Quick Intro - a Stamp Life

My Dad got me interested in stamps when I was 6, so this year marks officially 50 years in the hobby for me.  My very first job was helping a stamp dealer in Port Jefferson Station (NY) price stamps for his shop -- I got paid about $15 in catalog value per hour, my pick.  Perfect.

 

 I would get to see things like this India States issue...

I started a mail order mixture company when I was a senior in high school (1984) and it moved with me over the years from CT to NY to California.  I got on eBay in 1996 and their computer algorithm booted me off as I was gearing up for a 20th anniversary promotion (long story).  I'm sure I have gone through 1000 pounds of mixtures over the years, made 20,000 lots for sale, got my eBay ranking up to almost 10,000 so I had at least that many sales ... as well as cataloging hundreds of collections for Lee Clark Stamps over 20 years.  So, I have seen a few million stamps.

I still have a significant stash tucked away for a rainy day.  The biggest attraction to me is being able to go through boxes of items, sorting them, looking at the various details (color, postmarks, etc), instinctively knowing which ones are the most valuable or uncommon after so many years of experience.  Somehow my brain still highlights stamps I have never seen before as if I somehow remember them all -- I don't know how that would even work, but there is a special vibe when I turn a page or shift around a pile of stamps and see something "different."  A lot of the attraction is that thrill of the hunt.

Old postal stationery items from faraway lands?  My kind of thing.

Actually selling stamps involves a lot of steps and labor: finding them, making sellable lots, scanning or photographing them, getting the descriptions into my spreadsheets, and ultimately uploading the images and CSV files into websites.  I had my own website for many years but it just never got much traffic.  These days I am selling on Hipstamp exclusively -- I have been with the site through its last few iterations, and there is enough activity there to make it worthwhile.

There are times when the extra stamp sales would help me survive between paychecks, though currently I don't need the extra income, so I have cut down on activity.  But every few months I dive back into boxes of stuff and find more things of interest.  So last weekend, I took another box of lots from my old website, got them all into the new format of spreadsheet, pulled all the images from my archives, and I am planning on getting them posted soon.  Meanwhile, I found some envelopes of better items from a stamp show a few months back that I had not finished working up.  With more to come.

I still have a personal collection, which I eventually whittled down to only stamps from before I was born (1966), skipping the U.S., U.N., Canada and Mexico.  I occasionally have some $$ to spend on my own stuff, but what usually happens is that any stamps/sets over $5 go into the TO SELL boxes and I maybe get to pick a few for myself every now and then.  Or, since I collect used stamps, the mint ones get sold.  Since I never had much of a budget for anything in my life, and use my own computer-printed pages and hinges, I sell all MNH items I find -- so I don't damage them with hinges, and they are the "top quality" items that other collectors are likely to be looking for anyway.

That's a glimpse of where it's at right now.  I don't know why I have never written articles or had a blog about my stamp collecting life, but this is going to be my spot for my personal observations and highlights of some of the fascinating items I have found over that half a century of collecting.  A lot of things about the hobby have changed over that span, including online sales, shipping methods, you name it -- so it should be an interesting ride.

And even with catalogs of over a million items, unlisted issues turned up all the time.

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