ScottV Stamps

I have seen some spectacular stamp art on walls at stamp shows over the years, where artists have cut and pasted thousands of stamps to make images.  My reactions to it are complex.  First, there's admiration for the work that went into it.  Then there is some annoyance that our cherished collectibles have been trivialized or treated like things of no value to be cut up and glued.   Then again, if they are common junk stamps, why not?  They could either sit in envelopes in boxes in closets, never seeing the light of day, or they can be used for art and craft projects, presented in clever new ways, given some kind of purpose again. There are a lot of sellers on eBay, Etsy, and HipStamp who sell bulk stamps specifically to be used for crafting purposes.  It might be 100 red queens or a mix of 50 green stamps from all over the world.  Sometimes, these are little packets of better stamps, like cartoon character commemoratives from Japan, you name it. ...

Sometimes, the dealers at our local show (Sandipex in Poway, CA) bring a box of mixtures.  I find these hard to resist.  Back when I was doing this as a half-time job, and came to all the shows I could get to, some of the guys would keep a big big box of things for me so when I showed up I would be hooked.  That was a lot of fun, and I could probably ask them to do so again, but time and the pandemic have thinned out the events over time. Here are the mixes I found today: This was just a fraction of what was in that big box on the table, but these were the ones that appealed to me.  The world mix looked like it had a bunch of Malaysia in there, and it turned out to be over a half pound of Malaysia in there (nothing fancy but it's an hard mix to find). For the others, they were unusual quantities for those countries.  Costa Rica usually only shows up as a glassine or two here and there, but this baggie had about 1000 of them.  The Spain mix had a good range ...

One thing I always look for at local shows are the dealers who have country folders.  These are stacks of album pages usually stapled to a folder with an overall catalog value and typically a big discount.  These are usually priced from 20% to 30% of the total value, and they are easy to flip through. I look for ones from places that always sell well, like Italian Colonies, Offices Abroad, etc, or I look for a good chunk of complete pages or an overall high count of complete sets.  If it's all broken sets or mixes, it's not going to be easy to flip. I also typically make a stack of about 50% over my budget and then slowly pick through them and put back ones that don't measure up to the others.  I have 40 years of know-how in this business now, and have a good eye for what will make good lots and what won't. Today we were at Sandipex in Poway, CA.  There were about $500 of other folders of those Italian back-of-book issues, so I wish I had more of a budget. ...

While you can get almost anything you want from any of a thousand online sites these days, there's no substitute for walking into a local stamp show where you've known the guys for decades and looking through their hoards.  Here is a bin full of stamps I got today: Everything in here was mint never hinged complete sets.  Individual glassines boasted catalog values of $45 or $70 or more.  Even if it was all $5 to $10 items, wow, look at the quantity. I suppose that the seller didn't want to put the time into this batch.  It will take time to check the catalog prices and numbers and scan them all, and post them to some site, but the sales will trickle in for years to come.   Maybe the seller bought it from someone else for $180 and just marked up the price.  That's a good move.  No need to do all the work to get every penny out of it, just take a bonus now and move on to other items.   Either way, we had fun doing a preliminary run through...

I find sorting mixtures of stamps to be very relaxing.  While it obviously satisfies that part of me that likes to go through boxes of "stuff" looking for the best items, it's also just a calm, repeating task where my mind can wander ... while also being a test of my memory and appraisal skills. For world mixes, I will add country piles alphabetically in about 3 rows as the countries come into play.  A general mix will have all the usual suspects: Australia, Canada, Germany, GB, Japan, Switzerland, Scandinavian countries and a few others, about 20 main piles.  I typically have extra piles for Africa, Other Asia (not Japan or Hong Kong), Latin America and Other (general).  I also have a pile for postmarks, or a pile for regular postmarks and slogan postmarks if enough slogans appear in the mix -- despite the decades of articles about how interesting postmarks are, I almost never sell an actual batch of them even though I have hoarded pounds and pounds of them and neve...