) looking for matches in the albums (if none, it's a Need). If it's a Need, or it's a better cancel or condition, I swap them on the spot. If too much movement on the album page will be required to add the new arrivals, or more pages need to be printed due to a significant addition to a country [are you listening, Korea?] they go back in the glassine for albumizing.
This one-row was tightly squeezed into the photo-box lid, with hinges in Tupperware. (On one particularly humid day, I had to separate ALL the hinges in the envelope and store them in a cool place for a couple of days. The 500 or so hinges in the envelope were well on their way to becoming one big hinge!) Tonight I got to Mozambique (alphabetically, not physically) and I've already filled half a baggie with doubles and the row is shrinking. So the process is working. It has my....stamp of approval!

Now, with the stamps winnowed, it's a question of albumizing them. With a known quantity for each country, I'm able to pre-select pages from two previous Travelers and the Ambassador stamp-show-find albums. I interleaved them where they will go in each of my four albums. Now, the albums look like they're .... bulging. And it's like somehow shoehorning a new chapter into an already-written book - it is a little unnatural to slot in another title page for Nicaragua, for instance, when there's already one there with flag and crest stickers. Undaunted, I still prefer the original album page format, even if I don't place each stamp in its matching black & white image on the page. 

So it's on to albumizing...Afghanistan, Aland (a new one for me!) and then it's on to Andorra and Angola. After I reach Zimbabwe, it will again be time to level the album's contents thereby distributing them equally among all (soon to be five) Traveler albums.

Still evading me is the will to albumize large, daunting country baggies like Bulgaria, China, Poland and Russia. I did interleave some Poland, Romania and Prussia, finding Bulgaria and China too daunting and early in the alphabet. I guess you could say I'm Stalin, er, stalling! Either way, I'm on my way to breaking out the fifth Traveler! The Crusade continues...